From Sea to Shining Sea
Memorial Day weekend is here, and with it comes the start of summer. (Has anyone ever told the summer solstice that we get the party going without it? Oh well.) And with summer comes the return of exciting outdoor scavenger hunts featuring delicious snacks, amazing zoo animals, famous landmarks, and more.
Speaking of which, let’s see how well you know some famous landmarks and museums around the country.
Cheers, Sam
Outside Boston’s famous Faneuil Hall stands a statue of the pretty-much-just-as-famous Samuel Adams. Adams has often been described as a beer brewer, but what specific suds ingredient did he actually produce?
Malt
Putting the Arch in Architect
New York City’s photogenic Washington Square Park has appeared in everything from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel to the Avengers movies, and pops up in our popular Greenwich Village scavenger hunts. The architect who designed the park’s iconic entryway, Washington Square Arch, was shot and killed by a mentally unstable millionaire—the story of his shooting features in the musical Ragtime. Who was that architect?
Stanford White, who designed a great many buildings. Some of his greatest works that are still around today include the Boston Public Library building on Copley Square and the rebuilt Jeffersonian Rotunda at the University of Virginia.
A Scare in Chicago
Full of African mammals, the Rice Gallery at Chicago’s Field Museum features a pair of famous residents who starred in a 1996 historical adventure film. “If you dare lock eyes with them,” a character in the film says, “you will be afraid.” Who are they?
The Lions of Tsavo, who were the subject of The Ghost and the Darkness
Can You Dig It?
Beloved for its Dinosaur Hall, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles enjoys an honor like no other. They are the only organization authorized to take fossils from what nearby greasy hole?
The La Brea Tar Pits
Go Long
Finished in 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco was the longest suspension bridge in the world for almost 30 years. But then a New Yorker took that title in 1964. What is the name of that East Coast crossing?
At roughly 4,260 feet long, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is 60 feet longer than the Golden Gate Bridge, though there are much longer bridges in the world today.
Philly Foodie
Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market is one of that city’s premier dining destinations. What sort of animal is Philbert, the Market’s mascot?
A pig
From Dream to Reality
The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial opened near the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in 2011, after years and years of development. The memorial was first proposed by the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, the first historically African-American intercollegiate Greek fraternity, of which Dr. King was a member. Who was president at the time that lawmakers authorized construction of the memorial?
Bill Clinton was president in 1996, when Congress authorized the MLK Memorial. The project took 15 years to see the light of day.
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Photo credits
Washington Square Park Arch photo by Josh Appel on Unsplash; Field Museum photo by Photo by Solstice Hannan on Unsplash; Natural History Museum of Los Angeles photo by David Leigh Ellis – Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 3.0; Golden Gate Bridge photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash; MLK Memorial photo by Sonder Quest on Unsplash; Lead photo with flag by Brandon Mowinkel on Unsplash