Assassination Trivia

[Steve]

(08-31-2017 04:14 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Google has become my best friend, but I swear I can't find things as easily as you seem to -- especially in identifying photos.

I actually use a combination of memory, books, and Google to answer trivia questions. Each trivia question or research project needs a strategy tailored to the question being asked. For instance in this thread:

http://rogerjnorton.com/LincolnDiscussio...l#pid66265

I googled "grotesque in appearance, the kind who are always at the corner stores, sitting on boxes, whittling sticks, and telling stories as funny as they are vulgar" to take me directly to that part of Mary Chestnut's diary. After seeing the quote was from March 1861, I googled something like "California" "Scott" "Civil War" and "Congressman" which brought me to Charles Scott's Wikipedia page and from there I figured out his wife's name.

Although the next trivia question in that thread, your question about Gen. O. O. Howard, I answered from memory - not having to use Google at all.

In this recent thread:

http://rogerjnorton.com/LincolnDiscussio...l#pid66946

To help Marty find a copy of Dr. Curtis's letter to his mother, I googled part of Curtis's quote used. That brought up several websites and books that also only quoted the letter. But one result, and only one result, of the whole Google search brought up a newspaper article behind a paywall. From that I did a newspaper search and found the article.

So to search for quotes include a unique sounding chain of words within " '' and without any breaks in the quote.

I hope this is helpful.

Oh just so you know, there are many trivia questions that I don't even post a reply to. A few are answered before I even see the question, but a lot of times if I don't know the answer I simply won't reply at all. So that might make my "hit" rate seem higher than it actually is.