TRIVIA TODAY - Monday, December 14, 2015

Greetings Infomaniacs,

I didn't realize that middle names are a more recent tradition in Western civilization. I'm pretty sure they were invented by parents so that their kids would know when they were REALLY mad at them.

I always knew I was in trouble when my parents used my middle name. Not that it happened often since I was such a good kid...ha!

Here are some fun facts about middle names for you today..

Enjoy!
Melissa

Questions? Comments? Email Melissa

P.S. Did you miss an issue? You can read every issue from the Gophercentral library of newsletters on our exhaustive archives page. Thousands of issues, all of your favorite publications in chronological order. You can read AND comment. Just click Gophercentral Archives

WHO SAID IT?
QUOTE: Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.

HINT: (1907-1973), was an Anglo-American poet, best known for love poems such as "Funeral Blues," poems on political and social themes such as "September 1, 1939" and "The Shield of Achilles"

RANDOM TIDBITS
Middle names are a somewhat recent tradition in Western civilization. No person aboard the Mayflower had a middle name. Only three of the first 17 U.S. presidents had one.

Retailer J.C. Penney had an appropriate middle name: Cash.

The T in educator Booker T Washington's name stood for Taliaferro. The former slave added the middle name in his later years after learning that his mother had once called him Booker Taliaferro. Even today, the significance of Taliaferro is not known.

Tom Cruise's middle name is Cruise. His birth name was Thomas Cruise Mapother IV. When he moved to New York to persue acting after high school, he adopted the last name of Cruise, which was the name of an ancestral family matriarch.

Frances Bean Cobain, daughter of rockers Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, got her middle name because her late father thought she looked like a kidney bean.

When Reginald Kenneth Dwight changed his name to Elton John, he took the middle name Hercules.

*** Weekly Mind-Scrambler ***
I am a protector. I sit on a bridge. One person can see
right through me, while others wonder what I hide. What
am I?

Submit your answer by clicking: HERE

Answer will be posted in Friday's Trivia Today. Good Luck! If your name appears in Friday's newsletter, EMAIL MICHELE your complete name and address to be shipped your prize. Be sure to put "Winner" in the subject line.

WHO SAID IT?
QUOTE: Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.

ANSWER: W.H. Auden

***
Missed an Issue? Visit the Trivia Today Archives
Please feel free to forward this, in its entirety, to others.