ROBERTA HORTON of Concord remembers that brothers Robert and Ted Kennedy served in the U.S. Senate at the same time (1965-68), and wondered if any other sibling pair ever did. According to a page on www.senate.gov, this happened only one other time: From 1800-03, brothers Theodore (R.I.) and Dwight (Mass.) Foster were U.S. senators. Related tidbits in a future column.

n Word of the week: "fax potato." A first cousin to "couch potato," it is a term for an office worker who sends a fax from one floor of a building to another, to avoid the effort involved in delivering the document in person.

  • Trivia Detective Alert: The trio of Bette Davis, Claude Rains and Paul Henreid appeared in the films "Now, Voyager" and "Deception." The trio of Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland and Alan Hale appeared in four films together. Are there any more contemporary trios of stars who have appeared in two or more films together, each in different roles each time? If you can think of any, please let us know.

  • "Tequila" update: 1970s rock duo Seals and Crofts first recorded together in the late 1950s, as members of the "Tequila" group, the Champs. When Dash Crofts was drafted in the early '60s, he was assigned to Ft. Bragg, N.C., where he was assigned as a clerk to future Vietnam commander Gen. William Westmoreland, because of his high typing speed.

  • Charles Van Doren speaks! According
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    to a July 2006 article in Connecticut's Litchfield County Times, Mr. Van Doren has completed a memoir entitled "Second Chance," covering the quiz-show period in his life and beyond. He talks a bit about the game-show scandal in the article, the first time we know of that he has spoken publicly about it since the 1950s. The article can be found online at www.litchfieldcountytimes.com.

  • Small-town celebrity birthplace of the week: Byron, in northern Illinois (current population about 4,000). Baseball Hall of Famer and sporting-goods entrepreneur Albert Goodwill Spalding was born there in 1850. Impressionist painter Wilson Irvine was also born in Byron, in 1869.

  • The word "fiasco," as in "spectacular failure," means "flask" in Italian. Specifically, the flask commonly used for Chianti that is enclosed in a straw basket. The word took on its unpleasant connotation as an Italian theatrical term, as part of the Italian phrase literally meaning "make a bottle," in the mid 19th century, but word-history experts aren't exactly sure of the connection.

    Stanley Newman is the editor of the Newsday Crossword. Reach him at StanTrivia@aol.com or www.StanXwords.com.