Tag Archives: trivia

Fascinating Facts about Costco

Costco, a warehouse club where customers pay to shop, is a fascinating example of American business culture. Where else can you buy a lifetime supply of mayonaise, toilet paper and a casket in the same store? Check out these questions and answers for a closer look at this giant retailer.

How many products does Costco sell? Given how big these warehouses are, the answer may surprise you.

What is Costco’s number one selling product? Hint: You use it every day. Well, we hope you do.

Since Costco makes most of its money off of membership fees (about $55 a year), it can offer steep discounts on many products. So, what exactly is Costco’s price markup?

It’s nearly impossible to leave Costco without hitting up the food court. Which makes us wonder, why are Costco hot dogs so cheap? and What do the Costco food courts sell in international locations?

Costco is the world’s largest retailer of wine. It also sells a lot of meat. How many rotisserie chickens does Costco sell a day?

What other questions do you have about Costco? Ask them in the comments or in our Costco topic on Answers.com.

New trivia added to blufr!

There are thousands of blufs (or trivia bits) that make up Answers.com’s social trivia game blufr, and in the past couple months we’ve added hundreds more. So if you were worried about reaching the end of a category – or the entire game – get back into it!

Also stay tuned for more categories coming. Discover fun facts and pick up trivia to share next time you find yourself in an awkward conversation. Hey, blufr has many uses!

Here are some of the newbies; way or no way (click to get the answers):

Wanna play blufr? Get it on the web, iPhone or Facebook.

 

 

5 fascinating facts about the Chinese New Year.

Happy new year! Sure, it’s February, but we’re not talking about the Gregorian new year. Today marks the first day of the Chinese New Year celebrations. So pull up a chair to the reunion dinner, have some Niangao, open a red envelope, dance with a dragon and read on for more fascinating facts about celebrating this new year festival.

  1. Party like it’s 15 days! And you thought the week between Christmas and New Years is long. This  new year festival begins on the first day of the first month in the traditional Chinese calendar, which is a lunisolar calendar, and ends with the Lantern Festival which is on the 15th day.
  2. Think traveling the week of Thanksgiving is tough? The largest human migration happens during the month around Chinese New Year due to the travel of migrant workers in China and Chinese ex-pats around the world arriving home for the traditional reunion family dinners on Chinese New Year’s Eve. Did you know? There are more intercity trips taken inside mainland China for this celebration than the total population of China itself.
  3. Spring cleaning come early. Days before the celebration begins, Chinese families give their homes a deep clean. The belief is that the cleaning helps sweep away any bad luck from the outgoing year, making homes ready for the new year’s good luck. But it’s not all work and no play: brooms are shoved aside on the first new year’s day so as not to sweep away incoming good luck.
  4. When else could you dance with a lion? Dragon and lion dances are a fun, colorful feature for the Chinese New Year. Loud drum beats and cymbals, together with the faces of the dragon or lion dancing, rid us of the evil spirits. Fun fact: Lion dances are also a popular activity for business openings in Hong Kong.
  5. It’s not just China. Wherever a sizable Chinese population can be found, so can Chinese New Year. That includes Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and others in the region. In addition, although it’s not an official holiday there, many ethnic Chinese hold large celebrations in Australia, Canada and the United States. Even the mail gets into it: the Australia Post, Canada Post, and the US Postal Service all issue New Year’s themed stamps.

Read more fascinating facts about the Chinese New Year on Answers.com. Check out the Answer of the Day for more Chinese New Year trivia: Do the Japanese and Chinese have the same zodiacal calendar?

blufr: Not your mama’s trivia game.

Did you know?

You didn’t? Well, maybe that’s because none of it is true…

Or is it?

Introducing blufr, the addictive social trivia game from Answers.com. blufr is not your mama’s jeopardy. Think of it as the place where all the bizarre, odd, random, crazy, funny information from Answers.com gets spiced up and clamped down into bite-size pieces of trivia – which you can decide are true (way!) and which are false (no way!).

And you have to do it better than your friends if you’re going to make it to the top.

It’s a multi-platform game, currently available on the web and for the iPhone (download the iPhone app to your iPhone or iPod Touch). A Facebook app is coming soon.

Want more?

So…

Boxing champion Mike Tyson has a tattoo of tennis star Arthur Ashe.

Way or No way? Play to find out!

Five things to know about the Chicken Dance!

The Chicken Dance.

It may be blacklisted from wedding tracks… It may be eye-roll worthy… It may make your grandparents happy… but the fact is, the Chicken Dance is a classic, and face it, we all know how to do it.

So you might as well learn some fun facts about the Chicken Dance! Flap your arms and here we go:

  1. The Chicken Dance is an Oom-pah song! In plain English, it’s the rhythmical sound of a deep brass instrument in a band.
  2. Swiss accordian player Werner Thomas created the song and corresponding dance in the 1950s, while working as a restaurant musician.
  3. The name of the original Swiss song was “Der Ententanz,” or “The Duck Dance.”
  4. The dance first came to the United States in 1981 during Oktoberfest celebrations in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A German band wanted to demonstrate the dance in costume for a local TV station, but a duck costume could not be located, so a chicken costume was used. Hence, chicken dance instead of duck dance.
  5. In 2004, Mötley Crüe singer Vince Neil served as Grand Marshall of the World’s Largest Chicken Dance in Cinncinati. VH1 called the appearance “the single least metal moment in history.”

Check out more facts at Holy Kaw and get the bird’s eye view at Answers.com. Don’t forget to brush up on the moves!

Tanner family trivia: Six fun facts about Full House.

Whatever happened to predictability -
The milk man, the paper boy, evening TV?

What happened, indeed? If you grew up watching the Tanner family learn, love, and drive cars through kitchens, then you know what I’m talking about. Do they even make family sitcoms like that anymore?

We may as well remember the good times! Here are six fun facts about your favorite San Francisco family:

  1. In the pilot episode, the role of Danny Tanner was played by actor John Posey because Bob Saget had a conflicting gig on CBS’ “The Morning Program.” Saget was subsequently canned from the news show gig, and the pilot was reshot.
  2. John Stamos has teased the idea of a “Full House” movie, suggesting Steve Carrell and Tracy Morgan for the roles of Danny and Joey, respectively.
  3. Uncle Jesse’s real first name was Hermes.
  4. Andrea Laura Barber, who played wacky neighbor Kimmy Gibbler (who some may consider the female version of Steve Urkel), first acted on Days of our Lives for four years as a young kid.
  5. Candice Cameron (D.J.) is the sister of Kirk Cameron, that other darling of the 80′s/90′s family sitcom genre.
  6. Try not to get the lovable fun Full House you grew up with confused with the South Korean show with the same name: There, Full House was a 16-episode drama  TV series started in 2004.

Get more facts at Holy Kaw and the full lowdown at Answers.com.

6 school facts to teach your teacher.

Happy new year, everyone. No, put down your champagne. Not the calendar new year – the new school year.

Packed your pencils, packed your books? Put away your dirty looks… It’s back to school season and we’re going to arm you with a different kind of ammunition: See if you can stump your teach with the following bizarre bits of school-related trivia:

  1. The origin of the word ‘school’ is leisure.
    Sit back, relax, put your feet up: The word school comes from the Greek word originally meaning leisure. Remind your math teacher of that fact next time she calls you up to the board and you have no clue.
  2. The oldest university in Europe is the University of Bologna.
    No baloney. With a name like that, how seriously can you take college?
  3. In Canada, high school starts in eighth grade.
    You think you have it bad? At least you’re not in Canada or many other countries of the world, where high school is longer than four years.
  4. Meanwhile, high school in Japan is only three years.
    Japanese students attend three years of high school, including grades ten through twelve. Ready to move across the world?
  5. In Japan, attending high school is not mandatory.
    Ok, seriously, who’s moving to Japan with me? However, it should be mentioned: Though it is not mandatory, about 95% of Japanese junior high school graduates attend secondary school. Kiss ups!
  6. But Filipino students have it the best…
    In the Philippines, students enter high school at ages eleven or twelve and complete it by fifteen or sixteen. Which means I would have been out of high school about 38754376 years ago. Nice.

Here’s to a new school year of fresh pencils, clear heads, and learning a lot (whether useful or trivial…)

Good luck.

Five Factoids about tonight’s Opening Ceremonies in Vancouver.

Today marks the start of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia. This will be Canada’s second Winter Olympics (Calgary hosted in 1988). David Atkins, the director of the opening and closing ceremonies at the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, is the mastermind behind the ceremonies in Vancouver this year.

Although the details of the event are a closely guarded secret, here are a five factoids about this year’s opening ceremonies:

Five Factoids about tonight’s Opening Ceremonies in Vancouver

  1. CanadaNo expense spared.

    Canada spent $40 million for the February 12 opening ceremonies, making it the most expensive opening ceremonies in Winter Olympics history.

  2. Indoors?!

    The 2010 Winter Olympics opening ceremonies will be the first ever to be held indoors. It’s a good thing, because rain is often in Vancouver’s forecast!

  3. Greece takes the lead.

    Because it is the birthplace of the Olympic Games, Greece always leads the march of the athletes. After the Greek team, the countries will follow alphabetical order from Albania to Uzbekistan, with the host team, Canada, appearing last.

  4. Clara HughesGo, Clara, go…

    The flag bearer for the Canadian team is Clara Hughes, a cyclist and speed skater and the first athlete to win multiple Olympic medals in both the Summer and Winter games. She won the gold medal in the 2006 Winter Olympics for the women’s 5000 meter speed skating by 1.01 seconds!

  5. Doves on fire!

    One of the traditions of every Olympic opening ceremony is the release of doves, which symbolize peace. Originally the doves were released before the lighting of the Olympic cauldron. But in the 1988 Seoul Summer Games several doves perched on the cauldron and went up in flames, forcing the International Olympic Committee to change the traditional order. Yikes!

The opening ceremonies are guaranteed to be a spectacle. Tune into NBC at 7:30 p.m. EST or check your local TV listings to catch the Olympic spirit and cheer your country on!

ReferenceAnswers has a new face.

ReferenceAnswers, the resident trivia wiz over at Answers.com, got a new look this week. Not to worry, it’s still the home of Today’s Highlights, where you’ll find newly updated trivia about today, every day.

ReferenceAnswers homepage

So get going – find out today’s Answer of the Day, and what it has to do with… Patrick Dempsey!?

It’s National Trivia Day.

Haven’t had enough of the holidays yet?

January 4th is National Trivia Day! The origins of the day are unknown, however, many would claim it is a marketing ploy of the makers of Trivial Pursuit. There is a tradition to play the famous game, or other knowledge-based games, in honor of today.

Of course, there is also a tradition to call or email friends and family and share a little-known fact… What if I propose sharing that little-known trivia fact on WikiAnswers, spreading your knowledge to an entire Q&A community spanning the globe?

Go for it! Find an unanswered question that can be answered with a piece of trivia, or create your own question and answer it. Comment on this blog post with the URL of your question and answer so we can all learn something trivial – but interesting! – today.

…Or, if you’re looking for trivia instead of sharing it, check out the Spotlight on today’s Answers.com homepage.

Today’s highlights, wiki technology and the greater good.

Let’s talk about Today’s Highlights.

It’s a daily updated feature from Answers.com that offers a spotlight, featured question, today’s birthdays, today in history and more, right from the homepage. You could say it’s like taking your daily dose of Vitamin T: ‘t’ for trivia and ‘vitamin’ because it’s good for you.

You could also take the trivia you learn and finally have something to contribute to the water cooler conversations going on right outside your cubicle. Don’t be shy; just lean over there and sing ‘happy birthday’ to Elton John, Sarah Jessica Parker and Aretha Franklin or mention that today, in 1328, Robert the Bruce became king of the not-yet-independent Scotland.

Now let’s talk specifically about today’s highlight.

First of all, I wrote the Spotlight, so I can’t see a reason why you wouldn’t fall madly in love with it right when you start reading.

Today's Highlights: Ward Cunningham and wiki

Secondly, it covers the topic of wikis, which we discuss here a lot (being WikiAnswers gurus and all). I’ll be honest, when I first toyed around with the whole wiki thing, I was confused and a little skeptical; after all, why should I write something if it can be edited by anyone later on?

But once I got into it, it made a lot of sense. I know a little bit about a topic, Timmy knows a little something more, Samantha adds some personal experience… Collaboration is for the greater good, and like the Spider-man movies have taught me, the greater good is worth fighting for.

Thank you Answers.com Editorial Team, for serving fresh Today’s Highlights every single day; thank you Ward Cunningham, for developing wiki technology; thank you WikiAnswers, for having the courage to fight the good fight.

 

Company love… in Hebrew!

Yours truly was interviewed for an article in Globes, a fancy-shmancy Israeli business finance newspaper. The article covered Facebook applications, and as you know, we’ve released quite a few in the past few months.

Unfortunately for most of us out there, it’s in Hebrew… But the gist is about why and how we made Facebook applications based on Answers.com trivia and WikiAnswers Q&A. I’ve included some of my answers to the reporter’s questions in English below (not necessarily appearing like this in the article):

I work for Answers Corp, a U.S. and Israel-based company leading the world of online answers with Answers.com, a site with over 4 million reference topics, and WikiAnswers, the leading community-driven Q&A wiki. Both sites have content that I thought was worth sharing – we all need answers, right?

We wanted to create a way to allow Facebook users to put Answers.com trivia and WikiAnswers Q&A on their profiles, allowing friends to ask and answer questions or learn new facts, updated daily. That’s where Dapper comes in. Dapper, an exciting new Web 2.0 company, makes it easy to extract content from any site and reuse it elsewhere. They recently developed a way to create Facebook apps from any website content (in beta), which is how we’ve been creating these apps. We’re working closely with them as early adopters of their technology.

I chose topics for the apps that I thought would appeal to different people with diverse interests; for instance, there’s a Music Q&A app, perfect for people who are into music trivia, a Sports Q&A app for sports enthusiasts, and so forth. What you get is an app in your profile listing unanswered trivia questions, which anyone who can view your profile is invited to click and answer on WikiAnswers.

It’s also great for students, who were Facebook’s original audience. They can add Q&A apps relating to their studies (law, health, money) and test their knowledge, help others learn or even ask questions of their own.

Aside from Q&A apps, there are also a bunch of trivia apps as well: Quote of the Day, Wine Word of the Day, Today’s Birthdays (see below for URLs). There is also another app – the first we did – developed by Dapper that includes Word of the Day and Today in History (here).