From Dan Miller's Notebook

CLOSE YOUR BOOKS, IT'S A POP QUIZ!!

By Dan Miller

August 15, 2008

There are 10 multiple choice questions here, each with a Tennessee connection. The correct answers are at the bottom of the page.

Play fair.... don't look at the answers until you've answered all 10 questions.

Just like in school, you must get 7 correct to pass.

Here we go:

1) What place in Nashville features the largest bronze doors in the world?

A. War Memorial Auditorium
B. The Parthenon
C. Alan Jackson's home
D. The Ryman Auditorium

2) Which of the following rivers is the longest?

A. The Harpeth
B. Caney Fork
C. Tennessee River
D. Cumberland River

3) The Ku Klux Klan was formed in 1865 in which Tennessee city?

A. Murfreesboro
B. Tullahoma
C. Pulaski
D. Bruceton

4) One of the following celebrities DID NOT attend Nashville's Hume-Fogg High School. Which one?

A. Phil Harris
B. Dinah Shore
C. Delbert Mann (movie director)
D. Mel Torme

5) One of these music legends -- as far as I can determine -- NEVER recorded a song at Sun Studios in Memphis. Which one?

A. Rick Nelson
B. Roy Orbison
C. B.B. King
D. Ike Turner
E. Charlie Rich
F. Conway Twitty

6) Which one of these cities NEVER served as Tennessee's state capital?

A. Nashville
B. Kingston
C. Murfreesboro
D. Knoxville
E. Manchester

7) When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped on the moon, what were they wearing that was manufactured in Nashville?

A. gloves
B. helmets
C. socks
D. sunglasses

8) After the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp honoring Tennessee's bicentennial celebration in 1996, what glaring mistake was discovered on the stamps?

A. the flag on the stamps was the wrong color
B. the flag was upside down and backwards
C. there was no glue on the stamps
D. the stamps were inadvertently priced one cent under the first class rate

9) What city lies at the exact geographical center of Tennessee?

A. Lebanon
B. Cookeville
C. Murfreesboro
D. Nolensville

10) In Fred Thompson's very first movie acting role, he portrayed what character?

A. the president
B. a senator
C. himself
D. a gangster

ANSWERS:

1) B. The Parthenon's doors are 24 feet high and 7 feet wide.

2) D. The Cumberland River is 678 miles long... just 26 miles longer than the Tennessee River.

3) C. The Klan was formed in Pulaski in 1865 by six Confederate veterans.

4) D. Mel Torme never lived in Nashville and obviously never attended Hume-Fogg though, coincidentally, he was known as "The Velvet Fog."

5) A. There's no indication that Rick Nelson ever recorded anything at Sun.

6) E. Manchester is the only one of those cities that never was the state capital... but, interestingly, Kingston was the state capital for only one day in 1807.

7) C. The socks worn by the astronauts as they stepped onto the moon in 1969 were manufactured by May Hosiery Mill on Chestnut Street in Nashville, which had a contract with NASA at the time.

8) B. The Tennessee Bicentennial stamps were backwards and upside down. And, get this... when someone from the Postal Service went to the governor's office to talk about the problem, they realized the flags inside the governor's office were also displayed upside down.

9) C. Murfreesboro is smack dab in the middle of every geographical line drawn border to border.

10) C. In 1977 Fred Thompson was Marie Ragghianti's attorney after she was fired from her job as Chairman of the Tennessee Parole Board for refusing to release convicted felons who had bribed aides to Governor Ray Blanton. In the mid-1980s, when the movie "Marie" was being made, the producers asked Thompson -- who had no acting experience -- if he'd like to play himself in the film. He agreed, and that led to all his other acting roles.