It's About Joe Trivia Quiz

Answer: average

The average Joe, the everyman, Joe Sixpack, the average American. The term usually describes someone of the working or middle class. There are similar terms for ordinary people worldwide.

Answer: Phantom 309

Red Sovine released "Phantom 309" in 1967, about Big Joe, a trucker who died in a truck wreck to avoid a school bus full of kids, and whose ghost would occasionally come along and pick up a hitchhiker. It was based on the true story of John Trudell, who died when he ran his truck into a bridge abutment in Saugus, Massachusetts in 1963, to avoid hitting a school bus.

Answer: Joseph Heller

The paradox in Heller's novel was about U.S. Army Air Force bomber crew members in World War II who asked to be excused from flying missions saying they were mentally unfit, but their doctors said anyone who was worried about his safety was sane. The term has entered general usage to indicate an unsolvable logic puzzle.

Answer: coffee

A cup of joe is a difficult term to pin down. It may be a shortened form of "java and mocha" or just a nickname of a drink for the common man. Another name for coffee is a "cup of mud". Most of us coffee-drinkers have had a poorly brewed, stale example of that sobriquet!

Answer: Big Bill Broonzy

Broonzy wrote the song imagining a time of a vast flood and how a man named Joe Turner came around surreptitiously to help people who had lost most everything they had. While people were away from their houses Turner would leave flour, meat, potatoes, seed, firewood, axes and more, never asking anything in return.

Answer: Lee, Massachusetts

All of the possible answers are towns with a Joe's Diner but only Lee, Massachusetts is in New England. The painting shows a policeman and a young boy (the runaway) having a conversation at a diner counter. The restaurant counterman talking to both was the real Joe of the diner. It was one of the "Post's" most popular covers.

Answer: Trader Joe's

In the late 1950s and early '60s, Tiki culture was big in America and Trader Vic's restaurants were a big hit. Coulombe came up with the moniker of Trader Joe's and patterned his stores on the corner grocery stores of decades past. One of the company's more famous products is "Two Buck Chuck", a wine produced by Charles Shaw wines, which sold for one dollar and ninety-nine cents.

Answer: Hasbro

G.I. Joe was 'boots on the ground' on toy store shelves in 1964. Since Hasbro's marketers reasoned that boys wouldn't play with "dolls", the term "action figure" was invented. The success of the toy has led to other action figures, cartoons, video games and on and on.

Answer: Joe Hill

He was born Joel Hagglund in Sweden in 1879 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1902. He became active in the Industrial Workers of the World, an organization calling for better conditions for workers. Accused of murder, Hill never defended himself and was executed in 1915; it wasn't found out until 2011 that he had been involved in a lover's triangle which would have given him an alibi, but he never mentioned it.

It has been theorized that he thought that workers would have more to gain if he became a martyr to their cause. Alfred Hayes and Earl Robinson wrote a ballad about him in 1938.

It was a staple of Joan Baez's folk music repertoire and she sang it (rather incongruously, it seems now) at the 1969 Woodstock music festival.

Answer: Sloppy Joe

The loose meat sandwich has been around since the early 20th century in American cookbooks, and probably just as long, or longer, elsewhere. There are many, many variations. The name "Sloppy Joe" appears to have come from a sandwich offered at Ye Olde Tavern in Sioux City, Iowa in 1934.