Challenge yourself to Tom’s Trivia!
See if you know as much as King of UConn Trivia and University Deputy Spokesperson Tom Breen ’00 (CLAS).
Scroll to the bottom to reveal the answers.
Until 1985, when Connecticut raised the drinking age to 21, UConn operated an on-campus bar in the Student Union that was a focal point of social activity. What was its name?
A: The Trumbull Pub
B: The Thirsty Husky
C: The Anonymous Pub
D: The Blue and White Tavern
In UConn’s history, plenty of bars, coffee houses, and restaurants have sprung up near campus to cater to students. Which of these was not among those establishments?
A: The Nine-Foot Drop
B: Wizard’s
C: Blood & Bones
D: Schmedley’s
In 1984, author Stephen King visited Storrs, not to terrify students but to campaign on behalf of a presidential candidate. Who was it?
A: Ronald Reagan
B: Gary Hart
C: Walter Mondale
D: Jesse Jackson
During the deadly Hartford circus fire of 1944, a 13-year-old boy cut a slit in the tent canvas, allowing scores of people to escape. UConn rewarded him with what honor?
A: A scholarship named in his honor
B: A plaque near Gulley Hall
C: A full undergraduate scholarship for him
D: Both A and C
After 75 years, the legacy of Hartford’s deadly circus fire is still felt at UConn in many ways. Read all about it at uconn.edu/fire.
Answers
- C. Connecticut lowered the drinking age to 18 in 1972, and plans for a campus “rathskellar” were swiftly formulated. The beer-serving Anonymous Pub was a popular hangout on campus, but began to face financial woes as the state gradually raised the drinking age between 1982 and 1985, when it finally settled at 21.
- A. Blood & Bones was a popular hangout at the dawn of the 1970s, while students in the early 1980s hung out at Wizard’s and Huskies at the turn of the millennium would have known Schmedley’s well, but the Nine-Foot Drop exists only in the imagination.
- B. Saying that the young senator from Colorado had “concrete plans for restructuring this nation,” King spoke to about 60 students on behalf of Gary Hart in March 1984 as part of a campaign trip through New England. King later said the questions asked of him by UConn students were the most intelligent he’d heard on the campaign trip.
- C. 13-year-old Donald Anderson of Columbia, Connecticut, used his pocket knife at the circus to cut a slit in the tent canvas that allowed untold numbers of people to escape. The “boy hero,” as he was being called, was front-page news across the country – and Connecticut Gov. Raymond E. Baldwin and UConn President Albert Jorgensen rewarded him with a full scholarship to UConn in recognition of his quick thinking and actions estimated to have saved hundreds of lives. Anderson, who earned his UConn degree in sociology, went on to a long career in insurance and enjoyed collecting coins and fishing in his retirement, before his death in 2012 at age 81.
Love this Tom. Certainly knew the answer to #1 as my office was down the hall from the Anonymous Pub; but never heard of Blood and Bones ( where was it? ) — I did not get her til ’78. Certainly knew of Wizards, good friend of mine ran it.
Keep em coming.
M. Kevin Fahey
Merrow Rd., Mansfield, off of Route 32. Patrons entered via a stairway on the side of the building up to the 2nd floor. Great place for pancakes after a night of partying. Afterwards the buildings nag housed many things including The Baloon Saloon and the Mansfield Academy of Dance.