Do Mention It! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Nadia Comaneci

As a fourteen-year-old representing Romania, Comaneci scored the perfect ten and a gold medal at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Canada, for her performance on the uneven bars. She also won two more gold medals at Montreal.

Omega SA, the company which supplied timing equipment to the games, asked if the scoreboards for the gymnastics events should be capable of registering a 10.00 score. Olympic officials told them no because a 10 was thought unattainable. Comaneci's score on the uneven bars had to be shown on the scoreboards as 1.00.

Answer: Wilt Chamberlain

Playing for the Philadelphia Warriors in 1962, Chamberlain scored the 100 points on March 2 playing against the New York Knicks. The Warriors won the game 169 to 147. Earlier that year, Chamberlain scored 78 points in a game. No other basketball player scored 100 points in one game in the 20th century.

Answer: Ross Barnes

Batting .400 means a player reached base four times out of every ten at-bats. Ross Barnes accomplished a .429 in 1876 playing with the Chicago White Stockings. Twenty-six at the time, it was Barnes's last strong season. He retired from baseball in 1881.

Answer: Richard Petty

The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) was founded in 1948. One of the most revered driver's names is Petty. Lee Petty was one of the sport's first stars and son Richard picked up where his father left off. Richard raced from 1958 to 1992, chalking up 200 victories and setting many NASCAR records.

His 200th win came at the "Firecracker 400" race in Daytona Beach, Florida, on July 4, 1984. So dominant was Petty that, of his contemporaries, only David Pearson managed to win over 100 times, closing his career with 105 victories.

Answer: Larisa Latynina

Latynina was a Soviet gymnast from Ukraine. In three Olympics she won 18 Olympic medals, 9 gold, 5 silver and 4 bronze; 14 were individual medals and four were for team victories. Her medal count was finally bested by Michael Phelps in the 2004, 2008 and 2012 Olympics.

Answer: Byron Nelson

1945 was a good year for Byron Nelson. He won 11 Professional Golf Association (PGA) tournaments in a row, something no one else accomplished in the 20th century. He went on to win 18 of the 35 sanctioned events that year. Nelson also won all of the four major tournaments at least once during his career. He retired in 1946 at age 34 to become a rancher.

Answer: Secretariat

Secretariat won the 1973 Belmont Stakes, the third leg of the Triple Crown by 31 lengths (the most in the 20th century), and won the Triple Crown. The former record was held by Count Fleet, who won by 25 lengths in 1943, also at the Belmont Stakes, and he also won the Triple Crown that year. A length is about eight feet or 2.4 meters.

Answer: Usain Bolt

Bolt set a 9.69 seconds World (and Olympic) record. He ran so fast that his shoelaces came untied. He became the first man to set a 100 meter running world record at an Olympics since Donovan Bailey ran 9.84 seconds in 1996.

Answer: Martina Navratilova

Navratilova's career highlights are almost too numerous to describe. Her string of consecutive Wimbledon victories went from 1982 to 1987. (Suzanne Lenglen had won there five times, 1919-1923). Over the course of her career Navratilova won the Venus Rosewater Dish nine times.

Answer: Roger Bannister

All four men broke the four-minute mile but Briton Roger Bannister did it first, at Oxford University on May 6, 1954, with a time of 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds. In July of that year, Bannister and John Landy of Australia raced each other to an under four-minute mile at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, British Columbia. Landy was leading until he looked over his shoulder near the end of the race to see where Bannister was; that cost Landy the race and brings to mind baseball pitcher Satchel Paige's maxim: "Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you".