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Jeopardy! host and champion Ken Jennings is here with some amazing facts about historical figures, and to answer YOUR questions about the show and his new book, The Complete Kennections.
Each fact in this video is about a notable person from history, and they all have something in common. Can you figure out the connection? Or, rather, the Kennection??
Find Ken's new book here:
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Complete-Kennections/Ken-Jennings/9781668056530
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Ken Jennings Talks Jeopardy! & Amazing Trivia Facts | Mental Floss
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0:00
Hi, I'm Ken Jennings. You might know me from Jeopardy! or maybe you've taken some of the
0:04
Connections quizzes I write for Mental Floss, which are now available in book form with the
0:09
Complete Connections. Today I'm going to be dropping amazing facts about historical figures
0:14
and they all have something in common. Let's get started. Pilot Chesley Sully Sullenberger is best known for safely touching down on the Hudson River with
0:27
155 souls on board in 2009. Sullenberger left a library book about professional ethics
0:33
behind in the plane's cargo hold. The library waived all fees. Wow, that is my new favorite
0:39
Sully fact. If you want a possibly spurious Sully fact, you should watch
0:44
the second season of Nathan Fielder's show, The Rehearsal, where he has a theory about what Sully was doing
0:48
during those moments of radio silence that you may or may not find convincing. How has hosting Jeopardy
0:53
changed your perspective of your time as a contestant? I will never be the Jeopardy host that Alex Trebek was
1:00
He was just so perfect for that job. Like he'd been engineered in an Ontario lab for it
1:05
Like we miss Alex every day. But the one thing I can bring to the table
1:09
is that I remember what it was like to be a contestant. There's a lot of big feelings when you're a Jeopardy player
1:13
And so every morning I come out and I try to chat with the players. I try to talk them down
1:18
I convey to them if possible that I'm on their side and everybody on the show is on their side
1:23
And we just want to see three people play well. That's like our perfect show
1:27
It also just brings back fond memories. Every time I get to walk out on that set, I think about the summer of 2004
1:32
and what a crazy thing that was and how my life changed forever. Elvis Presley is credited with causing a surge
1:39
in polio vaccinations after he was photographed getting the shot in New York in 1956
1:44
But it wasn't really Elvis' doing. The city's health department called Colonel Tom Parker
1:48
Presley's manager, who agreed to the idea. This is what we need today
1:53
Pop stars getting vaccinations. Dua Lipa, help us out here. How did the idea for Connections come about
1:58
and what can fans look forward to in the complete Connections I been writing these weekly Connections quizzes for Mental Floss for almost a decade now but actually the quiz did not begin at Mental Floss
2:10
It was a puzzle idea from Parade Magazine. Five trivia questions. If you can answer them
2:16
all the answers have something in common. But a lot of those quizzes, because of the ownership change
2:20
and just the vagaries of the internet, they're all kind of lost in the bowels of the web now
2:25
You know, somewhere in the Wayback Machine, They're all trapped, like the Phantom Zone from Superman
2:30
And I decided to release all these puzzles in a ginormous new book
2:34
There's 1,000 Connections Trivia Puzzles, 5,000 questions in this new book on sale now from Simon & Schuster
2:41
Jim Lovell, who became a NASA astronaut in 1962, holds the distinction of being the only man to travel near the moon twice
2:48
without actually landing or stepping foot on the lunar surface. Astronaut stories don't usually have a lot of pathos
2:55
but I've always thought the gym level must be the saddest astronaut. You know, so close, so close to the moon
3:02
And yet so far. What anecdote would you share if you were a contestant on Jeopardy today
3:07
Please, I am begging you for the love of God. Do not make me come up with any more Jeopardy anecdotes
3:12
That has got to be the hardest part of being on that show for 75 times
3:17
Answering the clues is hard enough, but then they make you have a funny story every half an hour
3:21
Nobody has 75 funny stories. When Captain Richard Phillips' cargo ship, the Maersk, Alabama, was hijacked by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean in 2009
3:31
it became the first American vessel to be captured by sea pirates since the 19th century
3:37
We had a pretty good run there. We had 100-plus years of pirate-free sailing
3:42
I wonder if they had one of those boards with the numbers, you know, the number of years without a piracy incident
3:48
What's your favorite fact about 80s pro wrestling? Ah, wow, that's great
3:52
I often get asked what category I would like to see more of on Jeopardy
3:57
And my joke answer is 80s pro wrestling. What happened? Like a few months after I said that there was an 80s pro wrestling category So the next time they asked me what would you like to see more of on the show I said 80s monster trucks And then an 80s monster truck category appeared And now I am scared straight Favorite fact about 80s pro wrestling
4:15
Oh yeah, my favorite wrestler from the era is probably Coco Beware, the bird man
4:20
His gimmick was that he had like a cockatoo on his shoulder, which meant that if he did this
4:25
he could make the cockatoo kind of dance. But come on, Coco, we can see you're just moving your elbow
4:29
It also meant he had to kind of walk to the ring like this, which is kind of an odd posture in any sport
4:34
One of the last things Walt Disney ever jotted down was the name of actor Kurt Russell
4:39
though not even Russell seems to know why. It would be even weirder if we found out
4:43
that like almost every famous person, right before their death, they write down Kurt Russell
4:49
Even people in eras before Kurt Russell existed. How do you determine if a connections quiz
4:53
is too hard or too easy? Do you ever ask your friends or family members to test them
4:58
The truth about connections is it's sometimes pretty hard. It's on the hard side of fun trivia
5:04
just because mostly just the structural conceit of having to satisfy, oh, all these answers have to be unambiguous
5:10
and they have to work towards the theme. And yes, my guinea pigs are usually my family
5:14
My kids are actually very good at coming up with connections themes on the fly. They're used to me asking them
5:19
hey, what's easier, this or that? And now they'll come to me with theme ideas. Like, hey, dad, have you done a connections
5:23
about such so-and-so if they're into, my son's into baseball, My younger kid's really into Broadway, so there's a lot of this kind of stuff
5:30
In the 1980s, Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson helped funnel hundreds of millions of dollars
5:35
into Afghanistan to support that country's conflict against the Soviet Union. He even shipped mules from Tennessee after Soviet forces struck down their camels
5:44
I didn't know mules were so much hardier than camels. That's great. As Jeopardy host, what's your relationship to the writer's room
5:50
Do you ever get to suggest clues or categories? First of all, we have a multi-Emmy winning staff of writers
5:57
who are brilliant and you really can't overstate the difficulty of that job producing not just
6:02
the 61 clues you see every day but they have to write bonus clues in every category. The
6:07
clues have to go through a rigorous research process We got like eight to ten researchers who have to kick the tires on every single fact The clues have to be ordered shaped into boards daily doubles placed randomly drawn for each game
6:21
It's a tremendous conveyor belt to get all that, all those words on TV
6:26
And the writers are great at it. They do not need my help. But Alex would occasionally suggest an idea
6:31
If he was on vacation and he saw a fun fact about the Easter Island heads, he might come back to Culver City
6:36
and suggest a clue or a category. And so I do the same thing. Also in the Notes app of my phone
6:41
next to the Connections ideas, I have a list of Jeopardy ideas
6:46
And if I think of something fun that my, oh, this sounds like a final Jeopardy, this could be a punny category title
6:51
I will occasionally email it to the writers and sometimes they humor me
6:55
and I see them on the show. Ben Bradley became executive editor of the Washington Post in 1968
7:01
just in time to assist reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in breaking the Watergate scandal wide open
7:07
For decades, he was one of very few people who knew that the informant Deep Throat
7:11
was Mark Felt of the FBI. I'm old enough to remember when this was one of the great American mysteries
7:17
Who was Deep Throat? And this is very exciting to a young trivia nerd
7:22
when you find out there's all these theories. Could Diane Sawyer have been Deep Throat
7:26
It's a little disappointing now because we know that it wasn't Diane Sawyer. It was some FBI functionary we'd never heard of
7:32
but was apparently everybody's prime suspect. Last question. What did all of the historical figures we gave you facts about have in common
7:40
Ooh, let's see. Were you paying attention? Like how many of them can you remember
7:44
A little short-term memory test. There was Charlie Wilson, Ben Bradley of the Washington Post
7:49
Colonel Tom Parker, Walt Disney, Captain Phillips, Sully Sullenberger. Those were both captains, but they weren't all captains
7:57
What did they all have in common? I think I know. Do you
8:01
They were all played by Tom Hanks on screen. Well done if you got that one
8:07
I'm Ken Jennings. You can pick up my new book, The Complete Connections, at a bookstore near you
8:13
This has been Amazing Facts with Mental Floss. Thanks for watching
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