Welland  

Welland, Ontario, is a fairly small town with a population of just over 50,000. It used to be a centre for heavy industry thanks to its location - the town grew up thanks to the railway crossing over the canal - but once the canal was diverted due to the large amount of traffic using it, the town went into decline. Now it's probably more famous for being the home of Chris Haney, the man who invented the game Trivial Pursuit along with his buddy Scott Abbott.

In 1979 they were playing another popular board game, Scrabble, but some of the letters were missing so they decided to invent their own game. For anyone who has never played it, here are the basic rules of the game. Each player has a plastic 'container' as a playing piece which they move around the board according to the roll of a dice. The object of the game is to land the playing piece onto a particular coloured space on the board - they will then be asked a question from the relevant category. The categories are geography (blue) , history (yellow), sport and leisure (orange), science and nature (green), entertainment (pink) and art and literature (brown). Once the player has collected a coloured wedge from each category they then head to the centre of the board for the final question, the category for this being chosen by the other players. It may sound complicated but is in fact pretty simple once you get the hang of it.

The game was released in 1982 and was an overnight success. In 1984, in North America alone, over 20 million games were sold. Now there are versions in 17 languages sold all over the world. There are special editions too, such as Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Disney. The game can now also be played on your computer and even on TV with a DVD version.

So, how is your knowledge of trivia? Here are some questions to try you out. 1. Geography. Which is the largest island in the Mediterranean sea? 2. Entertainment. Who was Elton John's songwriting partner for the film The Lion King? 3. History. In which year did the First World War end? 4. Art and Literature. Who painted The Sunflowers? 5. Science and Nature. What did Lazlo Biro invent? 6. Sport and Leisure. Which football team did David Beckham join after Real Madrid?

How did you do? Well, the answers, in order, are Sicily, Tim Rice, 1918, Van Gogh, the biro (or ballpoint pen) and LA Galaxy.