Three of a Kind, Part 16 Trivia Quiz

Answer: scooter

Motor scooters are similar to children's unpowered scooters but have seats and places for both feet on the floorboard. They originated around 1915 but grew popular between World War I and World War II. The street-ready ones are mostly gasoline powered.

Scooter assists Kermit the Frog in running the back of the theatre in "The Muppet Show." He is a sort of all-around assistant, gofer, talent wrangler and factotum. He was played by Richard Hunt from 1976 until the puppeteer's death in 1992; he was revived after hiatus by David Rudman in 2008.

In the American South, round Graham-cracker cookies sandwiching marshmallow filling coated with a coating of chocolate or other flavoured frosting are called Moon Pies. They have been made in Chattanooga, Tennessee, since 1917. In other parts of the country, especially in the North, a similar confection is called a Scooter Pie.

Answer: Pluto

Pluto is the largest dwarf planet in the Solar System. It is orbited by five moons: Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra. Charon is closest to Pluto and is almost half the size of the dwarf planet. Pluto orbits the Sun once every 248 years.

In Poe's 1843 short story "The Black Cat," the narrator's first black cat was named Pluto. He killed this cat, by hanging it in the garden, but it may have reappeared as the second black cat, the one which causes the narrator's discovery as a murderer. This story was first published in "The Saturday Evening Post."

Operation Pluto embraced the development of a kind of undersea pipe and its manufacture, the design of ships to lay the pipe and a scheme to pump fuel oil through the pipe from Britain to waiting Allied forces in France. It worked and, in fact, multiple pipes were laid and used to support Operation Overlord.

Answer: sky

"Celestial dome" is another term for the sky. It defines everything seen above the Earth's surface, be it clouds in the atmosphere or stars in space. Astronomers sometimes refer to the latter as the celestial sphere.

Headquartered in Rosemont, Illinois, the Chicago Sky plays in the same metropolitan market as do the Chicago Bulls. The women's professional basketball team was founded in 2006 and first reached the WNBA playoffs in 2013. The team mascot is Sky Guy -- a muscular fellow in a flight suit who claims to have five sisters, all of whom play basketball.

Team Sky races in the Union Cycliste Internationale World Tour. It is headquartered in Manchester, England. It surpassed its goal of winning the Tour de France within five years of its organization: Bradley Wiggins, 2012, Chris Froome, 2013, 2015, 2016. Well done, lads!

Answer: fire

Combustion occurs when an oxidant (usually oxygen gas) reacts to a fuel so as to produce a flame, heat, light and afterproducts, usually mixed together as smoke. The resulting process (fire) is always exothermic. The afterproducts may contain chemicals necessary to perpetuate the process (e.g. burning).

The Mozilla Foundation (created in 2003 to develop and operate the Mozilla Corporation) owns and distributes Firefox: a free web browser that runs on Windows, OS X and Linux. It was originally created using the name "Phoenix" which was quickly changed to Firefox.

In 1957, Jerry Lee Lewis and his band recorded the song "Great Balls of Fire" at Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee. The song, which includes the line "Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire," became a hit in both the US and the UK. A motion picture about the life of Jerry Lee Lewis is entitled "Great Balls of Fire!" (1989) after the song.

Answer: mercury

Mercury is the only metal which is a liquid at room temperature and sea-level pressure. It was formerly known as quicksilver and/or hydrargyrum. This explains the scientific notation for mercury which is Hg. Mercury's toxicity has led to a reduction of its uses in consumer products, e.g. thermometers and mercury switches.

Eugene Edward "Mercury" Morris played running back for the Miami Dolphins football team, played in three Super Bowls and was chosen for three Pro Bowls. He was nicknamed "mercury" because of his quickness. He sadly spent three and a half years in prison for selling cocaine.

The ancestor of the San Jose Mercury was founded in 1851. It bought and merged with a number of newspapers to grow to dominance. At one point, it published ten papers in the Bay Area, each "an edition of the San Jose Mercury News." It is now called "The Mercury News."

Answer: bath

The date of the founding of Bath in south west England is unknown. During the Roman Occupation, it was the site of Roman baths and was called Aquae Sulis. An abbey was built in the 7th Century. Jane Austen was a 19th Century resident. The German Blitz destroyed many of the cultural-historic buildings in Bath.

Natural mineral baths were thought to be beneficial because of the minerals dissolved in their waters. Commercially prepared and sold bath salts are mixtures of minerals which can be dissolved in one's home bath to replicate the experience. Mixes often include Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate), baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) and borax.

It is impossible to date with any certainty the first bathtub. They have existed for over three thousand years. Bathing has historically been associated with the upper classes. Whereas tubs were made of porcelain-coated cast iron for one hundred years, modern tubs are more often made of acrylic or fiberglass.

Answer: Buster

Buster Keaton (1895-1966) was a master comedian of silent film. His career declined into alcoholism in the 1930s but he recovered and won an Academy Honorary Award in 1959.

James "Buster" Douglas (b. 1960) completely stunned the professional boxing world when he beat world-champion Mike Tyson in Tokyo in 1990. The betting odds were completely against Douglas. He lost his only defense of this crown eight months later to Evander Holyfield.

Buster Benton (1932-1996) played guitar and sang with Willie Dixon's Blues All Stars as well as on his own. He suffered from diabetes, lost both of his legs to the disease, and died at 67 from complications. His blues style was part of what became known as The Chicago Blues.

Answer: creek

The Muscogee Indian Nation is the Creek tribe in the State of Oklahoma. The Creek people were found in Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. They were removed from their land and resettled in Oklahoma (and parts of Alabama, Louisiana and Texas).

Jonathan Creek, played by Alan Davies, works backstage for a professional magician. His knowledge of stage magic and illusions allows him to solve apparently supernatural real-life mysteries. The programme has been seen in the US on BBC America.

Paul Hutchens wrote the original 36 volumes of "The Sugar Creek Gang" between 1940 and 1970. His daughter, Pauline Hutchens Wilson, revived the series in 1970 with the "New Sugar Creek Gang" books. Each book includes a lesson in the Christian faith as well as an adventure.

Answer: Holly

Charles Hardin Holley (1936-1959) was an American rock and roll musician, known as Buddy Holly, who recorded "That'll Be the Day" and "Peggy Sue" with his band The Crickets. He died on tour in an airplane crash with Ritchie Valens and Jiles Perry "J. P." Richardson, Jr. (better known as The Big Bopper).

Graham Green wrote the screenplay for the British film "The Third Man" before he wrote the novella of the same name. Carol Reed directed Joseph Cotton as Holly Martins, a pulp mystery writer seeking Harry Lime, played by Orson Wells.

Holly Robinson is a human (with only human talents) who appears with Batman and especially as a sidekick to Catwoman. She was the first openly lesbian character in the DC Comics world.

Answer: Molly or Mollie

Jim Jordan and Marian Jordan, a married couple, played Fibber McGee and Molly on American radio (1935-1956). The programme successfully crossed over to several films; an attempt to cross over to television was less successful. Fibber had a closet which he never cleaned out such that, when the door was opened, everything in it tumbled noisily out onto Fibber and the floor.

Mollie Sugden (1922-2009) played the English sales lady Mrs. Slocombe in "Are You Being Served?" (1972-1985). She and her actor husband played many other roles on British television.

The ewes Polly and Molly were born in 1997 at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland. They differed from Dolly, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell, in that they were also the result of genetic modification of the nucleus of the adult donor cell. The so-called transgene which was added to the cell from which Polly and Molly were produced was one which produced the human clotting factor IX protein in the resulting sheep's milk (proving that this could be done).