Al Hartmann | The Salt Lake Tribune UEA President Sharon Gallagher-Fishbaugh welcomes teachers to the Utah Education Association annual convention Thursday, Oct. 20 at the South Towne Expo Center in Sandy.

Sandy •

Opossums have 13 nipples.

Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day.

Buzz Aldrin’s mother’s maiden name was Moon.

These facts may seem like little more than trivia at first glance. But to “Jeopardy!” champ and former Utahn Ken Jennings they’re bits of information that can help people connect to others and ignite an interest in learning more about the world.

“Information may not be the same as knowledge, and it may not be the same as wisdom, but it is the building block,” Jennings told hundreds of teachers gathered for the first day of the Utah Education Association Convention and Education Exposition Thursday. Jennings, who famously won 74 games of “Jeopardy!” to win $2.5 million in 2004, kicked off the annual two-day convention with a humor-filled take on the importance of trivia and knowledge.

“A good fact in the right place can be the thing that convinces someone that some subject that they heretofore did not think was interesting actually might be more interesting than they thought,” Jennings said.

The usefulness of trivia goes far beyond a game show stage, he said. Knowing about different topics can also help people relate to others, which can spark conversation and understanding.

“I think it’s a way to bring people together,” Jennings said. “Maybe this is naive, but I think one of the problems between people of the world is we just don’t know much about each other — or at least not enough.”

He said it might sometimes seem that there’s no need to learn facts anymore, with answers just a click away on smartphones or Google. But he said there are certain things that can’t be Googled — like how to vote on an issue. To get enough information to decide on a complex topic takes time and knowledge.

And he said sometimes pieces of trivia come in handy at unpredictable moments, such as when a 10-year-old girl saved dozens of people on a beach in Thailand in 2004 when she saw the ocean suddenly recede and alerted her parents. She had remembered learning in school that receding water was a sign of a tsunami. The girl’s family and other tourists fled from the beach shortly before the massive waves hit the shore.

Jennings said people often ask him, “How do you know all that stuff?” He said he wishes he had an exotic secret to impart, but the answer is relatively mundane: curiosity.

He asked teachers to think of the students in their classes who might struggle with multiplication tables but have memorized sports statistics. Interest drives learning, he said.

“Interest is the magical special sauce that makes stuff stick,” Jennings said.

After his talk, several teachers said they found Jennings’ take on trivia interesting. Teachers can easily relate to the idea that students must be interested in order to learn, said Sylvia Carrell, education coordinator for Red Pine Residential Treatment Center in Fort Duchesne.

“It’s got to be interesting, and if it’s not interesting you’ve lost them,” Carrell said.

Jennings’ talk followed that of UEA President Sharon Gallagher-Fishbaugh, who opened the convention Thursday by thanking teachers and union members. She also spoke of the challenges facing Utah teachers, including dwindling resources, students with diverse needs and criticism from lawmakers and others.

“I am a Utah teacher and a member of the UEA, and I am not the enemy,” Gallagher-Fishbaugh told members. “I am the solution, and I matter.”

The UEA convention will continue through Friday and is expected to draw between 2,500 and 3,000 educators, who will listen to additional speakers and attend teacher-training workshops. Students in most Utah school districts were off Thursday and will be off Friday.