Ezra I.Q. | TO CELEBRATE THE FOUNDER'S 200TH BIRTHDAY, TEST YOUR TRIVIA KNOWLEDGE

1) In 1990, astronaut G. David Low '80 took which of Ezra's personal items into space?

a. Top hat
b. Socks
c. Spectacles
d. Handkerchief

2) After laying his first section of telegraph pipe, Ezra declared it to be . . .

a. "Strong as an ox"
b."Hardy as a mule"
c. "Straight as a mackerel"
d. "Right as a reverend"

3) During the Civil War, Ezra promised $50 to the Ladies Aid Society if its members could . . .

a. Bake a cake large enough to feed all of Ithaca
b. Roll a record number of bandages
c.Write a "rousing, patriotic song"
d.Work for an entire afternoon without speaking

4) Ezra was distantly related to which Founding Father?

a. Benjamin Franklin
b. George Washington
c. Thomas Jefferson
d. John Adams

5) The publisher of the Ithaca Chronicle once wrote an editorial praising Ezra for . . .

a. Endowing a fund for war widows
b. Sending him a delicious pig
c. His performance in a production of King Lear
d. Giving books to Confederate prisoners in Elmira

6) In June 1855, Ezra suffered severe fractures and nearly lost an arm when he . . .

a. Fell from a telegraph pole
b.Was robbed in New York City
c. Let it dangle out a railcar window
d.Was attacked by a big red bear

7) What did Ezra buy his wife in the hope that "it will much improve your looks"?

a. A wig
b. A French corset
c. A diamond necklace
d. A set of false teeth

8) In October 1858, Ezra paid $1,500 for a prize bull named . . .

a.Wizard of Cambridge
b. Duke of Oxford
c. Prince of Yale
d. Earl of Harvard

9) The passport Ezra used to travel to Europe at age fifty-five described his face as:

a. "Spare"
b. "Ruddy"
c. "Angular"
d. "Craggy"

10) When Ezra was asked for funds to equip the Cornell baseball team, he refused on the grounds that . . .

a. Sports were a distraction from academics.
b. Baseball was not "a thinking man's enterprise."
c. It was "altogether undignified" for college men to play a child's game.
d. His mother had made him a baseball out of an old stocking, and the team could do the same.