Time to Rhyme Trivia Quiz

Answer: trash cash

Were you aware that the average human being generates about 4.4 pounds (2 kg) of trash every day? That adds up to over 1600 pounds (726 kg) per year per person in the United States alone! Human rubbish, mostly plastics, has accumulated in the northern Pacific Ocean in what is called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which has wreaked havoc on marine life that have become entangled in it or have consumed the trash. Despite the efforts of environmental groups, the patch continues to grow.

Answer: true blue

To be true blue means to be unwaveringly faithful. True Blue is also the name of a racehorse who finished fourth in the First Grand National at Aintree Raceourse outside of Liverpool, England in 1839. The sports teams at UCLA have adopted a particular shade of blue that they call True Blue. It may be hard for us moderns to imagine when we look at the azure or cerulean sky on a sunny day, but the ancient Greeks had no word for blue. Truly!

Answer: free spree

In 1932, Australia faced an unexpected problem: the emu. After World War I, veterans received land grants in Western Australia, but before long about 20,000 emus migrated inland when they found that these new farms offered free and easy food and shelter. Against this avian spree, the farmers asked for help from the government, which sent soldiers armed with Lewis machine guns and 10,000 rounds of ammunition in what was meant to be a swift eradication of the pesky creatures.

But as the poet said, the best-laid plains of mice and men often go awry. As the Great Emu War went on, the emus proved very adept at avoiding the soldiers, who rarely got close enough to the birds to do much damage. And even when they did, the emus scattered, minimizing casualties. Some soldiers reported that a few emus even appeared to be acting as lookouts! Eventually the government recalled their troops, and the Great Emu War came to a close. The emus had won the day, and indeed after their great spree they became symbols of adaptability and resilience against seemingly insurmountable odds.

Answer: narrow arrow

In ancient Greece, the philosopher Zeno contended that an arrow in flight would never land, because it must arrive halfway first; but before doing that, it must travel a quarter of the distance; but before doing that, it must travel an eighth of that distance; and so on.

This is called Zeno's Paradox. Yet thousands of years of hunting and warfare have demonstrated that the arrow, which has never heard of this paradox, manages to hit its mark anyway.

Answer: same game

Though it doesn't happen every day in sports, every now and then multiple records are broken during the same game. On 29 January 1995, during Super Bowl XXIX between the San Francisco 49ers and the San Diego chargers, Steve Young of the 49ers threw six touchdown passes and set a new record.

In the same game, the 49ers scored a touchdown in just one minute and forty-two seconds into the game, another record! Lastly, the Chargers scored 26 points, for a total game score of 75 points, the highest combined score up to then in the Super Bowl!

Answer: fake drake

Speaking of fake drakes, duck decoys have been used since ancient times, including by the indigenous peoples of Australia and North America. A collector named Joel Barber published a book in 1918 called "Wild Fowl Decoys", which helped change decoys from being just a tool used by hunters to a collectible bit of Americana.

The practice really took off after the publication of "The Art of the Decoy" in 1965 by folk art dealer Adele Earnest.

Answer: thin pin

As with the wheel, it's hard to pin down (no pun intended) the origin of the pin. It has certainly been around since ancient times. Bronze pins have been found at archaeological digs in Egypt, for instance. In the eighteenth century, England was one of the first countries to manufacture pins for sewing. Luis Marcus, a maker of cosmetics in San Francisco invented the bobby pin after World War I to hold in place the newly popular bobbed or "bob cut" hairdos.

Answer: lean bean

Lentils, beans, and peas all belong to the legume family of plants, the scientific name being either Fabaceae or Leguminosae. Peanuts, clover, and alfalfa are also in the legume family. What makes a plant a legume is that the fruit opens on two sides, like peas in a pod. Legumes are important in crop rotation because bacteria in their root nodules fix nitrogen to the soil.

As the popularity of a plant-based diet has grown since the early 21st century, so has the consumption of legumes, used as a source of protein to substitute for meat and dairy products.

Answer: smart art

Art thieves can be smart, and certainly a pair of clever burglars managed to pull off what may be the biggest heist in history in 1990. Disguised as police officers, the villains entered the Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and absconded with a baker's dozen of art works -- Vermeer, Rembrandt, Degas, etc. -- valued at half a billion dollars or so. The museum keeps the empty frames on display lest anyone forget this unsolved crime.

Answer: space race

At the height of the Cold War, the USA and the USSR engaged in the Space Race, to be the first to achieve major accomplishments in the exploration of outer space. The Soviet Union was a little bit ahead at first, for they managed to put the first dog in space (Laika, a mutt who did not survive the journey), and the first human in space (Yuri Gagarin, a man who did survive the journey), as well as the first woman in space (Valentina Tereshkova, a pioneer who also survived).

But then the United States scored a big coup by being the first and only country in the 20th century to land astronauts on our Moon (and bring them all home again). Then the two countries began to work together in 1975 with the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, a major milestone not only in space exploration but in international coöperation.