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Over the summer of 2011, people picked five of 14 nominees for the first inductees in the Trivia Hall of FameTM. Here are the top five vote getters!
Just missing the cut was Robert Ripley. Also nominated were Kevin Ashman, Pat Gibson, Brad Rutter, Don Reid, John Carpenter, Fred L Worth, Ed Goodgold, Kevin Olmstead and Jim Oz Oliva. Who do you want to nominate for the 2012 inductees to the Trivia Hall of FameTM? 1) Ken Jennings
In addition to winning 74 straight Jeopardy games, smashing just about every one of the show's records in the process, this former star of the Brigham Young University quiz bowl team is also the author of Brainiac (a social history of trivia), a "trivia almanac" and Maphead. Read our interview with Jennings. 2) Alex Trebek
Trebek brought quiz shows back to prime time as the host of the 1980s revival of Jeopardy. He has, however, hosted many game shows in his career, and in 1966 hosted Reach for the Top, a Canadian quiz show for high schoolers. More recently, he has hosted the National Geographic World Championship. 3) Chris Haney and Scott Abbott
Trivia was pretty much dead in the early 1980s, when an improbably successful board game was created by two Canadians. Haney and Abbott created Trivial Pursuit and, despite the huge production costs, turned the game into a massive hit. Formerly in the Montreal newspaper business, the pair became millionaires. 4) Will Pearson and Mangesh Hattikudur
Pearson and Hattikudur were at Duke when they created what is now Mental Floss magazine as a campus publication. Despite a bleak environment for magazine startups, Pearson and Hattikudur turned Mental Floss into a monster hit that spun off a series of books and board games. Read our interview with them. 5) Norris and Ross McWhirter
In 1955, a debate about Europe's fastest game bird led the twin brothers Norris and Ross McWhirter to create the Guinness Book of Records, which became the world's biggest selling non-copyrighted book. Later in life, the pair became involved in arch-conservative causes and Ross McWhirter was killed by the IRA. |