Words! Words! Words!

On November 14, 2006, state officials closed the last two of Texas’ famed Pig Stand restaurants, the only remaining pieces of the nation’s first drive-in restaurant empire. The restaurants’ owners were bankrupt, and they owed the Texas comptroller more than $200,000 in unpaid sales taxes. (Can you figure which word on our test today originated with Pig Stand restaurants?) Also on this day, in 1969, Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the surface of the moon, launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with astronauts Charles Conrad, Richard Gordon, and Alan Bean aboard. On this day in 1851, Harper & Brothers in New York published the novel Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville. The book flopped at first, and it was many years before the book came to be recognized as an American classic.

On this day in 1901, a 63-year-old schoolteacher named Annie Edson Taylor becomes the first person to take the plunge over Niagara Falls in a barrel. She survived, which is not easy to do. On this day in 1931, eight months ahead of schedule (people worked hard back in the day), New York governor Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the George Washington Bridge over the Hudson River. The 4,760-foot-long suspension bridge, the longest in the world at the time, connected Fort Lee, New Jersey with Washington Heights in New York City. On this day in 1945, the United Nations Charter, which was adopted and signed on June 26, 1945, became effective and ready to be enforced.

Test your building skills, talent for survival, and international acumen in today’s word quiz.

On this day in 1931, gangster Al Capone was sentenced to 11 years in prison for tax evasion and fined $80,000, signaling the downfall of one of the most notorious criminals of the 1920s and 1930s. On this day in 1835, Texans approved a resolution to create the Texas Rangers, a corps of armed and mounted lawmen designed to “range and guard the frontier between the Brazos and Trinity Rivers.” In 1960, The Drifters topped the U.S. pop charts with "Save the Last Dance for Me."

How will you score on this week's quiz?

On this day in 1844, the U.S. Naval Academy opened in Annapolis, Maryland, with 50 midshipmen students and seven professors. Known as the Naval School until 1850, the curriculum included mathematics and navigation, gunnery and steam, chemistry, English, natural philosophy, and French. The Naval School officially became the U.S. Naval Academy in 1850, and a new curriculum went into effect, requiring midshipmen to study at the academy for four years and to train aboard ships each summer–the basic format that remains at the academy to this day. On this day in 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned. And in 1780, a great hurricane ravaged the West Indies. (Storms had no names back then.)

See how sharp and disciplined you are with today’s vocab quiz. Will you be accepted or will you resign immediately and be blown away?

On this day in 1881, eighty days after a failed office seeker shot him in Washington, D.C., U.S. President James A. Garfield died of complications from his wounds. In 1827, Jim Bowie stabbed a Louisiana banker with his famous knife. And in 1959, in one of the more surreal moments in the history of the Cold War, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, while touring the United States, exploded with anger when he learned that for security reasons, he would not be allowed to visit Disneyland. The incident marked the climax of Khrushchev’s day in Los Angeles, one that was marked by both frivolity and tension.

Let’s see if you’re on the cutting edge of vocabulary knowledge or if, for security reasons, you’ll never be allowed to enjoy the advantages of a free day in your favorite theme park. Take today's quiz.

On this day in 1940, near Montignac, France, a collection of prehistoric cave paintings was discovered by four teenagers who stumbled upon the ancient artwork after following their dog down a narrow entrance into a cavern. The paintings, consisting mostly of animal representations, are among the finest examples of art from the Upper Paleolithic period. On this day in 1953, John F. Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier. And on this day in 1972, Hopalong Cassidy, aka the actor William Boyd, rode off into his last sunset.

Take this week's word quiz and let's see how you'll go down in history.

On this day in 1876, Charles Franklin Kettering, the American engineer and longtime director of research for General Motors Corp. (GM), was born in Loudonville, Ohio. Of the 140 patents Kettering obtained over the course of his lifetime, perhaps the most notable was his electric self-starter for the automobile, patented in 1915. He started Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (aka DELCO), which merged into General Motors. With GM head Alfred P. Sloan, he founded the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in New York. On this date in 1949, the Soviet Union detonated their first atomic bomb. In 1961, Hurricane Donna formed. And in 2005, Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast of the US.

See if you’re a self-starter today with our vocabulary quiz. Do you glow in the dark or will you be blown away by the challenge?

On August 15, 1979, the movie Apocalypse Now, the acclaimed Vietnam War film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, opened in theaters around the United States. On this date in 1969, the Woodstock festival opened in Bethel, New York. And on August 15, 1914, the Panama Canal opened. The American-built waterway across the Isthmus of Panama, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, was inaugurated with the passage of the U.S. vessel Ancon, a cargo and passenger ship.

See if your vocab skills resemble “the horror… the horror” of failure or if they rock from ocean to ocean like nobody’s business.

On this day in 1974, President Richard M. Nixon resigned in the wake of the Watergate burglary scandal. He was the first president in American history to resign. On this day in 1918, 22-year-old poet John Keats returned from a strenuous walking tour of the Lake Districts and Scotland with friends. On this day in 1988, the Chicago Cubs hosted the first night game in the history of Wrigley Field.

Let’s shine a light on your vocabulary today, see if your skills are unimpeachable, and determine if beauty and truth are indeed all you need to know.

It’s Colorado Day! On August 1, 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant officially welcomed Colorado into the Union as the 38th state. On this day in 1774, Joseph Priestly discovered oxygen (one wonders what he had been breathing up until that day). In 1914, World War I, the so-called war to end all wars, erupted. And in 1943, the Navy’s PT-109 was sunk by the Japanese, leading to John F. Kennedy becoming a bona fide war hero, a U.S. senator, and the first Catholic president.

Time to get high (so to speak) on that fresh Colorado air and tackle today’s vocab quiz. How many do you know?