Everything Elmo Trivia Quiz

Answer: Sesame Street

This lovable furry monster created quite a stir at Christmas time in 1996, when the Tickle-Me Elmo toy became the must-have item of the year. The red puppet began life in the early 1970s as an uninspired spare; several attempts to give him life resulted in him being put back on the shelf. Finally, in 1984, Kevin Clash happened to pick him up and managed to imbue him with a unique personality. Witnessing this performance, the writers of Sesame Street were inspired to write parts for Elmo. After years of going practically unnoticed, this little red monster became a star.

Answer: St. Elmo's Fire

St. Elmo's fire is caused by the ionization of the air during thunderstorms. It is a ghostly, blue-white fire that appears on tall, pointed objects such as ships' masts, but it can also appear on the tips of cattle horns!

Answer: ELectronic Mail Opener

ELMO is technically known as a MUA, or mail user agent. Most of the software developed for Unix-based operating systems, including Linux, is considered open-source or free software. Linux supporters, in defining the concept of free software, often compare it to "free as in beer" and "free as in speech," meaning that not only is the software freely available for download at no cost, but that the source code is also available for developers to modify, refine, and improve upon at will, providing they supply appropriate documentation when publishing it.

Answer: Elves

The races of Middle-earth are sometimes divided into the Powers, the Light races, and the Dark races. The Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits and Men are generally considered to be among the Light races, though some tribes of Men were allied with Sauron from their earliest history and thus would be counted among the Dark races.

Answer: First African-American to receive a PhD in chemistry in the US

St. Elmo Brady was born in 1884 in Louisville, Kentucky. He attended Fisk University, graduating in 1908. He began teaching at the Tuskegee Institute, and in 1912 was offered a scholarship from the University of Illinois for graduate studies. He later would tell his students that when he entered graduate school "they began with 20 whites and one other, and ended in 1916 with six whites and one other."

Answer: Grandma got run over by a reindeer

Elmo Shropshire, aka Dr. Elmo, is a veterinarian from San Francisco. He earned his 15 minutes of fame when he and his wife, Patsy, recorded the quirky, offbeat, now-classic Christmas jingle "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer." In 1983, the song surpassed Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" on the Billboard Christmas charts in the US.

Answer: The Brave Little Toaster

The novella titled "The Brave Little Toaster" was written by Thomas Disch and originally appeared in "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction" in 1980. It was later made into an animated movie and features, in addition to the title character, a lamp, a radio, a vacuum cleaner, and an electric blanket.

Answer: Paleontologists

Elmo, Kansas, USA, is best known for its proximity to the Permian Insect Fossil Beds, discovered in 1899 by Elias H. Sellards, a graduate student in Paleontology at Yale University. He returned to the site in the summers of 1902 and 1903, eventually accumulating "...some 2,000 specimens, a number which exceeded the combined fruits of nearly a hundred years' collecting from all other American Paleozoic localities..."
("The Permian Insect Fossils of Elmo, Kansas" by Roy J. Beckemeyer)

Answer: Sailors

There are a number of myths and legends about the torture and miraculous survival Erasmus of Formiae, some of which may have led to his adoption as the patron saint of sailors. One account states that, after surviving numerous other tortures, a bolt of lightning came down, electrocuting everyone but Erasmus who was (again) miraculously spared. Since lightning is the bane of sailors on ships with tall masts, a saint who might protect them from it would certainly be a favored intercessor.

Answer: Projectors

Audio-visual presentations have found their way into nearly every walk of life. Do you suppose this is partly due to the fact that AV equipment is just, well... fun to play with? From fuzzy film strips to VHS tapes to PowerPoint to Bluetooth technology, educators of all stripes have let the medium do the talking.

Much of the equipment that ELMO USA produces finds its way into K-12 and college classrooms, but many other professions also rely on them for equipment for training and presentations.