Trunk Calls/That's the Spirit! - 1-4

1903 - Coney Island has decided to execute a violent elephant named Topsy, so Thomas Edison volunteers to electrocute Topsy with 6,000 volts of alternating current--part of his ongoing campaign to discredit AC in favor of his own system, direct current. This incident is the source of Edison's famous maxim "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-two percent perspiration, and seven percent execution of elephants."

1. Who called his elephant "Tantor"?

2. Which chess piece was originally called "the elephant"?

3. What late-breaking news story kicked Dumbo off the cover of Time Magazine six weeks after the elephant cartoon release?

4. Surus (The Syrian) who had a broken tusk, was the standout among whose elephants?

5. Who is worshiped by Ganapatya Hindus as the supreme god?

6. What's the only land mammal taller than the elephant?

7. What 1979 hit was the first song featuring a marching band ever to make the Billboard Top Ten?

8. Who produced the movie The Elephant Man, casting his wife in a lead role and hiring director David Lynch, but insisted on going without screen credit to avoid confusing audiences?

9. What White Stripes hit, off their album Elephant, is titled after singer Jack White's childhood name for a well-known religions organization?

10. Who married his own cousin Celeste in an elaborate 1931 ceremony?

11. Of the three substances that make up your teeth--enamel, dentin, and pulp--which is elephant ivory made of?

12. What word comes to us from the Greek for "thick-skinned"?

13. Which SEC college football team uses an elephant as its mascot?

14. What two Republicans are the only U. S. presidents ever to serve a full eight years as vice president as well?

15. What country's highest decoration is the Most Exalted Order of the White Elephant?

2004 - The Mars rover Spirit lands on the red planet's Gusev crater and begins taking the highest-resolution pictures ever taken on any planet but this one.

In what movie do these actors play ghosts?

16. Bruce Willis
17. Alec Baldwin
18. Nicole Kidman
19. Cary Grant
20. Ray Liotta
21. Rex Harrison
22. Alan Rickman
23. Carol Kane
24. Daveigh Chase
25. Michelle Pfeiffer
26. Jake Busey
27. Charles Laughton
28. Paul Scofield
29. Vincent Schiavelli
30. Ian McShane

Answers:

1. Tarzan
2. The Bishop
3. Pearl Harbor
4. Hannibal
5. Ganesh
6. The giraffe
7. Tusk, by Fleetwood Mac
8. Mel Brooks
9. Seven Nation Army - for the Salvation Army
10. Babar
11. Dentin
12. Pachyderm
13. The Alabama Crimson Tide
14. Richard Nixon and George H. W. Bush
15. Thailand
16. The Sixth Sense
17. Beetlejuice
18. The others
19. Topper
20. Field of Dreams
21. The Ghost and MRs. Muir
22. Truly, Madly, Deeply
23. Scrooged
24. The Ring
25. To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday
26. The Frighteners
27. The Canterville Ghost
28. Hamlet
29. Ghost
30. Scoop