These days, trivia is everywhere, from television, to computer, to corner pub. When did this trivia obsession begin and why do we love it so?

Can you beat the next guy at Six Degrees of Separation - the quintessential Kevin Bacon challenge? Which of your friends did better than you on the latest Facebook movie trivia quiz? What about those little trivia games that pop up sometimes when you're surfing the Internet - how do you compare to the rest of the world's respondents?

As a whole, we're a people obsessed with mental challenge. Many of us actually feel smarter when we can prove we've mastered a body of knowledge - whether it's Food Trivia, Celebrity Trivia, or even Vocabulary Trivia, which is really a more useful version of the same thing. Flip open almost any magazine and you'll find at least one page devoted to multiple choice questions. Whether these little quizzes bring back fond memories of grade school, or just boost our ego, we can't get enough of them.

But in the past several decades, trivia has developed from an occasional pastime to a worldwide phenomenon. We constantly encounter and pursue quiz games in all forms, from game shows, to board games, to the Internet and even at parties. Where and when did this unstoppable trend begin?

Perhaps the first true surge in the trivia trend was the creation of the board game, Trivial Pursuit, in 1979. While trivia games had been played previously in a more informal format, mostly amongst college students, Trivial Pursuit was the first official trivia game to gain enormous popularity in the U.S.

Anybody who lived in the 80's has probably played the game once or twice. It's based around a wheel shaped game board, where players move their game pieces (also shaped like wheels) and answer trivia questions. The questions are divided into categories, like Arts and Literature or Geography, for example. Answer a question right, and you get to put a wedge into your wheel shaped piece. Fill up your game piece and make it to the middle of the board to win the game.

So what was so great about Trivial Pursuit that led the sale of over 20 million games in 1984? Intelligent people love to test their brainpower. And even those who weren't experts in the field of, say, History, were able to show off their mental prowess in the Entertainment category. Not only that, but if you were a Star Wars or Disney fan, you could purchase a special set of Trivial Pursuit questions that would give you a chance to put all of the trivia you'd collected to use. Hey, if knowing Luke Skywalker's mother's name would help you win a game, it had to be useful information, right?

The popularity of Trivial Pursuit in the 80's led to a new form of trivia game - Alex Trebek's Jeopardy. While quiz shows had been a popular form of entertainment in the 50's, they had been out of public favor for 30 years. The newly recreated Jeopardy effectively resurrected the quiz show genre.

Jeopardy is played like most other trivia games, with one twist - instead of giving the answer, players have to ask the questions. For example, if the category is state capitals, and the answer is "Baton Rouge", the player has to provide "What is the capital of Louisiana?"

In a game of Jeopardy, players put their vast knowledge to definitively good use. Winners of the game have earned millions of dollars by asking the right questions on the show.

Fast forward a decade or so to the creation of the next level of quiz show programming - Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The show was first released in the U.K., where a lone contestant was given the chance to answer trivia questions in hopes of winning the grand prize of 1 million pounds. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was one of the first shows to emphasize suspense instead of reaction time - there was no time limit for answering questions and no one to compete against. And it was the first show to offer such a large grand prize.

It didn't take long for the show to become a worldwide hit, with customized versions taking place in over 70 countries, each one offering contestants one million units of the local currency.

What really brought the show home to the viewer was that the audience and viewers themselves could help answer the questions. If the contestant requested help, Internet users could send in their answers by online vote. The contestant then had the chance to give an answer based on audience response. As opposed to Jeopardy, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire booked itself as a show for the masses rather than a show for intellectuals.

So where is trivia played today? The answer is, everywhere. Like most things in the age of Internet, trivia has made it's way into the homes and lives of people all over the world, who love to test their knowledge and give their confidence a boost.

Take Facebook, for example. This popular social connectivity website gives users a choice of hundreds of different trivia games and quizzes to play against one another. And people really do play them. Sign up for yourself, and you'll find old friends from high school challenging you to Breakfast Club Trivia Games and current friends testing verbal ability with Scrabulous - Facebook's signature word game . We love to get a sense of how much important stuff we know, and how much we absorb in relation to those around us.

What about the web sites that are dedicated solely to creating and dispersing trivia games? There are sites that let you take your pick of topics, and offer to sign you up for a grand prize if you make it past the first round of trivia- then they hand over your name and contact info to any companies who might be able to capitalize on your interests. And there are also sites that produce quizzes for sale, to anyone hosting a quiz night at their local pub or club.

Yes, that's right, quiz nights have even taken off at the corner pub, especially in the U.K. These establishments host trivia nights that have become immensely popular, and are a solid asset for bringing more customers through the door. Most are hosted by a trivia guru, who assembles a host of new questions on a weekly basis to challenge the regulars.

And who are these regulars? Mostly teams of a few players who have made trivia nights an important part of their night life. Some of them travel from pub to pub to compete against adversaries, and to have fun.

And the prizes? Sometimes it's free drinks. Other times it's something a bit more spectacular. But, usually, it's a jackpot of fifty to a hundred dollars that team members have to split.

So back to the general love of playing trivia, the question remains - why do people play?

And the answer really varies from one person to the next. Some people find it fun to test themselves. Some people like to win. Others take trivia seriously, and embark upon the pastime as they would a profession.

But players like those are few and far between. The reason? Many trivia games, online and in-pub, do offer prizes, but most are just for fun. Even the ones that offer prizes are difficult to really benefit from - after subtracting pub entrance fees and splitting the cash between other players, most competitors are left with little more than a few free drinks. There are some trivia quizzes online that offer fun and the chance to win in a draw, i.e. you still have be lucky not only talented at trivial knowledge to win the prize.

One of the places where trivia experts can truly cash in are on big money television quiz shows. And it's not exactly easy to win one of those. Winning players are usually people with phenomenal memories and lots of study time - people with a special talent.

So go ahead and join the rest of the world in their ongoing trivial pursuit. It's a trend that's fun and perhaps, useful. Studies show that testing your mental power actually improves it. And you can't say you wouldn't have fun besting your college roommate with your incredible ability to connect Kevin Bacon to any film - in less than six maneuvers.