This week’s questions:
1) What motivated Minnesota factory worker Charles Strite to invent the automatic pop-up toaster in 1919?
2) What bird has the longest bill?
3) What is unusual about the Cayman golf ball that was designed for golf great Jack Nicklaus in 1984?
4) French writer Alexander Dumas traded hundreds of volumes of his work for a lifetime supply of what fruit?
5) What is the natural source of the pearl essence that gives many lipsticks and nail polishes their lustrous appearance?
This week’s answers:
1) He couldn’t stand the burned toast regularly served in his company cafeteria. Stride’s invention, which browned a single piece of bread on both sides, had a variable timer that turned off the electricity and triggered a spring that ejected the toasted bread.
2) The Australian pelican, with a bill that is up to 18 1/2 inches long.
3) It weighs 24 grams instead of the standard 45 and has a hard plastic shell with pimples instead of the usual golf ball dimples.
4) Cantaloupes, known as cavaillons, which are named for the town in Provence where they are still grown.
5) Fish scales, primarly from herring. Synthetic substitutes are used by some cosmetics manufacturers.