169 Fun Facts About Back to School

The 'lead' in a pencil is actually made of what?

Pencil cores are graphite and clay, fired together; more clay makes a harder grade. The 'lead' name stuck because 16th-century chemists took the black mineral for a kind of lead ore.

Which country's pure graphite find in the 1500s kicked off the pencil industry?

England: the Borrowdale deposit in Cumbria, found in the 1500s, was so pure it was sawn straight into sticks. The Crown seized the mines because graphite lined cannonball moulds.

Which shape is the most common for a wooden pencil?

Hexagonal is the standard shape: six flat sides stop a pencil rolling off the desk and let a wooden slat be cut with little waste.

What colours are the ferrule (the metal band) on a classic Ticonderoga pencil?

The rest of the pencil is the familiar yellow, with a soft pink eraser on top.

The word 'Crayola' combines the French word for chalk with a suffix meaning what?

Oily: Alice Binney, a former schoolteacher, joined French craie (chalk) to 'ola' from oleaginous, meaning oily. The first Crayola crayons went on sale in 1903 for a nickel a box.

The 64-colour Crayola box, launched in 1958, was the first to include what?

A built-in sharpener: the 1958 Crayola 64 box had a sharpener moulded into the back of the carton, a feature that made it the company's most famous package.

In what year did yellow become the standard colour for North American school buses?

Dr. Frank Cyr's week-long conference at Columbia's Teachers College picked the shade because black lettering on it is easiest to read at dawn and dusk.

Why was 'school bus yellow' chosen?

Black lettering shows best in low light: the 1939 conference found the yellow-orange shade gave the strongest contrast at dawn and dusk. The shade is officially National School Bus Glossy Yellow.

Before motor buses, rural American children were carried to school in horse-drawn wagons called what?

Kid hacks: 'hack' was a word for a hired carriage, and the open wagons took the name. Wayne Works of Richmond, Indiana built horse-drawn kid hacks from the 1880s before turning to motor buses.

The word 'kindergarten' literally means what?

Garden of children: Friedrich Fröbel coined Kindergarten in 1840 for his institute in Bad Blankenburg, likening children to plants to be tended rather than drilled.

The first U.S. kindergarten, opened in 1856 in Watertown, Wisconsin, was taught in which language?

Margaretha Meyer-Schurz ran it; German immigrants carried Fröbel's idea across the Atlantic.

The word 'sophomore' comes from Greek words meaning what?

Sophos, wise, plus moros, fool, which is why a sophomore is a second-year student who knows just enough to be dangerous.

How long are Japanese first-graders expected to use their randoseru leather backpack?

All six elementary years: a randoseru is bought before first grade and carried until graduation at twelve, which is why a good one costs 55,000 to 70,000 yen. The name comes from the Dutch ransel.

What is the decorated cone of sweets given to German children starting first grade called?

A Schultüte, literally 'school cone': the custom dates to about 1810 in Saxony and Thuringia, where some families know it as a Zuckertüte, sugar cone.

What were the earliest blackboards made from?

Thin sheets of slate, framed in wood, were the first blackboards. The earliest attested U.S. use was George Baron's maths lecture at West Point on September 21, 1801.

Who is credited with inventing coloured chalk, using ground chalk, dyes and porridge?

James Pillans, headmaster of Edinburgh's Old High School, is credited with coloured chalk; he wanted to draw maps in colour for his geography lessons.

Natural chalk is a soft limestone made mostly from what?

The shells of tiny plankton: coccolithophore plates and foraminifera tests settled on Late Cretaceous sea floors, building Western Europe's chalk over tens of millions of years.

Before rubber erasers, what did people use to rub out pencil marks?

Pieces of crustless bread: rolled breadcrumb lifted graphite well enough that Japanese students in the Meiji era admitted eating their bread erasers when hungry.

Where is Hogwarts said to be located?

The Scottish Highlands: Rowling has said the castle stands somewhere in Scotland, reached by the Hogwarts Express from King's Cross; the name may have come from the hogwort plant.

How many Houses does Hogwarts have?

Four: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin, each named for one of the school's founders; the Sorting Hat places every first-year into one of them.

Which animal is the mascot of Hufflepuff?

A badger stands for Hufflepuff, the house of loyalty and hard work; its head is Herbology teacher Pomona Sprout.

Who voices Ms. Frizzle in The Magic School Bus animated series?

Lily Tomlin voiced Ms. Frizzle in the 1994 PBS series, a role that won her a Daytime Emmy; the series was adapted from the Scholastic picture books that began in 1986 with a trip to the waterworks.

What is the name of the tyrannical headmistress in Roald Dahl's Matilda?

Miss Trunchbull, a former Olympic hammer-thrower, runs Crunchem Hall and swings pupils by their pigtails; Miss Honey is the kind teacher who tries to move Matilda up a class.

Dead Poets Society is set at a fictional boarding school called what?

Robin Williams's John Keating is a Welton alumnus; Tom Schulman's script won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

How many times has Ferris Bueller been absent that semester when Dean Rooney decides to expose him?

The 1986 John Hughes film is a love letter to Chicago, from Wrigley Field to the Art Institute.

Grease is set at which school?

Rydell High, class of 1959, is where Danny and Sandy reunite; the 1978 film was the year's top earner and, at the time, the highest-grossing musical ever.

In Mean Girls, Cady Heron starts at which school after years of homeschooling in Africa?

North Shore High School, in the Chicago suburbs, is where Cady meets the Plastics; Tina Fey adapted the story from Rosalind Wiseman's book Queen Bees and Wannabes.

How many students serve the Saturday detention in The Breakfast Club, one from each high-school clique?

Five: a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal, at Shermer High on March 24, 1984.

Which school is believed to have been the first to use a uniform, in 1552?

Christ's Hospital, founded in London in 1552, is usually credited with the first school uniform: the long blue coat and yellow stockings that earned its pupils the nickname Bluecoats.

Which European state's 1763 General School Regulation made schooling compulsory for children aged 5 to 13?

Prussia: Frederick the Great's Generallandschulreglement of 1763 ordered children aged 5 to 13 to attend school, the model later copied across Europe and the United States.

Who is known as the 'Father of American Education'?

Horace Mann, first secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education from 1837, built the model of tax-funded common schools and teacher-training 'normal schools' that most states copied.

Who is credited with serving the first school lunches, in Munich in 1790?

Count Rumford, the American-born physicist Benjamin Thompson, fed pupils at the Munich workhouse-school he set up in 1790, a century and a half before most national programmes.

In which year was the permanent U.S. National School Lunch Program created?

1946: President Truman signed the National School Lunch Act on June 4, 1946, turning the wartime surplus-food lunches into a permanent federal programme.

Which country provides free lunches to all government-school students through its Midday Meal Scheme?

India's Midday Meal Scheme, renamed PM-POSHAN in 2021, serves a cooked lunch to more than 100 million children in government and aided schools, the largest school-feeding programme in the world.

The Scripps National Spelling Bee was founded in 1925 by a newspaper in which city?

Louisville: the Courier-Journal merged local bees into the first national final in 1925, won by 11-year-old Frank Neuhauser on 'gladiolus'; Scripps took the bee over in 1941.

How many winners did the 2019 National Spelling Bee end up with?

Eight: after 20 rounds the 2019 bee declared eight co-champions, dubbed the 'octochamps', because the organisers had run out of words that could beat them.

Which chemical gives a classic yellow highlighter its glow?

Pyranine, a fluorescent dye, turns ultraviolet light into visible yellow-green and gives yellow highlighters their glow; Frank Honn's 1963 Hi-Liter for Carter's Ink was the first.

The Post-it Note's weak adhesive was found in 1968 by a 3M scientist trying to make what?

A super-strong glue: Spencer Silver was trying to make a stronger aerospace adhesive in 1968 and got a weak, reusable one instead; Art Fry later used it to anchor a hymn-book bookmark.

Why are original Post-it Notes canary yellow?

It was the scrap-paper colour next door: the lab beside Art Fry's had only yellow scrap on hand when the first test notes were cut, and 3M later registered the canary shade as a trademark.

The Gem-style paper clip, the standard design for over a century, holds what distinction?

It was never patented: the Gem design was probably in production in Britain by the early 1870s, and the story crediting Norway's Johan Vaaler is a myth, since his 1899 patent was for a loopless clip.

The ballpoint pen is called a 'Birome' in which country, after its inventor and his partner?

Argentina: László Bíró, who had fled Europe, patented the pen in Buenos Aires in 1943 with his partner Juan Jorge Meyne; Bíró plus Meyne gives Birome.

Elmer's Glue is named after what?

The bull married to Elsie the Cow: Borden made the glue from casein, a milk by-product, so the dairy borrowed its mascots and put Elsie's husband Elmer on the bottle.

The Trapper Keeper binder was created by which company in the late 1970s?

Mead introduced the Trapper Keeper in 1978, pairing sliding plastic rings with a wrap-around flap that was first snap-closed and later Velcro.

Lisa Frank's rainbow-coloured school supplies were designed in which city?

Tucson: Lisa Frank Inc. has been based in Tucson, Arizona since it began around 1980 as a children's jewellery line called Sticky Fingers.

Schoolhouse Rock! began after an ad exec's son could memorise Rolling Stones lyrics but not what?

Multiplication tables: ad executive David McCall hired jazz musician Bob Dorough to set them to music, beginning with 'Three Is a Magic Number'; ABC ran the shorts on Saturday mornings from 1973.

Sesame Street premiered in which year?

1969: Sesame Street premiered on November 10, 1969 on public television, created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett with Jim Henson's Muppets.

Which idea about the origin of summer vacation is actually a myth?

That children were needed to plant and harvest crops: farm work peaked in spring and autumn, when rural schools closed; the long summer break grew from hot, half-empty 19th-century city schools and calendar reformers.

Roughly how long is summer vacation for schools in Japan?

Six weeks: most Japanese schools break from around July 20 to August 31, taking in the mid-August Obon holiday, with homework set for the whole stretch.

The SAT college-admissions test debuted in which year?

1926: the first Scholastic Aptitude Test was given on June 23, 1926 to about 8,000 students; for decades its Verbal and Math sections were each scored 200 to 800.

What is 'recess' called in British schools?

Break or playtime: British primary schools call it playtime and secondaries call it break, usually a 15-minute mid-morning stop before the lunch hour.

What do the Japanese call a packed single-portion lunch in a lidded box?

Bento: a single-portion meal packed in a lidded box, usually rice with fish or meat and pickled vegetables; an onigiri rice ball, wrapped in nori, often goes inside.

Which state was first to add student transportation to public education, in 1869?

Massachusetts: an 1869 law let its towns spend tax money carrying pupils to school, the first such provision in the country, as districts began consolidating one-room schools.

Roughly how many copies of McGuffey's Readers were sold between 1836 and 1960?

120 million: an estimated 120 million McGuffey's Readers sold between 1836 and 1960, sales in the same class as the Bible and Webster's Dictionary.

Which industrialist cited McGuffey's Readers as a key childhood influence?

Henry Ford credited McGuffey's Readers with shaping his boyhood, reprinted the 1857 editions at his own expense and moved McGuffey's log birthplace to Greenfield Village.

Who created the Dick and Jane characters for Scott Foresman's basal readers?

Zerna Sharp, a former teacher and Scott Foresman reading consultant, devised the characters in the late 1920s while William S. Gray wrote the method; at their 1950s peak 80 percent of U.S. first-graders used the books.

What was Dick and Jane's pet Spot in the 1930s editions?

A cat: in the 1930s editions Spot was a cat; in later editions Spot became a dog and a new cat, Puff, joined the family.

What reading method were the Dick and Jane books built on?

Whole-word or 'look-say': pupils learned to recognise whole words by sight through repetition, hence 'See Spot run'; Rudolf Flesch's 1955 Why Johnny Can't Read attacked the method in favour of phonics.

Which magazine first published Francis Bellamy's Pledge of Allegiance in September 1892?

The Youth's Companion, a Boston family magazine, printed Bellamy's pledge on September 8, 1892 for the National Public-School Celebration of Columbus Day, 400 years after the landing.

When were the words 'under God' added to the Pledge of Allegiance?

Flag Day 1954: President Eisenhower signed the law adding 'under God' on June 14, 1954, at the height of the Cold War, after a campaign led by the Knights of Columbus.

Which Supreme Court case ruled that students cannot be compelled to recite the Pledge?

West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette: on June 14, 1943 the Court ruled 6-3 that a state could not force Jehovah's Witness pupils to salute the flag or recite the pledge.

Who wrote the first version of the Pledge in 1885, seven years before Bellamy?

Captain George Thatcher Balch, a Union Army veteran who taught patriotism in New York schools, wrote 'We give our heads and hearts to God and our country' in 1885; Francis Bellamy's version followed in 1892.

Children's alphabet tablets of the 1500s were protected by a translucent sheet of what?

Horn or mica: the hornbook, a paddle-shaped tablet in common English use from around 1450, held its alphabet sheet under a thin transparent layer of horn, later sometimes mica.

What does the 'HB' grade stamped on a pencil stand for?

Hard Black: HB marks the middle of the European grading scale, between the H (hard) and B (black, or soft) grades; it is the standard school pencil, equal to a U.S. No. 2.

Which U.S. state was the last to pass a compulsory school attendance law, in 1918?

Mississippi passed its compulsory attendance law in 1918, the last of the 48 states to do so, 66 years after Massachusetts led the way in 1852.

Ore-Ida founders developed tater tots in 1953 to use up what?

Leftover slivers of cut potatoes from making French fries were being thrown away, so the Grigg brothers chopped, seasoned and fried them; Tater Tots reached shops in 1956 as an Ore-Ida trademark.

One theory credits the sloppy joe to a 1917 bar owner in which city?

Havana: José 'Sloppy Joe' Abeal y Otero opened Sloppy Joe's Bar there in 1917, and one story says the loose-meat sandwich took the bar's name; Sioux City, Iowa claims a cook named Joe instead.

Japan's private cram schools that prepare students for entrance exams are called what?

Juku: private after-school cram schools, widely attended by Japanese middle-schoolers, drill pupils for high-school and university entrance exams; Kumon is one franchised tutoring brand, not the generic word.

In which month is South Korea's Suneung college entrance exam held each year?

November: the Suneung falls on a Thursday in mid-November so results reach universities before admissions; offices open late that morning to clear the roads for candidates.

What happens to aircraft during the English listening section of South Korea's Suneung?

They are grounded: for roughly half an hour around the English listening section, take-offs and landings stop at every South Korean airport and planes aloft hold above 3,000 metres; the stock market opens an hour late.

Argentina marks Teachers' Day on September 11 to commemorate whose death?

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, the president who built Argentina's public school system, died on September 11, 1888; a 1943 inter-American conference in Panama made the date Teachers' Day across much of Latin America.

Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller's teacher, was educated where?

Perkins School for the Blind: Anne Sullivan, partly blinded by trachoma at five, graduated as valedictorian of the Boston school in 1886, a year before she went to teach Helen Keller.

Jaime Escalante taught calculus at which East Los Angeles institution?

Garfield High School in East Los Angeles, where Escalante taught from 1974 and built the AP calculus programme; Edward James Olmos played him in the 1988 film Stand and Deliver.

How many of Escalante's students passed AP Calculus in 1982, inspiring Stand and Deliver?

18: all 18 of his Garfield students passed the 1982 AP calculus exam, the Educational Testing Service accused 14 of cheating, and 12 retook it and passed again; Olmos was Oscar-nominated for the role.

Alice Cooper's 'School's Out' topped the singles chart in which country?

The United Kingdom: 'School's Out' spent three weeks at number one in the UK in August 1972, while peaking at seven on the Billboard Hot 100.

Pink Floyd's 'Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)' was the UK Christmas number one of which year?

1979: the single reached number one in the UK on 15 December 1979 and held the Christmas spot; producer Bob Ezrin pushed the disco beat and the Islington schoolchildren's choir.

Van Halen's 'Hot for Teacher' opens with a 30-second solo on which instrument?

Alex Van Halen's double bass drums feature.

The Beach Boys' 'Be True to Your School' borrows the melody of which fight song?

'On, Wisconsin!': the 1963 single lifts the University of Wisconsin fight song's melody, and the lyric salutes Hawthorne High School, the Wilson brothers' alma mater.

Which state effectively abolished homework for children under 15 in 1901?

California: a 1901 state law barred homework for pupils under 15, part of a Progressive-era backlash that saw homework as a threat to children's health; the ban lasted until 1917.

Which character is Scholastic's official mascot?

Norman Bridwell created Clifford in 1963.

Scholastic was founded in 1920 near which city?

Pittsburgh: Maurice R. Robinson started The Western Pennsylvania Scholastic in nearby Wilkinsburg in 1920, covering high-school sports and social life; the company later moved to New York.

Weekly Reader ceased as an independent publication in 2012 and merged into what?

Scholastic News: Scholastic bought Weekly Reader in 2012 and folded it into its own classroom paper; the title had begun in 1928 as My Weekly Reader.

What is the tagline of Highlights for Children?

'Fun with a Purpose' has been the Highlights motto since Garry and Caroline Myers launched the magazine in Honesdale, Pennsylvania in 1946.

In what year did Highlights magazine surpass a billion copies?

2006: Highlights printed its one-billionth copy in 2006, sixty years after the Myers family launched it from Honesdale, Pennsylvania.

Which 1950s research findings prompted America's presidential fitness programme?

Kraus and Weber found American children lacked minimum muscular fitness.

In what year was the Presidential Fitness Test replaced by the Presidential Youth Fitness Program?

2013: the old test was retired in the 2012-13 school year in favour of the Presidential Youth Fitness Program, which swapped rankings against national percentiles for health-based 'Healthy Fitness Zone' targets.

Which LAPD chief founded D.A.R.E. in 1983?

Daryl Gates, LAPD chief from 1978 to 1992, launched D.A.R.E. with the Los Angeles school district in 1983; at its peak the programme reached about 75 percent of U.S. school districts.

What is the name of D.A.R.E.'s lion mascot?

Daren the Lion is D.A.R.E.'s costumed mascot, appearing at school assemblies and on its workbooks; after decades of criticism the programme replaced its original lessons with the evidence-based 'keepin' it REAL' curriculum.

The original text-based Oregon Trail was created in 1971 for what setting?

An 8th grade history lesson: Don Rawitsch, a Carleton College student teacher, wrote it with Bill Heinemann and Paul Dillenberger for his Minneapolis class in 1971, played on a teletype.

Roughly how many copies have the Oregon Trail games sold collectively?

65 million: the Oregon Trail series had sold more than 65 million copies by 2016, the year it entered the World Video Game Hall of Fame.

In what decade did whiteboards rapidly gain popularity in classrooms and offices?

Mid-1990s: whiteboards, also called dry-erase or marker boards, spread rapidly through classrooms and offices in the mid-1990s, decades after their 1960s invention, as chalk dust fell out of favour around computers.

Which company launched the Sharpie in 1964, the first permanent marker in pen form?

Sanford Ink Company of Chicago launched the Sharpie in 1964; Newell acquired Sanford in 1992 and kept the brand.

Liquid Paper's inventor was the mother of a guitarist in which band?

The Monkees: Bette Nesmith Graham, a Texas typist who mixed the first correction fluid in her kitchen in 1956, was the mother of Michael Nesmith, the band's guitarist.

What was Liquid Paper originally called?

Mistake Out: Graham, a Texas typist, mixed white tempera paint in her kitchen blender in 1956 and sold it as Mistake Out before renaming the company Liquid Paper.

Swingline was founded in 1925 under what name?

Parrot Speed Fastener Company: Jack Linsky founded it in New York in 1925, renamed it Speed Products in 1939 and took the Swingline name from its popular stapler in 1956.

JanSport is named after whom?

Jan Lewis, the founder's girlfriend and later wife: Murray Pletz won a 1967 Alcoa design contest with an aluminium-frame pack and promised to name the company after her if she married him; she did, and ran the sewing.

The word 'satchel' comes from a Latin diminutive meaning what?

Little bag: satchel reached English through Old French sachel from Latin saccellus, the diminutive of saccus, a sack; it named the leather school bag long before the backpack.

Thermos was originally founded in 1904 in which country?

Germany: James Dewar's vacuum flask was commercialised by Reinhold Burger's Thermos GmbH in Berlin in 1904; the Japanese firm Nippon Sanso bought the business in 1989.

Which character appeared on the first licensed decorated lunch box in 1935?

Mickey Mouse: in 1935 Geuder, Paeschke and Frey of Milwaukee lithographed Mickey in four colours onto an oval tin, the first licensed-character lunch box.

Aladdin's 1950 lunch box based on which TV show sold 600,000 units in its first year?

Hopalong Cassidy: Aladdin Industries put William Boyd's TV cowboy on a steel lunch box in 1950 at $2.39 and sold 600,000 in the first year, launching the character lunch-box boom.

How many metal lunch boxes were sold in the US between 1950 and 1970?

More than 120 million metal lunch boxes sold between 1950 and 1970, with Aladdin and American Thermos turning out hundreds of licensed designs before plastic took over in the 1980s.

Which magazine printed the first known peanut butter and jelly sandwich suggestion, in 1901?

Boston Cooking-School Magazine: Julia Davis Chandler's 1901 column suggested layering peanut paste with currant or crab-apple jelly, the earliest known reference to the sandwich.

When was the 100 billionth Bic Cristal pen sold?

September 2006: Bic announced the sale of its 100 billionth Cristal that month, a rate of about 57 pens a second; the Museum of Modern Art holds one in its permanent collection.

László Bíró, who patented the modern ballpoint pen in 1938, worked in which profession?

Journalist: Bíró edited a Hungarian newspaper and, frustrated by fountain pens, borrowed the quick-drying ink of the press for a pen with a rolling ball; his 1938 patent followed.

In which year did the Bic Cristal ballpoint first go on sale in France?

1950: Marcel Bich launched the Cristal in December 1950 at a price that undercut every rival ballpoint, and it went on to become the best-selling pen in the world.

Who received the first patent for a lead-propelling refillable pencil in 1822?

Sampson Mordan and John Isaac Hawkins took out the first patent for a refillable, lead-propelling pencil in Britain in 1822; Conrad Gessner had described a simple lead holder in 1565.

Henkel's 1969 glue stick was inspired by which product's twist-up applicator?

Lipstick: Henkel researcher Wolfgang Dierichs got the idea watching a woman apply lipstick on a flight, and the twist-up Pritt Stick launched in 1969.

Who reportedly developed the first widely marketed rubber eraser in 1770?

Edward Nairne, a London instrument maker, is said to have picked up rubber instead of breadcrumb by accident in 1770 and began selling half-inch cubes at three shillings each.

The Brown v. Board of Education case involved the school system of which city?

NAACP counsel Thurgood Marshall argued the appeal.

What was the vote in the 1954 Brown v. Board decision?

It partially overruled Plessy v. Ferguson's 'separate but equal'.

Head Start was originally conceived as what?

A catch-up summer school programme: Project Head Start began in summer 1965 as an eight-week course for poor children about to start school, part of Johnson's War on Poverty, before going year-round.

What did John Travolta play in Welcome Back, Kotter?

Vinnie Barbarino, a Sweathog and the gang's swaggering leader, was Travolta's breakout role; the show ran on ABC from 1975 to 1979 and sent him into Saturday Night Fever.

Kotter's remedial class in Welcome Back, Kotter is at which Brooklyn school?

James Buchanan High School in Brooklyn, where Kotter returns to teach the remedial Sweathogs, having been one himself a decade earlier.

Edna Krabappel of The Simpsons teaches which grade?

Fourth: Mrs Krabappel teaches Bart's fourth-grade class at Springfield Elementary; she holds a master's from Bryn Mawr and marries Ned Flanders in season 23.

Which actress voiced Edna Krabappel until her death in 2013?

Marcia Wallace, who had played Carol on The Bob Newhart Show, voiced Krabappel from 1990 until her death in October 2013, after which the character was retired.

Which Simpsons episode was the first to use the opening sequence with the chalkboard gag?

Bart the Genius, the second episode, aired on January 14, 1990 and introduced the full title sequence with the chalkboard gag; the Christmas special before it had opened without one.

Cory Matthews's teacher-neighbour George Feeny is played by which actor?

William Daniels, already known as the voice of KITT in Knight Rider, played George Feeny for all seven seasons of Boy Meets World on ABC from 1993 to 2000.

Boy Meets World is set in which US city?

Cory is an 11-year-old middle-schooler in season one.

What is the name of the school in Disney's Recess?

Third Street Elementary, in Disney's 1997 series, is where T.J. Detweiler's gang of six navigates a playground ruled by sixth-grader King Bob.

What kind of animal is Arthur Read?

An aardvark: Marc Brown's Arthur Read is an aardvark, a third-grader at Lakewood Elementary in Elwood City, whose long snout shrank over the years of the books and the PBS series.

How many half-hour episodes of Arthur aired over 25 seasons?

253: Arthur ran for 253 half-hour episodes across 25 seasons on PBS from 1996 to 2022, one of the longest runs of any animated series on U.S. television.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid first appeared online in 2004 on which site?

Funbrain: Jeff Kinney serialised the diary on the educational games site from May 2004, where it drew some 20 million reads before Abrams printed the first book in April 2007.

Who sings the theme song of The Magic School Bus animated series?

Little Richard sang the 1994 series' theme, a fit for the rock-and-roll energy of Ms. Frizzle's class at Walkerville Elementary.

The Magic School Bus books were written by whom?

Joanna Cole wrote the series, beginning with The Magic School Bus at the Waterworks in 1986, with Bruce Degen illustrating every book.

Reading Rainbow's host LeVar Burton was known at its 1983 debut for which role?

Kunta Kinte in Roots: Burton was 19 when the 1977 miniseries made him famous; Geordi La Forge came four years after Reading Rainbow began in 1983. The series won 26 Emmys and a Peabody.

Reading Rainbow was the first PBS children's show broadcast in what?

Stereo sound: Reading Rainbow, which ran from 1983 to 2006, was the first PBS children's series broadcast in stereo.

How many Emmys did Bill Nye the Science Guy win from 23 nominations?

19: the show won 19 Daytime Emmys over its 1993 to 1998 run, produced by KCTS Seattle with National Science Foundation funding.

Bill Nye's 'Science Guy' persona originated on which sketch comedy show?

Almost Live!, Seattle's KING-TV sketch show, gave Nye the 'Science Guy' name in 1986 when host Ross Shafer needed a segment filled and Nye offered a science bit.

In which fictional Connecticut town is The Baby-Sitters Club set?

Stoneybrook: Ann M. Martin set the series in the fictional Connecticut town from the first book, Kristy's Great Idea, in 1986, with Kristy Thomas as the club's founder and president.

How many books were published under the original Goosebumps title from 1992 to 1997?

62: the original Goosebumps run began with Welcome to Dead House in July 1992 and ended with Monster Blood IV in December 1997; Stine then moved to spin-offs like Give Yourself Goosebumps.

Captain Underpants' George and Harold live in which Ohio town?

Piqua, Ohio: Dav Pilkey set Jerome Horwitz Elementary in the real town of Piqua, where George and Harold hypnotise their principal Mr. Krupp into becoming the hero.

Which singer's song partly inspired R. J. Palacio's novel Wonder?

Natalie Merchant: R. J. Palacio took the title from Merchant's 1995 song 'Wonder' after an encounter with a girl with a facial difference; Auggie Pullman enters mainstream school for the first time in the book.

Andrew Clements's Frindle won which prize in 2016, twenty years after publication?

The Phoenix Award, which the Children's Literature Association gives to a book that won no major prize when published twenty years earlier; Frindle, Clements's first novel, illustrated by Brian Selznick, took it in 2016.

Ramona Quimby first appeared as the pesky little sister in which Beverly Cleary series?

Henry Huggins: Ramona first turned up in the 1950 novel as Beezus's bothersome little sister, five years before Beezus and Ramona gave her a book of her own in 1955.

Which grade is Junie B. Jones starting when the series begins?

Kindergarten: Barbara Park's first book, Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus (1992), opens on Junie's first day of kindergarten; she reaches first grade in the eighteenth book.

Freedom Writers is based on the diaries of students at which Long Beach campus?

Woodrow Wilson Classical High School in Long Beach, where Erin Gruwell's room-203 students wrote the diaries she compiled as The Freedom Writers Diary in 1999.

Which veteran actress plays kindergarten teacher Barbara Howard in Abbott Elementary?

Sheryl Lee Ralph plays Barbara Howard, the veteran kindergarten teacher, a role that won her the 2022 Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series.

Freaks and Geeks is set in a suburban high school near which city during 1980-81?

Detroit: the show's William McKinley High sits in the fictional Detroit suburb of Chippewa, Michigan; NBC cancelled it after airing 15 of its 18 episodes.

In School of Rock, Jack Black's Dewey Finn forms a band of students from which grade?

Fifth-graders: posing as substitute Ned Schneebly, Dewey turns the fifth-grade class at Horace Green prep into a band to win Battle of the Bands and pay his rent.

Napoleon Dynamite is partly adapted from which earlier short film by Jared Hess?

Peluca, Jared Hess's nine-minute black-and-white 2003 short shot in Preston, Idaho with Jon Heder, grew into Napoleon Dynamite, which Fox Searchlight bought at Sundance in 2004.

Clueless is loosely adapted from which 1815 novel?

Jane Austen's Emma gave Cher her matchmaking and her blind spots; Heckerling sat in on Beverly Hills High classes for authentic slang.

Which president urged school uniforms in his 1996 State of the Union?

Bill Clinton told Congress in January 1996 that if it would stop teenagers 'killing each other over designer jackets', public schools should be able to require uniforms.

Which US school district became the first large urban system to mandate uniforms, in 1994?

Long Beach Unified required uniforms in all its elementary and middle schools from 1994, and its reported drops in crime and suspensions became the most-cited case for uniforms.

Who first copyrighted 'The ABC Song' in 1835?

Boston publisher Charles Bradlee copyrighted the alphabet song in 1835, setting the letters to the 1761 French tune 'Ah! vous dirai-je, maman' that also carries 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star'.

The oldest known base-10 multiplication table, from about 305 BC, was found where?

China: the Tsinghua bamboo strips, dated to about 305 BC in the Warring States period, carry a decimal multiplication table; Babylonians had used base-60 tables 4,000 years ago.

In French, Italian and Russian the times table is often named after which mathematician?

Pythagoras: the French table de Pythagore, Italian tavola pitagorica and Russian tablitsa Pifagora all carry his name; the Chinese nine-nine table, by contrast, has eighty-one terms.

When was the first Gaokao held in China?

1952: the first nationwide unified college entrance exam was held in 1952, three years after the People's Republic was founded; suspended in 1966, it was restored under Deng Xiaoping in 1977.

The ACT's multiple-choice sections are scored on what scale?

1 to 36 per section, averaged into a composite; the SAT's 200-to-800 scale is the usual confusion.

Where did the first Waldorf school open in 1919?

Stuttgart, Germany: Emil Molt, owner of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory, asked Rudolf Steiner to open a school for his workers' children in 1919, and Steiner's anthroposophy underpins it.

Eton College was founded in 1440 by which king?

Henry VI founded Eton in 1440 as a charity school for 70 poor scholars, a year before he founded King's College, Cambridge to take its pupils.

What does Eton College call each of its three school terms?

A half: Eton's year had two terms when the name was coined, and the word survived the move to three, the Michaelmas, Lent and Summer halves.

Science fairs began in the 1930s in which US metropolis?

New York City: the American Institute of the City of New York ran children's science fairs from the 1930s; Morris Meister, who led the effort, went on to found the Bronx High School of Science in 1938.

What are crossing guards called in Britain, Ireland and Australia?

The nickname comes from their large lollipop-shaped signs.

Which chime pattern is commonly played as the school bell in China and South Korea?

Westminster Chimes: the four-note quarter-hour pattern from the Palace of Westminster clock is the standard electronic school bell across East Asia, most famously in Japan, where it marks every period.

In The Magic School Bus, what is Ms. Frizzle's first name?

Valerie: Ms. Valerie Felicity Frizzle drives the bus; Wanda, Dorothy Ann and Phoebe are pupils in her class.

Which Texas Instruments graphing calculator launched in 2015 with a colour screen and rechargeable battery?

TI-84 Plus CE: released in 2015, it slimmed the TI-84 Plus body, added a colour screen and a rechargeable battery, and kept the keypad teachers already knew.

Who invented the IBM 805, the first electric test-scoring machine?

Reynold Johnson, a Michigan high-school teacher, built a machine that sensed pencil marks by their conductivity; IBM bought it and sold it as the 805 Test Scoring Machine from 1938, decades before Scantron.

The transparent sheets used on an overhead projector are commonly called what?

Transparencies or foils: acetate sheets laid on the projector's glass platen, lit from below and thrown onto the screen by the mirror head; teachers wrote on them with wipeable pens.

Which 3M engineer invented Scotch transparent tape in 1930, having already created masking tape for car painters?

Richard Drew used cellophane as the backing; his earlier masking tape was the first product sold under the Scotch name.

In Superbad, Fogell's fake Hawaiian ID carries what single name, which becomes his nickname for the rest of the film?

McLovin, the one-name Hawaiian organ donor on the card, was played by newcomer Christopher Mintz-Plasse; Rogen and Goldberg began the script as teenagers.

Glee is set at the fictional William McKinley High School in which Ohio town?

Lima, Ohio: Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan set the Fox series at William McKinley High in Lima, where the New Directions glee club competes on the show choir circuit.

Lunchables are marketed under which Kraft Heinz brand?

Oscar Mayer, the bologna and hot dog brand, launched Lunchables in 1988 to sell more sliced meat by pairing it with crackers and cheese in a tray.

Which two men are widely credited with inventing the whiteboard?

Martin Heit and Albert Stallion: Heit was the photographer, Stallion worked for the flat-rolled steel supplier Alliance.

An 1894 journal recounts an early prom at which women's college, visited by an Amherst student?

Smith: an Amherst College student's 1894 journal records an invitation to a 'prom' at Smith College, the earliest known use of the word, though it may then have meant an ordinary class dance.

Saved by the Bell's teenagers attend which fictional Los Angeles high school?

Bayside High, in Pacific Palisades: the NBC Saturday-morning show grew out of the Disney Channel series Good Morning, Miss Bliss and became the flagship of the TNBC lineup.

The Canadian school drama franchise Degrassi is set in which city?

Toronto's De Grassi Street gave the franchise its name; Kit Hood and Linda Schuyler created it.

Which rapper's acting career was launched by Degrassi: The Next Generation?

Drake, then billed as Aubrey Graham, played wheelchair-using Jimmy Brooks from 2001 to 2009 before his rap career took off; Nina Dobrev also got her start on the show.

Which college produced the first formal modern yearbook, in 1806?

Yale: its 1806 'Profiles of Part of the Class Graduated at Yale College', a bound set of silhouettes, is counted as the first formal yearbook, decades before photography reached campuses.

Henry Tillinghast Sisson's 19th-century 'temporary binder', an ancestor of the ring binder, was patented under what description?

An improvement in portfolios and paper files, patent no. 23506, used a spring inside a tube to hold papers securely.

Superbad, written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg as teenagers, was produced by which comedy kingmaker of the 2000s?

Judd Apatow produced it the same year as Knocked Up; Greg Mottola directed, and Jonah Hill and Michael Cera play Seth and Evan.