Answers to: What's Your Baby Boomer IQ?

1. c)  Surely you didn't go for "Leave It to Beaver" starring Jerry Mathers as the Beaver. Instead, Bucky Beaver was the animated star of an Ipana toothpaste commercial of the 1950s and '60s -- Brusha, brusha, brusha, new Ipana toothpaste -- and if you're a true Baby Boomer you're probably humming that tune right now!

2. b)  After Nikita Khrushchev was ousted as the Soviet leader in 1964, Alexei Kosygin became Premier and Leonid Brezhnev rose to First Secretary. Although Kosygin, a reformer, was eclipsed by the more conservative Brezhnev, he managed to hang onto his position until two months before his death in 1980. Garry Kasparov, a Russian, is generally considered the best chess player of all time; and Carter's National Security Adviser was Zbigniew Brezezinski (whose daughter Mika is co-host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe.")

3. a)  It's a line from Bob Dylan's immortal hit "Like a Rolling Stone." The song never reached number one on the charts -- it stalled behind "Help" by the Beatles in 1965 -- but it did rate number one on Rolling Stone magazine's list of "500 Greatest Songs of All Time."

4. d)  Everybody who was anybody at the time appeared on "Laugh-In" from Tiny Tim to Richard Nixon, from Bing Crosby to Flip Wilson. Everybody except Bill Cosby, former "I Spy" star and future accused sex molester.

5. b)  $1.60 per hour. President Johnson raised the minimum wage from $1.40 to $1.60 in February 1968 (an increase roughly the equivalent of $10 to $11 in current dollars).

6. b)  $25,000, according to the U. S. Census Bureau, compared to $319,000 today. But . . . the average square footage of a 1968 home was about 1600 square feet compared to an average of about 2400 square feet today.

7. c)  Toby. Kunta Kinte, the son of a proud Mandinka warrior, was forced to submit to the slave name Toby at the end of a whip.

8. c)  Rob and Laura Petrie, and their son Richie, lived in the suburb of New Rochelle,  NY.

9. a)  Malcolm X (1925-'65) was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska. After his father was killed, he quit school and spent time in prison. He became a Muslim and eventually rose to be leader of the Nation of Islam. He declared himself a communist, preached separation of the races, and promoted drug-rehabilitation programs. In 1965 after he turned away from extremism and began to champion economic and social equality, he was assassinated by three members of the Nation of Islam.

10. a)  In the final scene of Dallas in the 1979-80 season, J. R. was shot twice by an unseen assailant. The next episode, called "Who Done It?" aired on November 21,1980, and revealed that sister-in-law and mistress Kristin Shepard (played by Mary Crosby) shot him in a fit of anger. The episode ranks second only to the 1983 M*A*S*H finale as the most-watched TV program of all time. 

11.d)  Louganis won a silver medal diving off the 10 meter platform in the 1976 Montreal summer Olympics. Americans boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics, but he went on to take two gold medals in 1984 and two more in 1988.

12. c)  Cameron Diaz played one of Charlie's Angels in the 2000 movie and in the 2003 sequel. But she was not in the original TV series which aired from 1976 - 1981.

13. d)  American actress Grace Kelly (1929 - '82) appeared in High Noon, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, and won the Best Actress Academy Award for her performance in The Country Girl. Then in 1956, at age 26, she retired from the movies. She married Prince Rainier and became Princess Grace of Monaco -- no relation to Princess Di or the rock star Prince.

14. c)  Psycho (1960) was nominated for four Academy Awards but did not win a single one. The only Oscar director Alfred Hitchcock ever received was the Irving Thalberg award for lifetime achievement. Tippi Hedren starred in The Birds, but not Psycho, and most of the movie was shot in Hollywood and Arizona. Hitchcock made a cameo appearance, as he did in most of his films, as a man in a cowboy hat standing outside the office of Marion Crane, played by Janet Leigh of the unfortunate shower scene.

15. c)  Ralph couldn't believe he "ate that whole thing" in a 1972 Alka Seltzer commercial.

16. d)  Chou en-Lai (1898-1976), also known as Zhou Enlai, was the first premier of the People's Republic of China. He served under Mao Zedong, survived The Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the Gang of Four, and was credited with thawing relations with the West by arranging for President Nixon's visit to China in 1972. Chou died in 1976, a few months before Mao passed away.

17. a)  The Sting, starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman, was nominated for ten Academy Awards and won seven including Best Picture, beating out the others in this category. American Graffiti was nominated for five Oscars that year but didn't win any. Cries and Whispers won Best Cinematography. The Exorcist won Best Writing and Best Sound.

18. b)  Sally Ride (1951-2012) was the first American woman in space as a member of the 1983 Space Shuttle crew. She is not to be confused with astronaut Judith Resnik or teacher Christa McAuliffe, both of whom perished in the Challenger disaster of 1986. Altogether, 60 women have been to space, 45 of them Americans. Ride died of cancer at the age of 61.

19. b)  The Green Bay Packers beat the Dallas Cowboys 21 - 17 in the famous Ice Bowl, with temperatures at game time at -15 degrees, to win the NFL championship. Green Bay then went on to beat the Kansas City Chiefs 35 - 10 in the Superbowl. The Jets won two years later in 1969.

20. c)  Francis. Fitzgerald was his brother's middle name. Foley is a good Irish name that has nothing to do with the Kennedys.

Bonus question. Here's your answer . . .

     Score 19 or above:  You're a Baby Boomer genius!
     Score 17 or 18:  A near-genius.
     15 or 16:  Like the citizens of Lake Wobegon, you are above average.
     Below 15:  Well . . . you're still smarter than a 5th grader!