Private Mars Rocket II

I'm back from my all-day Rotary field trip, so have this week's trivia:

On this date in 1911, the Mona Lisa, one of the most famous paintings in history, was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris. Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian and former Louvre employee, entered the museum on Monday, August 21 around 7 am, through the door where the other Louvre workers were entering. The museum was closed that day. He said he wore one of the white smocks that museum employees customarily wore and was indistinguishable from the other workers. When the Salon Carré, where the Mona Lisa hung, was empty, he lifted the painting off the four iron pegs that secured it to the wall and took it to a nearby service staircase. He took off his smock and wrapped it around the painting, tucked it under his arm, and left the Louvre through the same door he had entered.

Peruggia hid the painting in his apartment in Paris. Supposedly, when police arrived to search his apartment and question him, they accepted his alibi that he had been working at a different location on the day of the theft.

After keeping the painting hidden in a trunk in his apartment for two years, Peruggia returned to Italy with it. He kept it in his apartment in Florence, Italy but grew impatient, and was finally caught when he contacted Alfredo Geri, the owner of an art gallery in Florence. Geri, after taking the painting for "safekeeping", informed the police, who arrested Peruggia at his hotel. After its recovery, the painting was exhibited all over Italy with banner headlines rejoicing its return and then returned to the Louvre in 1913. While the painting was famous before the theft, the notoriety it received from the newspaper headlines and the large scale police investigation helped the artwork become one of the best known in the world.
Source – Wikipedia.

I was going to say something about the latest tsunami of BS coming from the alt-right, namely Q-anon, but I'm having a hard time deciding what to say. I mean, it's clearly BS. Why would somebody with a "Q" level clearance (which is used by the Department of Energy, not Defense) be warning people on the Internet about pending actions? Especially the kind of highly questionable if not illegal actions of arresting powerful American citizens and shipping them to Gitmo. But logic, facts, and the alt-right have never been friends. (Huh. Looks like I did say something about the Q.)

Having gotten that off of my mind, have a preview of this week's trivia corner for the Darien Rotary Club's newsletter:

On this date in 1679, Le Griffon (French for The Griffin) became the first true ship to sail the Great Lakes. She was built on or near Cayuga Creek, a tributary of the Niagara river, by the French explorer La Salle. The ship was a 45 ton, 7 gun sailing barque. The ship departed Niagara and sailed through the Great Lakes, ending up in late September on either Washington or Rock Island, which are the two largest islands off of the tip of what is now the Door County peninsula. There they met up with a group of friendly Indians and some French fur trappers who had traveled ahead by canoe.

Trade was conducted and on September 18 the ship headed back to Niagara, loaded with fur. La Salle remained in the area to continue to explore. This proved fortunate for him as the ship never made it back to home base. The search for the wreckage of Le Griffon has become a cottage industry among divers and archaeologists in the Great Lakes area.

source: Wikipedia.

Last night at my weekly team trivia event, I was a guest host for a round. I wrote six questions in order from easy to hard. The category was "movie quotes" - I give you the quote, you give me the movie. This proved surprisingly hard for my team and the other teams.

As a test, here's my questions. You tell me what movie they are from (without Googling!). Extra credit if you give me actors and/or character names (questions are progressively harder).

1. I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse.

2. What we've got here is a failure to communicate.

3. Round up the usual suspects

4. When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk, shoot.

5. A man’s got to know his limitations

6. Now you understand. Anything goes wrong, anything at all... your fault, my fault, nobody's fault... it won't matter.