Q 01/05

Which grocery item did US Food Administrator Claude Wickard ban for seven weeks in early 1943 as a wartime saving?

A) Sliced bread

B) Canned soup

C) Bottled soda

D) Instant coffee

Answer · why

A) Sliced bread

Sliced bread needed heavier wax-paper wrapping than whole loaves, so officials hoped a ban would save paper. Public complaints helped end it on March ...

Q 02/05

Which drug did Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann test on himself in April 1943 before a famously strange bicycle ride home?

A) MDMA

B) LSD

C) PCP

D) DMT

Answer · why

B) LSD

LSD had sat on a shelf for five years before Hofmann absorbed a trace by accident and decided to try a measured dose. April 19 is now known as Bicycle...

Q 03/05

Which children's classic did exiled French pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry publish in New York in April 1943?

A) Curious George

B) The Story of Babar

C) The Little Prince

D) Madeline's Rescue

Answer · why

C) The Little Prince

The Little Prince was written in New York and on Long Island and reached France only after the liberation. Its author vanished on a reconnaissance fli...

Q 04/05

Which Scandinavian company did 17-year-old Ingvar Kamprad found in 1943 as a small mail-order business?

A) Lego

B) H&M

C) Nokia

D) IKEA

Answer · why

D) IKEA

IKEA joins Kamprad's initials to Elmtaryd, the family farm, and Agunnaryd, his home village. Furniture only entered the range five years after the fou...

Q 05/05

Which future US president towed an injured crewman to safety after a Japanese destroyer sank PT-109 in August 1943?

A) Richard Nixon

B) Gerald Ford

C) George H. W. Bush

D) John F. Kennedy

Answer · why

D) John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy swam with the burned sailor's life-jacket strap clenched in his teeth. A message scratched on a coconut later helped bring the strande...