Wikipedia: Unusual Articles Trivia Quiz

Answer: Hitler bacon

"Hitler bacon" is a type of fruit jam that Hungarian soldiers and civilians used to survive the war. It is a tough type of jam that was made like bricks and could be sliced and cooked like most foods. The Hungarians picked it as one of the few German foods they'd tolerate. The name apparently comes from the fact that it paralleled regular bacon, and thus was referred to as the emperor's bacon. The 'emperor,' of course, was Hitler.

Note: Urinal hot drink is Romanian, Fresh cemen dip is Turkish, and Molotov cocktails are not edible.

Answer: close your eyes

"Eigengrau" is the color that you see when you close your eyes. It's not really black, but rather a dark shade of gray. The reason it happens is due to rhodopsin, a light-sensitive protein in your eyes. Even in the relative absence of light, small amounts of rhodopsin will react as if there is light, thus creating a color that's not pitch black.

Answer: leaded gasoline and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)

While not necessarily a cartoon villain, "Thomas Midgley, Jr." is about a man whose most famous inventions are ones we'd prefer to forget about. Midgley was a mechanical/chemical engineer at General Motors, where he discovered that tetraethyllead reduced knocking in early (c. 1916) engines. In 1923, he was awarded the Nichols Medal for his discovery. Around that time, he also headed the team that came to the conclusion that freon would be a good refrigerant (and it was).

Midgley was strangled to death in 1940 by one of his own inventions. It took decades longer to disassociate ourselves from leaded gas and CFCs, which are now considered some of our worst inventions.

Answer: raise its price

A "Veblen good" is one whose quantity demanded increases when price increases. This is in converse to the Law of Demand, which states that that the more you jack up the price of a good, the less of it people will buy (all other things remaining equal). Named after economist Thorstein Veblen, the rationale behind such things often relates to conspicuous consumption, the idea of spending money to make your economic power more visible to others. Examples of veblen goods include Jack Daniels, Champagne, Rolex watches, and designer clothes.

Answer: $30

Named after a community in California, "Zyzzyx Road" is about an accountant visiting Las Vegas who thought he killed the ex boyfriend of a seductress and attempted to bury him on Zyzzyx Road. It grossed $30 from six viewers, though $10 of that was refunded by one of the movie's actors to two people related to the film's production.

Was the movie really that bad? Maybe, but the reason for the low receipts was an intentionally narrow release for contract purposes. This in turn was done because a greater foreign release was desired for the film.

Answer: Atari video games

The "Atari video game burial" was an event that followed the video game crash of 1983, which was brought on by a flood of new games to the market (both in title and cartridge quantity). In 1983, it was reported that trucks full of unsold video games were buried in Alamogordo, New Mexico but this was disputed for nearly as long.

In 2014, a Canadian entertainment company was allowed access to search for the video games, and sure enough found them. A substantial number of video games were found, though less than was originally reported in papers.

Answer: Czechoslovakia

Whether called the "Hyphen War" by the Czechs or the "Dash War" by the Slovaks, it was about how to rename Czechoslovakia after the Velvet Revolution removed communists from power. Slovak politicians demanded a hyphen because they felt "Czechoslovakia" diminished the status of Slovaks. Short-lasting compromises were made until it was officially named "Czech and Slovak Federative Republic." This name lasted until 1993 when the union gave way to a country for each side, presumably satisfying both groups.

Answer: cats

Written about since at least 1650, a "cat organ" is the idea of tying a bunch of cats to an organ or piano so that they would yowl when a key is pressed. The cats would ideally be placed in order of their voice tones. French writer Jean-Baptiste Weckerlin claimed that in 1549, a cat organ was part of an "abominable orchestra" that "arranged itself inside a theatre where monkeys, wolves, deer and other animals danced to the sounds of this infernal music." Alas, this melodious instrument has never been verified as being made and thus remains a strictly hypothetical construct.

Answer: elephant

"Execution by elephant" is what happens when people combine legal killing with one of the world's largest animals. Elephants were employed for execution in Rome, Carthage, and Siam, but this form of capital punishment was most common in India and thereabouts.

The idea was that elephants could be trained and versatile, allowing for either fast executions or ones that were slow and torturous. Execution by elephant was done for thousands of years and continued through at least the 1800s.

Answer: fish

"Ghoti" is a respelling of "fish" based on the pronunciations of /f/ in enough, /i/ in women, and /sh/ in nation. This of course is a parody, as there are spelling and pronunciation rules that would exclude "gh" as an /f/ sound at the beginning of a word. "Ghoti" was given as an example of absurd spelling in a book in 1845 for spelling reform, and has been mentioned a few times since then, usually in the context of spelling reform. So yes, you're forgiven if you want to pronounce that 'word' more like "goatee."