by Evelyn J. Mocbeichel
Does the partial quote above in the title bring you back to your high school English class? The rest of it reads, “and not a drop to drink”, from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A sailor is surrounded by salt water and yet nothing he can drink. First published in 1798, it is one of the most famous poems in the English language. (Even the TV show Jeopardy has used it as an answer to a question several times.) The story line is about the misfortunes of a seaman that shot an albatross, and it brought disaster for his ship and other sailors on board.
For many of us, the summer was spent around water, whether we were on a lake, river or ocean either enjoying swimming, fishing or sailing as part of our leisure time. When it comes time to doing chores, water plays a large part when we have to use it for washing clothing, a car or simply watering the lawn. This week’s trivia topic pertains to water, too.
- What TV character was the title of a sitcom back in the 1960’s where seven people are stranded on an uncharted island following a storm?
- Can you name the ship that they were on?
- In Roman mythology, who is the god of the ocean?
- Greek mythology has its own ocean god, can you name him?
- In the movie Titanic, who were the two lead actors?
- What singer sang the theme song for that movie?
- What was the title of the song?
- Which is the world’s largest ocean?
- What is the world’s largest river?
- What company has the slogan, “When it rains, it pours?”
- Explorer Thor Heyerdahl wanted to prove the Polynesians made the journey across the Ocean from South America to the Polynesians islands and built a similarly constructed raft in 1947. What was the name of the raft?
Answers: 1. Gilligan’s Island, starring Bob Denver; 2. S.S. Minnow; 3. Neptune; 4. Poseidon; 5. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet; 6. Celine Dion; 7. My Heart Will Go On; 8. Pacific Ocean and it covers 59 million square miles; 9. Amazon, flowing 4,345 miles from Peruvian Andes through Brazil to the Atlantic Ocean; 10. Morton Salt; 11. Kon-Tiki (by the way, his book about that expedition is a fascinating read that is spellbinding. Thor Heyerdahl’s book about his experience became a bestseller, published in Norwegian in 1948. Heyerdahl and a small team went to Peru, where, with the help of dockyard facilities loaned by the Peruvian authorities, they constructed the raft out of balsa logs and other native materials in an indigenous style, copying illustrations by Spanish conquistadores. The trip began on April 28, 1947 and Heyerdahl and five companions sailed the raft for 101 days over 4,300 miles across the Pacific Ocean before smashing into a reef at Raroia in the Tuamotus on August 7, 1947. The crew made successful landfall and all returned safely. His book was reprinted later as Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific in a Raft. It appeared with great success in English in 1950, also in many other languages. A documentary motion picture about the expedition, also called Kon-Tiki, was produced from a write-up and expansion of the crew’s filmstrip notes and won an Academy Award in 1951.
