Today’s Tough Trivia question: The EGOT is an entertainment awards grand-slam. To date, only 16 people have achieved an EGOT, winning at least one Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award in competitive categories (and only one has a double EGOT: at least two of each of the awards). How many of the EGOT winners can you name?

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Yesterday’s question was: Scales: fish wear them for protection, humans step on them to fret about their diets. We love to measure, rank, and grade things. Your question for today: what do we measure with the following scales: Fujita, Mohs, Richter, Scoville. Bonus points if you know what measures on those scales are for the least intense, and for the most.

The answers are:

The Fujita scale (also called the Fujita-Pearson scale) rates tornado intensity. Introduced by Ted Fujita in 1971, it ranges from F0 (winds less than 73 miles per hour, inflicting light damage) to F5 (winds greater than 261 miles per hour, inflicting incredible damage).

The Mohs scale of mineral hardness measures just what it says it does, characterizing scratch resistance of various minerals through the ability of harder material to scratch softer material. Created by German geologist Friedrich Mohs in 1822, the scale ranges from 1 (talc) to 10 (diamond).

The Richter scale, also called the Richter magnitude scale, measures the strength of earthquakes. And though scientists now use other scales because of shortcomings in the Richter scale, it is still the most commonly known and popularly used. It’s a logarithmic scale, introduced by Charles Richter in 1935, ranging from 1.0–1.9 (microearthquakes, not or only rarely felt) up to 9.0 and greater (near total destruction).

The Scoville scale measures the pungency (spiciness, or heat) of chili peppers. Introduced by pharmacist Wilbur Scoville in 1912, it measures in Scoville Heat Units (SHU), ranging from non-pungent (0–700 SHU) to very highly pungent (above 80,000 SHU). Another way of looking at the scale ranges from bell peppers and pimentos (0–100 SHU) up to law-enforcement grade pepper spray (1,500,000 SHU and up).

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Ian’s Tough Trivia is a daily feature of this blog (Monday’s category is History; Tuesday is Arts; Wednesday is Science; Thursday is Entertainment; and Friday is Grab Bag). Each day, I post a tough question, as well as the answer to the previous day’s question. Simply comment on this post with your answer. I’ll approve the comments after the next question is posted. Sure, you can probably find the answers by searching the web, but what’s the fun in that?

And if you’ve got a favorite trivia question—or even just a topic for which you’d like to see a question—let me know! Reader participation is warmly encouraged.