#26, aired 2024-01-23 | LITERARY CLICHÉS: Many mystery fans blame "The Door", a 1930 Mary Roberts Rinehart novel in which a servant kills a nurse, for this 4-word cliché the butler did it |
#25, aired 2024-01-16 | ICONIC DESIGNERS: Once married to a publishing heir who owned citrus groves, her brightly printed dresses were originally designed to hide juice stains Lilly Pulitzer |
#24, aired 2024-01-09 | TELEVISION HISTORY: According to the BBC, this 1953 event "did more than any other to make television a mainstream medium" the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II |
#23, aired 2024-01-02 | AWARD-WINNING ACTRESSES: Her 2019 Oscar win & 2021 Emmy win were both for portraying a British queen Olivia Colman |
#22, aired 2023-12-06 | APPLIED GEOMETRY: Thomas Hales proved hexagonal structures are the most compact way to fill a plane, a centuries-old theory based on the behavior of these honeybees |
#21, aired 2023-11-29 | UNIQUE BUILDINGS: Despite 17.5 miles of hallways, you can walk anywhere in this Virginia building within about five minutes, due to its concentric layout the Pentagon |
#20, aired 2023-11-15 | ARTISTS: Exhumed in 2017 to settle a paternity suit, his mustache had "preserved its classic 10-past-10 position" according to the Spanish press Salvador Dalí |
#19, aired 2023-11-01 | PLAY TITLES: This 1959 play's title was taken from a Langston Hughes poem that begins, "What happens to a dream deferred?" A Raisin in the Sun (by Lorraine Hansberry) |
#18, aired 2023-10-25 | TWEEN LIT: Referring to the lengthy title of her much-discussed novel, this author lamented that she didn't just call the book "Margaret" Judy Blume |
#17, aired 2023-10-18 | FAMOUS WOMEN: She joined the Sisters of Loreto at age 18, then took her good works to Calcutta, where she was called this Mother Teresa |
#16, aired 2023-10-11 | RALLYING CRIES: Don't mess with Texas: Sam Houston's troops shouted this 3-word battle cry while attacking Santa Anna's army at San Jacinto Remember the Alamo! |
#15, aired 2023-10-04 | WORLD LANDMARKS: Also famously cracked like the Liberty Bell, this 14-ton landmark still sounds its distinctive bong every hour Big Ben |
#14, aired 2023-09-27 | ASTRONOMY: Discovered in the '60s and '70s, Cygnus X-1 was the first of these light-trapping gravitational bodies to be identified black holes |
#13, aired 2023-02-02 | ARTISTS: Despite how he's known, he was probably actually born in Anchiano, near Florence Leonardo da Vinci |
#12, aired 2023-01-26 | NOVELS: "Breeders, Wives and Unwomen" was the headline of the New York Times' 1986 review of this novel The Handmaid's Tale |
#11, aired 2023-01-19 | NOTORIOUS PLACES: Al Capone played banjo in a band called the Rock Islanders at this notorious spot Alcatraz |
#10, aired 2023-01-12 | CORPORATE MASCOTS: Born on an island in a sea of milk, this pitchman was jokingly disavowed by the U.S. Navy by saying he is not in personnel records Cap'n Crunch |
#9, aired 2023-01-05 | 20th CENTURY PEOPLE: Calling him "the embodiment of pure intellect", in December 1999 Time magazine named him Person of the Century Albert Einstein |
#8, aired 2022-11-13 | ADVENTURE NOVELS: The villainess in this French novel kind of undercuts the title when she says, "among these four men two only are to be feared" The Three Musketeers |
#7, aired 2022-11-06 | BRANDS: With wood becoming more difficult to source, this company turned to plastic for its automatic binding bricks, introduced in 1949 Lego |
#6, aired 2022-10-30 | 19th CENTURY PEOPLE: In 1863 Walt Whitman wrote that this politician "has a face like a Hoosier Michael Angelo, so awful ugly it becomes beautiful" Lincoln |
#5, aired 2022-10-23 | WORLD LANDMARKS: Built of more than 18,000 metal parts & 2.5 million rivets, it was the world's tallest manmade structure from 1889 to 1930 the Eiffel Tower |
#4, aired 2022-10-16 | ANNUAL EVENTS: In 1986 Larry Harvey called a friend & said, let's do this, no one knows exactly why; it evolved into an annual festival in the desert Burning Man |
#3, aired 2022-10-09 | NEWSPAPER HEADLINES: A New York Times headline about this disaster included "866 rescued" & "noted names missing" the Titanic |
#2, aired 2022-10-02 | 19th CENTURY LITERATURE: William Brodie, an upstanding Scottish tradesman by day & leader of a gang of burglars by night, helped inspire these 2 title characters Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde |
#1, aired 2022-09-25 | LANDLOCKED COUNTRIES: It's the world's smallest landlocked country in both area & population Vatican City |