What's your April Fool's Quotient?
With April Fool's Day just around the corner, it's time to sharpen your wits. How gullible are you? How quickly can you spot a fraud? Here are a few "tune up" exercises to put you on your toes. Check your answers to find your "AFQ."
1. Just as bats can hear "ultrasound," or very high sound frequencies, so elephants can hear "infrasounds," very low frequencies. ___
2. The monkey wrench is so called because the long handle looked like the tail of a monkey. ___
3. Until well into the 20th century, "a computer" referred to a human who did calculations. ___
4. A duck's quack does not echo. No one knows why. ___
5. It is impossible to lick your elbow. ___
6. Peanut butter was invented in the early 1900s by well-known plant botanist George Washington Carver. ___
7. Levi Strauss's innovative trousers had rivets at the stress points for strength. Early jeans had a rivet in the crotch, too. This rivet was eliminated when it was found that it heated up uncomfortably when wearers - then mostly gold miners - lounged around a campfire. ___
8. "OK" is an English-language equivalent of the French phrase "Au quai!" ("At the dock!"), which French sailors yelled when their ship had arrived. ___
9. The inventor of the three-ring binder has a statue commemorating him on Boston Common. ___
10. Latex rubber was originally known as "caoutchouc." It became "rubber" when someone noticed that gobs of dried latex rubbed off pencil lines. ___
11. The first Nike "waffle sole" on its famous running shoes was created using an actual waffle iron. ___
12. The reason the filament (the thin wire that lights up) in a light bulb doesn't burn out instantly is that there's a vacuum inside the bulb - most of the air has been sucked out. ___
13. In India, where the majority Hindu religion regards cows as sacred, McDonald's fast-food restaurants serve the McVeggie, a vegetable patty with lettuce and eggless mayonnaise on a sesame-seed bun. ___
14. Up until the 1800s, beekeepers and naturalists assumed that the head of a beehive was "the king bee." ___
15. The state that has the highest proportion of people who walk to work is:
A. Alaska
B. New York
C. California
16. The state that has the highest consumption of ice cream, per person:
A. Alaska
B. New York
C. California
17. The state with the highest proportion of people who own airplanes:
A. Alaska
B. New York
C. California
18. Australia, plagued with rabbits (a nonnative species) that are eating up its grasslands, is shunning the tradition of the Easter bunny and promoting a native species as its cute Easter animal. What is it?
A. The Easter koala
B. The Easter bilby
C. The Easter didgeridoo
19. Citizens in Nazi-occupied Norway in World War II ran the risk of being arrested if they wore this particular item in their lapel. What was it that the occupiers found so subversive?
A. A button
B. A paper clip
C. A safety pin
20. April Fool's Day began when:
