Happy National Trivia Day! by VaccaD

The Romans had a goddess named Trivia, who was the goddess of crossroads, graveyards, and magic. Trivia was the Roman counterpart of WHAT GREEK GODDESS, a former Titan whose portfolio was similar to that of Trivia, but also included power over the moon, dogs, herbs, and poison?

In medieval Latin, the trivia were the fields of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, studied as the foundation for the later quadrivia of arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music. WHAT TERM, still used (in translation) in higher education, was used to describe the combined trivia and quadrivia?

But, in my mind, that were no policy: / The king will labour still to save his life, / The commons haply rise, to save his life; / And yet we have but trivial argument

The above quote (one of the earliest in which "trivial" is used to mean "unimportant") is from one of three plays William Shakespeare wrote about WHAT MONARCH, the King of England at the beginning of the War of the Roses?

The term for declaring something to be worthless trivia is floccinaucinihilipilification, often identified as the longest non-technical word in the English language. The word was coined by students at WHAT ELITE ENGLISH PUBLIC SCHOOL, the alma mater of 19 Prime Ministers, based on a list of verbs in their Latin grammar? (The school was founded by the king in question 3, coincidentally enough.)

One of the earliest commercially available trivia games was 1885's [BLANK]'s Memory-Builder: a Game for Acquiring and Retaining all Sorts of Facts and Dates. WHAT MAN, also the author of the essays "The Awful German Language" and "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses", created this game for his children?

We decided that “trivial” means “proved.” So we joked with the mathematicians: “We have a new theorem - that mathematicians can prove only trivial theorems, because every theorem that’s proved is trivial.” The mathematicians didn't like that theorem.

The above quote about the different meaning "trivial" can have in a mathematical sense is taken from Surely You're Joking, Mr. [BLANK]!, the autobiography of WHAT SCIENTIST who shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga?

The success of G.E. College Bowl in the United States inspired the creation of a British version in 1962. WHAT NAME is given to this show, which originally ran until 1987? It was revived in 1994 with new host Jeremy Paxman, and is still on the air

The term factoid first appeared in a biography of Marilyn Monroe, originally with the meaning "a fact which had no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper". WHAT AUTHOR, better known for The Armies of the Night and Tough Guys Don't Dance, coined the term? (edited at 4:23 pm, January 4, 2016 (EST))

Prior to the 1984 revival of Jeopardy! with new host Alex Trebek, there had been three versions of the show, all hosted by WHAT MAN?

The rights to the game Trivial Pursuit are currently owned by Hasbro, but were initially licensed to Selchow & Righter. Hasbro obtained the rights because Selchow & Righter was acquired by Coleco, who lost the rights to Parker Brothers in bankruptcy, who were acquired by WHAT MINNESOTA-BASED COMPANY better known for making toy cars that was acquired by Hasbro in 1991?

WHAT 1990 NOVEL by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett includes a scene where the Four Riders of the Apocalypse assemble in a bar, causing a computerized trivia game to switch its questions to match the riders' particular areas of influence? (In response to a question about Elvis's death, Death denies ever taking him.)

In 2011, Bill Clinton appeared on WHAT NPR NEWS PANEL GAME SHOW, in which he successfully answered three trivia questions on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic posed by Carl Kasel, Peter Sagal, and Jessi Klein?