Brain Exercise – June 7

Firsts

  1. Alice Stebbin Wells became the first female police officer in the US in the year ________.
  2. Thurgood Marshall became the first black Supreme Court judge in ______.
  3. The three letter expression BFF (best friend forever) was added to the dictionary in _____.
  4. The emergency telephone number 911 was first established in the US in ______.
  5. The first astronaut in space was Alan Shepard in _______.
  6. The Philadelphia Zoo was the first zoo in America and opened in ______.
  7. The song “Happy Birthday” was written by two teachers in _______.
  8. The first home smoke detector was invented in _____ but was not required in homes until ______.
  9. 9. The first recording of the human voice was by Thomas Edison in ______.
  10. The American Airlines became the first major airline to hire a female pilot in _______.

Try these analogies to give your brain a workout:

  1. RANDOM: SIMPLE :: (defacto, planned, ad hoc, tricky) : COMPLEX
  2. RACONTEUR: (hunt, ego, wit, cold):: OPTIMIST: HOPE
  3. STRANGER MYSTERY:: (kin, renegade, conformist, scapegoat): DEFIANCE
  4. NOUN: FREEDOM:: VERB : (mystery, from, deem, boredom)
  5. NIGHT:APEX::DAY : (output, callous, nadir, climax)
  6. MILLENNIUM :NEBULA :: MILLENNIA : (nebulous, nebular, nebulic, nebulae)
  7. NOUN: IMPUNITY :: VERB (noun, exemption, allow, freedom)
  8. ARES: (war, sun, underworld, sea):: APHRODITE : LOVE
  9. DAVINCI : MICHELANGELO :: ( The Thinker, sunflowers, Mona Lisa, Guernica): DAVID
  10. RAVEL: BOLERO :: (Beethoven, Brahms, Copland, Vivaldi) : THE FOUR SEASONS

Answers

Firsts!

1. 1910

2. 1967

3. 2011

4. 1968

5. 1961

6. 1874

7. 1893

8. 1965, 1980

9. 1877

10. 1963

Analogies

  1. Planned.  Something random is the opposite of something planned, and something simple is the opposite of something complex.
  2. Wit.  A raconteur has wit, just as an optimist has hope.
  3. Renegade.  A stranger has an air of mystery and a renegade has an air of defiance.
  4. Deem. Freedom is a noun and deem is a verb.  
  5. Nadir.  Night is the opposite of day and apex is the opposite of nadir
  6. Nebulae.  The plural of the word Millennium is millennia.  The plural of the word nebula is nebulae. 
  7. Allow.  Impunity is a noun and allow is a verb.
  8. War.  Ares is the Greek god of war and Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love.
  9. Mona Lisa.  Leonardo Da Vinci created the Mona Lisa and Michelangelo created David.
  10. Vivaldi.  Maurice Ravel created the orchestral piece Bolero and Antonio Vivaldi composed the set of concertos, The Four Seasons.