Mr. Write's Page

The Questions…

1. Conjoined twins Chang and Eng were born in 1811 in Thailand (then called Siam; hence, the term Siamese twins). As young adults, they moved to North Carolina, married sisters, had a total of 21 children, and died in 1874 within three hours of each other. In Siamese, what do the names Chang and Eng mean?

2. What U. S. president was so superstitious about the number 13 that he would order his secretary to attend White House dinners to avoid having 13  people at the table?

3. What is the only insect known (so far) to have just one ear?

4. When the 1982 film ET: The Extra-Terrestrial was re-released in 2002, digital changes were made to the scene in which federal agents try to stop the bike-riding kids from escaping with ET. What was changed?

5. Speaking of ET, Atari created a video game based on the film, but it was difficult to play, and it bombed. What did Atari do with the millions of unsold game cartridges?

The Answers…

1. Chang means left, and eng means right.

2. Franklin D. Roosevelt.

3. The praying mantis. Mantids have a single ear located in their chest segments. The ear can detect the high-frequency chirps of hungry bats, the chief predator of mantids.

4. The guns carried by the feds were digitally replaced with walkie-talkies.

5. In 1983, the games were hauled to a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico, crushed, and buried under a thick layer of concrete.