Philadelphia zoo was first in U.S.

The Philadelphia Zoological Garden was the first zoo in the United States. Chartered in 1859, then delayed by the Civil War, it opened in 1874 and had 813 animals in residence in its first year. Among them, as one newspaper reported, were “four porcupines; two laughing hyenae; two golden leopards, one not quite full grown and tractable, and the other very large and vicious ... twentysix monkeys, some very large and treacherous and others small and frisky.”

Who is the main character in “If I Ran the Zoo” by Dr. Seuss?

A) Cindy-Lou Who

B) Foo-Foo the Snoo

C) Gerald McGrew

D) Sam-I-Am

Answer: Gerald McGrew is the main character in Dr. Seuss’s “If I Ran the Zoo.”

Stars’ names are Arabic

The three stars that comprise the “belt” in the constellation Orion are Mintaka, Alnilam and Alnitak. Their names are Arabic, as are the names of other stars in Orion: Meissa, Rigel, Saiph, Bellatrix and Betelgeuse. Even though constellations generally have Latin names, more than 200 individual stars have Arabic names that originated with stargazers in the Muslim world. In fact, the work of 10th-century Persian astronomer Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi is still used as a reference today.

The goal of NASA’s Orion mission is to send humans to what celestial destination in the 2030s?

A) Betelgeuse

B) Jupiter

C) Mars

D) Venus

Answer: NASA’s Orion mission has a goal of sending humans to Mars.

Westward Ho! is an English town

Westward Ho! (the exclamation point is intentional) is a coastal village in Devon, England. Its name comes from the 1855 novel “Westward Ho!” by Charles Kingsley, the tale of an Elizabethan adventurer who leaves his home in North Devon to travel west (naturally) to the New World. Seeking to capitalize on the book’s popularity and to bring tourists to North Devon’s sandy beaches, the Westward Ho! family resort was built in the area in the 1860s. Pretty soon the whole area came to be called Westward Ho!

Elizabethan explorer Sir Walter Raleigh made what practice popular in England?

A) Smoking

B) Stamp collecting

C) Tattooing

D) Vegetarianism

Answer: Sir Walter Raleigh helped make smoking fashionable in Elizabethan England.