That's Entertainment? Trivia Quiz

Answer: Senet

Senet in ancient Egyptian means "the game of passing." It was played on a board with three rows of ten spaces each. Some spaces had symbols on them. The exact rules are not known, but it seems to have been similar to backgammon. People are often portrayed playing senet on the walls of their tombs, and many game boards have been found. Tutankhamun's tomb contained four complete senet boards, and parts of two others. Senet dates back to at least 3100 BC. Senet wasn't the only board game the Egyptians played; another popular game was "hounds and jackals," which seems to have resembled the children's game, "Chutes and Ladders."

Answer: Hetairai

Hetairai were not common prostitutes (pornai). Although many of them were foreigners or former slaves, they were free and independent women with talent and sophistication. They were expected to be well-educated and able to carry on a conversation with the best minds of the age.

Many of them became famous and immensely rich. One of them, a woman called by the unlikely name Phryne (Greek for "toad"), was a model for Apelles and Praxiteles. She grew so wealthy that one account says that she offered to rebuild the walls of the city of Thebes after they had been destroyed by Alexander the Great.

There are so many stories about her that it is difficult to separate fact from fiction.

Answer: Chariot racing

Surprised? Movies and television have made it seem that Romans practically lived at the Coliseum, watching gladiators hack each other to death. While gladiatorial combats were undoubtedly popular, and people also enjoyed watching gladiators fight wild animals, and criminals being put to death in various painful and creative ways, these "sports" paled before the popularity of chariot racing. The Romans were simply mad about the races. The Circus Maximus in Rome could seat 250,000 spectators (as compared to 80,000 for the Coliseum), and the seats were always filled to capacity. There were four factions - red, white, blue and green - and most races featured two teams from each faction. There was no pari-mutuel betting, but fans often bet immense sums on the outcomes of the races among themselves.

Chariot racing was a dangerous sport; charioteers wrapped the reins around their waists, so if there was an accident, they were often dragged to their deaths. But a successful charioteer could not only become famous, he could also become very rich. Over the course of a 24 year career, Gaius Appuleius Diocles won 1,462 out of 4,257 races, and purses totaling 36 million sesterces. This was the equivalent of 9 million denarii, probably close to a billion dollars in today's money (not $15 billion as reported in many sources). Chariot racing remained popular long after gladiatorial games had died out; they were still popular in the Byzantine Empire up until about the 12th century.

Answer: Jousting

Jousting began in the 11th century, and originally involved teams of competitors who fought on horseback, using not only lances, but also swords and other weapons. The winners could claim the vanquished warrior's horse and armor. These early contests were incredibly violent, and often resulted in death or serious injury. Henry II of England temporarily banned jousting because so many of his knights were being put out of commission.

By the 14th century the joust had evolved into what we usually think of today. Two knights would charge each other with a blunted lance, separated by a barrier called a "tilt" made of cloth or wood. Special plate armor and helmets were designed to reduce the possibility of injury.

The joust remained a dangerous pastime, however. Famous figures who died while participating jousts include Geoffrey, Count of Brittany (trampled to death), Leopold, Duke of Austria (his horse fell on him), and King Henri II of France (a splinter from a broken lance pierced his eye). Jousting remained popular in England until the middle of the 17th century, and is still the state sport of Maryland.

Answer: Bear-baiting

Paris Garden was the most famous "bear pit" in London. It was located in Southwark, near the Rose Theatre. The sport consisted of chaining a bear, whose teeth had been filed down, to a post in the middle of a large pit. The bear would be attacked by some 20 or 30 dogs, usually mastiffs.

Despite being at a disadvantage, the bears were seldom killed, although they might be badly mauled. The dogs, however, were often killed, or lost legs. Spectators would bet on how many dogs the bear would kill within a certain time period. Queen Elizabeth was very fond of bear-baiting.

She vetoed a law passed by Parliament that forbade bear-baiting on Sunday, and also decreed that plays could not be performed on Thursdays, in order that the bear-pits would not have any competition on that day.

There were variations, such as bull-baiting, where the bear was replaced by a bull, and the mastiffs by English bulldogs. Another popular event involved tying a monkey to the back of a horse, and having it attacked by dogs. One account from 1564 states: "...a pony with an ape fastened on its back, and to see the animal kicking among the dogs, with the screams of the ape, beholding the curs hanging from the ears and neck of the pony, is very laughable." Bear-baiting retained its popularity up until the beginning of the 19th century.

It was finally outlawed by the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1835.

Answer: Loo

Loo is a variation of the English card game all-fours, and was a popular gambling game in colonial times. Other games played in colonial America included piquet, whist, and cribbage. Poker did not become a popular game until well into the 19th century, and contract bridge and gin rummy were both invented in the 20th century.

Answer: Cycloramas

Cycloramas were huge paintings that were designed to give a 360 degree view of a scene. Battles were often depicted, but sometimes scenic views or other historical events were the subjects. Almost every large city had a round cyclorama building to display the paintings. Audiences would walk around and view the events in sequence. A similar form was the myriorama, or moving panorama, where the audience viewed the painting through a proscenium as it was rotated on huge spools.

To give you an idea of the huge size of these paintings, the famous Atlanta Cyclorama measures 42 feet (13m) high by 358 feet (109m) long. It shows the Battle of Atlanta, which took place in 1864. It was commissioned by General John A. Logan, who was the Republican candidate for Vice President in 1884. Logan commanded the Union army during the battle, and soundly defeated the Confederates under John Bell Hood. The original name of the piece was "General Logan's Great Battle," and one of the frames shows Logan on his black charger, Slasher, with sword drawn, leading a charge against the rebels.

The cyclorama toured the country during the campaign of 1884, and remained a popular attraction for decades afterwards. When motion pictures made cycloramas obsolete, the city of Atlanta was able to purchase the painting, and built a special building to display it. There were once hundreds, if not thousands, of cycloramas, but today only a handful survive.

Answer: Flagpole sitting

Alvin "Shipwreck" Kelly was born in 1893. He had worked as a prizefighter, sailor, and a stunt man in motion pictures. In 1924 a publicity agent hired him to sit on top of a flagpole near a theatre to draw attention to a motion picture being shown there. The publicity stunt worked; Kelly stayed on top of the flagpole for 13 hours and 13 minutes, and launched one of the most improbable fads of the 20th century.

Kelly soon began staying on top of flagpoles for longer and longer periods of time. In 1926, he sat atop a flagpole in St. Louis for seven days and one hour. In 1928, he went aloft in Newark, New Jersey for 12 days. Thousands of people came to stare at Kelly, and he was often on the front page of newspapers. He spawned dozens of imitators; at one time in Baltimore, there were 20 people simultaneously sitting on flagpoles. At the peak of his popularity, Kelly was earning $100 a day, a huge amount of money at the time. His record was a 49 day, one hour sit in Atlantic City in 1929. Altogether, Kelly logged 20,613 hours of flagpole sitting.

Kelly sat atop flagpoles during rain and snow, and during freezing weather. His food and drink was delivered to him by a system of pulleys, and he relieved himself in a bucket, covering himself with a blanket for modesty. He even shaved and slept atop his flagpole.

Flagpole sitting went out of fashion during the Great Depression, and Kelly wound up penniless; he was living in a boarding house in New York City when he died of a heart attack in 1952.

Answer: Smell-O-Vision

The film was called "Scent of Mystery," and was designed to show off a new breakthrough in movie-making developed by a man named Hans Laube called Smell-O-Vision. It was produced by Mike Todd, Jr., Elizabeth Taylor's stepson, which may account for her appearance in it. Smell-O-Vision was a complicated system that would blow scents through tubes under the audience's seats at key moments during the film. Smells included roses, wine, baking bread, pipe tobacco, and many others. The film was advertised as follows (and, no, I am not making this up): "First they moved (1895)! Then they talked (1927)! Now they smell!"

Incredibly, there was even a rival system called AromaRama that beat Smell-O-Vision to the theatres. A documentary about China called "Behind the Great Wall" using AromaRama was released on December 2, 1959, a few weeks before "Scent of Mystery."

Smell-O-Rama actually worked, sort of, but it was not a hit with audiences. "Scent of Mystery" was the only movie ever made using the process (AromaRama fared no better). It was later edited and re-released in a non-smelling format as "Holiday In Spain."

Answer: 1936

On the morning of June 7, 1936 in Owensboro, Kentucky 26 year-old Rainey Bethea robbed, raped and strangled to death a 70 year-old widow named Lischia Edwards. Bethea had a long criminal record. During the commission of the crime he left behind his muddy footprints, fingerprints, and a ring he had made while in prison. He was soon apprehended, and confessed to the crime. He also told the police where he had hidden Mrs. Edwards' jewelry. It took a jury less than five minutes to sentence him to be hanged.

Unfortunately, the case attracted the interest of the news media. What interested them was not the heinous nature of Bethea's crime, but the fact that the sheriff of Daviess County, where Owensboro is located, was a woman. When the previous sheriff had died suddenly, his widow, Florence Thompson, had been appointed to serve out the remainder of his term of office. So reporters from all over the country flocked to Owensboro to witness the hanging, which they expected to be carried out by a woman.

The reporters were disappointed. Although a large crowd, estimated at between 10,000 to 20,000 had gathered to watch the hanging, it was well behaved. There were no attempts to lynch Bethea. Thompson was present, but the actual execution was carried out by a man she had hired and a deputy. When the trapdoor on the gallows was sprung, Bethea's neck was snapped and he died instantly, without suffering. Afterwards, employees of a local funeral home carried the body through the crowd unmolested to their facility.

Now all of this made for a pretty dull story. Since many of the newspapermen present had been sent to observe the hanging at considerable expense to their employers, the reporters did what reporters still do today: they simply wrote what they thought would make good copy, and ignored the facts. Many reported that Thompson fainted (she didn't). Others reported that the crowd ripped the clothes from Bethea's corpse for souvenirs (they didn't). And so on.

Although the execution of Rainey Bethea had been carried out without incident (other than the fact that the man who was supposed to pull the lever that sprung the trap had shown up drunk and lost his nerve, and had to be replaced by a deputy), the resultant "media circus" convinced the governor and state legislature that in the future all executions would be carried out behind prison walls.