In honor of Father’s Day, take the following quiz to see how much you know about famous, and not so famous, presidential, historical, television, animal, movie and sports dads.
A. What actor will soon appear in his 86th movie but co-star for the first time with his son and grandson in a feature film? Hint: He and his wife are also funding the rebuilding of Los Angeles-area school playgrounds–170 so far and counting.
B. True or False: When their partners are pregnant, men can show symptoms of pregnancy too: morning sickness, weight gain, mood swings and food cravings, among others.
C. What two-time Most Valuable Player retired in 2001 to spend more time with his family after 21 seasons on the same baseball team–the only team he’d ever played for? What is the name of the team? Hint: His father and brother wore the same uniform.
D. What artist wrote the song “Straighten Up and Fly Right,” recorded with Capitol Records in 1943, based on a sermon his father, a preacher, gave? Name the artist’s famous daughter.
E. What nicknames did Archie Bunker give his daughter and son-in-law in the 1970s TV sitcom “All in the Family”? What actors played those three characters?
F. What famous athlete credits Buddhism (his mother’s religion) for instilling a sense of calm and inner peace and his father for introducing him to the game and teaching him confidence? What’s his father’s name?
G. Other than George Bush and George W. Bush, the United States’ 41st and 43rd presidents respectively, what other father-son pair served as POTUS?
H. What marketer and inventor learned he possessed natural salesmanship abilities by hawking his father’s inventions along Chicago’s Maxwell Street? Name his father and at least one of either man’s inventions.
I. Match the TV dads in column A with their jobs or places of employment in column B and son’s name in column C
(A)
Homer Simpson
Fred Sanford
George Jefferson
Mike Brady
Ward Cleaver
(B)
Owned dry-cleaning shops
Safety inspector at nuclear plant
Architect
Accountant
Junk dealer
(C)
Lionel
Greg
Lamont
Theodore
Bart
J. What father told Newsweek that he said, “Let’s have kids and make them tennis players” to his wife?
K. What famous TV dad got his start first in stand-up comedy and then, playing a federal agent on the 1960s TV series “I Spy?” Hint: He wrote a best-selling book about being a dad in 1986, titled “Fatherhood.”
L. Steve Martin and Diane Keaton starred in “Father of the Bride” (1991), a remake of the 1950 film by the same name. What was the title of the 1951 sequel (the 1995 remake of the sequel was called “Father of the Bride Part II”) and who were the co-stars?
M. The first Chinese emperor, Shih Huang Ti, buried in 210 B.C., has a tie to Father’s Day. What is it?
N. A famous writer once said, “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much he had learned.” Name the writer and his pen name.
O. Which two animals go to great lengths for paternity, assuming primary care for their prehatched young?
P. What two daughters followed their fathers’ footsteps into the boxing ring? Name their fathers too.
Q. There has been a rumor of rivalry between which father-son musical pair?
R. What famous TV dad from the
1950s began his career with a big band radio orchestra in the ’30s? What were the names of his subsequent movie and TV show?
S. What are two major trends in the United States related to fatherhood?
T. Who was Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Wash., and when was her father’s birthday?
A. Kirk Douglas. The 85-year-old actor plays a Jewish patriarch who has had a stroke (as Douglas did six years ago), alongside son Michael and 23-year-old grandson Cameron in “Smack in the Kisser.” The movie is due out this fall.
B. True. Studies report different findings, but from 10 percent to 60 percent of men with pregnant partners experience symptoms of sympathetic pregnancy, or couvade syndrome. From the French, `to hatch,’ couvade often presents at the end of the first trimester and again close to birth.
It has been attributed by various researchers to the stress of pregnancy, anxiety related to parenthood and the impending birth and a statement of paternity or identification with the fetus.
C. Cal Ripken Jr. and the Baltimore Orioles. The 41-year-old Ripken told the Associated Press last June that he missed being away from home and his kids’ activities. For parts of 12 seasons of his career, Ripken was coached by his father, Cal Ripken Sr. For five seasons, he played with his brother, Bill. All three were in uniform together in 1987. And both Cal Sr. and Jr. are published authors: “The Only Way I Know,” by the younger Ripken, and “The Ripken Way: A Manual for Baseball and Life,” by his late father.
D. Nat King Cole and Natalie Cole. The song was recorded during Cole’s first recording session with Capitol. The record sold more than half a million copies, but Cole had sold the copyright years prior and earned little from the hit. Daughter Natalie re-released the song on her 1991 album, “Unforgettable, With Love,” which earned seven Grammy awards and sold 11 million copies.
E. Little Girl (pronounced goy’ ul) and Meathead. Carroll O’Connor played Archie Bunker; Rob Reiner played Michael Stivic, a.k.a. Meathead; and Sally Struthers played Gloria Bunker Stivic. Archie’s chair now sits in the Smithsonian Institution.
F. Golfer Tiger Woods. His father, Earl Woods, got his son swinging a modified club before he was a year old and served as Tiger’s first coach.
G. John Adams and John Quincy Adams. John Adams was the second president, serving from 1797 to 1801. His son, John Quincy Adams was the country’s sixth president, serving from 1825 to 1829.
Until July 31, the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum in College Station, Tex., holds an exhibit, “Fathers and Sons,” which traces the careers and lives of these two pairs of presidential fathers and sons. Included in the exhibit are the Bible used to swear in George W. Bush as governor of Texas and the disputed electoral count from 1825. (No word on whether there is a dimpled chad on display.)
H. Ron Popeil served as pitchman for the gadgets invented by his father, Samuel, at Woolworth’s and at Chicago street fairs before discovering television infomercials. Products include the Ronco Spray Gun, the Chop-O-Matic, Veg-O-Matic, Inside-the-Shell Egg Scrambler (supposedly a Martha Stewart favorite), GLH (Great Looking Hair) and the Showtime Rotisserie Oven.
I. Homer Simpson, Bart’s father, is a safety inspector on “The Simpsons.” Lamont Sanford helped his father, Fred, manage his Los Angeles junk business on “Sanford and Son.” George Jefferson, Lionel’s father, owned a chain of dry-cleaning stores on “The Jeffersons.” Greg Brady’s father, Mike, was an architect on “The Brady Bunch.” Theodore (a.k.a. Beaver) Cleaver’s father was an accountant on “Leave it to Beaver.”
J. Richard Williams, father and coach to Venus and Serena. Far from teaching in a private tennis academy, Williams taught his daughters the game as toddlers on the rundown courts of Compton, Los Angeles, where they say they remember ducking gunfire. Now 22 (Venus) and 21 (Serena), the two have taken more than 30 titles, including several at the U.S. Open and Wimbledon and two Olympic gold medals in 2000.
K. Bill Cosby, who co-starred with Robert Culp in “I Spy” and became the first African-American to play a lead role in a weekly television series. He went on to play Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable on NBC’s “The Cosby Show” from 1984 to 1992. Cosby’s book, “Fatherhood,” was the fastest-selling hardcover book of all time.
L. “Father’s Little Dividend.” Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett co-star as Stanley and Ellie Banks, parents of Kay Banks, played by Elizabeth Taylor.
M. Evidence of the world’s earliest known version of the cravat was found in his tomb, unearthed in 1974. It contained 7,500 life-size terra-cotta statues of his soldiers, buried to protect him in death. Each statue was different, modeled on a particular man, but all statues sported knotted silk neck cloths. Today, like it or not, dads, Americans spend about $1 billion on 100 million ties annually.
N. Samuel Clemens wrote “Huckleberry Finn,” “Tom Sawyer,” “Innocents Abroad,” “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” and “Life on the Mississippi,” among many other titles, under the pen name Mark Twain.
O. Emperor penguins and seahorses. After mating, female Emperor penguins of Antarctica lay just one egg, and the male guards it on his feet, covered with a feathery flap of skin. A colony of similarly charged dads-to-be huddle together against the cold for about two months. They don’t even eat. During this time, the females have traveled to the sea to feed. They return when the eggs hatch, and the fathers have their turn to waddle to the ocean for much-needed food and rest.
Female seahorses lay their eggs–as many as 1,000–into the male’s pouch, where they’re fertilized and provided nutrients from his body for a two- to three-week gestation period. When they’re ready to hatch, he expels them into the water, taking as long as two days. The babies rise to the surface, inflate their swim bladders and they’re on their way–no need to return to dad’s pouch for protection.
P. Laila Ali, daughter of Mohammad, and Jacqui Frazier-Lyde, daughter of Joe Frazier. Laila has been boxing since 1999 and Jacqui soon thereafter. The two fought each other in June 2001, and Ali, then 23, scored a majority decision over Frazier-Lyde, 39.
Q. Julio and Enrique Iglesias. According to a recent issue of Parade magazine, Enrique said, “It’s not a normal relationship” and claims his father expressed doubts that the son would ever win a Grammy. In 1996, Enrique did just that, for Best Latin Pop Performance, but according to the article the rivalry remains.
R. Ozzie Nelson met his future wife, Harriet Hilliard, when she joined his orchestra as a vocalist in 1932. They left music in 1944 for a radio sitcom, and then in 1951 made a feature film, “Here Come the Nelsons.” Their TV show, “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” followed in 1952. Ozzie wrote and produced the show for 15 years.
S. Single dads are one of the fastest-growing demographic groups in the country. Census data from 2000 show 2.2 million households across the United States in which single men were raising children, a 62 percent increase since 1990.
Census data also show that roughly half of all married dads are providing full- or part-time care of their preschool children. Though difficult to measure, stay-at-home dads of kids of all ages are on the rise, too, from an estimated 1.9 million in 1993 to more than 2 million today.
T. In Spokane in 1909, Dodd organized the first Father’s Day on her father’s birthday (June 19) to honor him for raising her and five siblings after their mother died in childbirth. The following year, the mayor of Spokane and the governor officially supported a father’s day celebration. President Calvin Coolidge supported a nationwide celebration; in 1966, President Lyndon Johnson declared Father’s Day an official national holiday; and in 1972, Richard Nixon signed into law the third Sunday of June as Father’s Day.
