Month of the Year: October Trivia Quiz

Answer: nuclear submarines

Tom Clancy's first novel, "The Hunt for Red October, was a great success, in part because President Reagan said how much he enjoyed reading it. It is the story of a Soviet submarine captain who defects and brings an advanced nuclear submarine with him. The motion picture with Sean Connery was a great success, as well.

Answer: month of the World Series

The full title of Mantle's book is "All My Octobers: My Memories of Twelve World Series When the Yankees Ruled Baseball." The World Series is always played during the fall in North America, thus it is sometimes called "the Fall Classic." Almost all of the games in the World Series have been played in October; a very few in September; a very few in November.

Answer: Ireland and the United Kingdom

Black History Month is a way of emphasizing the persons and events of the black diaspora from Africa. In the US, it began with Negro History Week in 1926. The first Black History Month in the US was kept at Kent State University in 1970. Black History Month was first observed in the UK in October of 1987, coincident with the African Jubilee Year.

Answer: Dutch, German, Swedish, Afrikaans

"Oktober" also means October in Danish, Frisian, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Slovak and Slovenian. The Modern English October came directly from the late Old English October which descended directly from the Latin meaning the eighth month of the Old Roman ten-month calendar. The Latin term displaced the early Old English "winterfylleğ."

Answer: the Supreme Court of the United States

American playwrights Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee wrote the play "First Monday in October." The play was promptly adapted to the screen starring Walter Matthau as Associate Justice Daniel Snow and Jill Clayburgh as Associate Justice Ruth Loomis. The title is a reference to the day on which the Supreme Court of the United States reconvenes following its summer recess. Issues of gender and politics drive this pleasant work. Both Matthau and Clayburgh were nominated for Golden Globes.

Answer: opal and tourmaline

A birthstone is a gemstone which varies with the owner's month of birth or zodiacal sign. The two stones associated with October are opal and tourmaline. Both come in many colours. The English word "opal" derives from the Sanskrit word "upala" and the Latin word "opalus." The most productive opal mines in the world are in Australia.

The English word "tourmaline" derives from the Sinhalese word "toramalli" which means a stone with mixed colours. The most productive tourmaline mines are in Brazil; a few have been found in California and Maine.

Answer: James Taylor

"October Road" was the source of the title for James Taylor's fifteenth studio album. It was released in 2002. Months and days figure significantly in the tracks of this album: "October Road," "September Grass," "On the 4th of July," and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."

Answer: Ray Bradbury

Most of the short stories in "The October Country" were previously published in another collection ("Dark Carnival") in 1947. Some of those were omitted and others added to the 1955 collection. All of these stories are macabre. They include "The Dwarf," "The Next in Line," "The Emissary," "The Crowd," "The Wind," "The Man Upstairs," and "The Wonderful Death of Dudley Stone." It was reprinted in 1999.

Answer: 31

"Countdown" is a long story about the consequences of an event which instantly kills six billion people, leaving only teenagers to survive. Adults and small children are reduced to puddles of "black goo." Each of the twelve volumes tells of the aftermath in one month of 1999. Daniel Parker is the pen name of Daniel Ehrenhaft, who writes lots of children's and YA books.

Answer: none of these

In the original Roman calendar, October was the eighth month. It was named for the Latin word "octo" meaning eighth. When Rome expanded its calendar to twelve months, there were several attempts to name the month after a Roman emperor but there was insufficient support to overcome popular acceptance of "October".