GK 3 Flashcards
Mercury and bromine are the only two chemical elements which exist in which state at room temperature? Sublimation involves a substance changing from solid to a gas without changing into this state in between.
Liquid
Although studies have shown that many factors can be responsible what adjective describes wine which gives off undesirable smells or tastes and reflects a belief that such taint is caused by an item often used as a stopper for the wine bottle?
Corked (accept derivatives)
Which motor race held in the midwest US on Memorial Day weekend on a course nicknamed The Brickyard forms part of the Triple Crown of Motorsport with the Monaco Grand Prix and the Le Mans 24 Hours? Graham Hill is the only driver to have won all three.
Indianapolis 500
Philosopher Roland Barthes scientist Pierre Curie and beloved national icon Diana Princess of Wales all died in road traffic accidents of one kind or another in which European capital city?
Paris
Which British artist held the record for most expensive painting by a living artist sold at auction from November 2018 to May 2019 with his work Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)? It was one of numerous pictures of swimming pools he painted in the 1960s and 70s most famously including A Bigger Splash.
David Hockney
The monarchs that ruled Britain from 1714 to 1901 were members of which royal house named after a city in Lower Saxony Germany?
Hanover
According to its opening line in which US city known for its association with jazz music is the House of the Rising Sun?
New Orleans
Which real-life Frenchman was portrayed by Ian Holm in Time Bandits (1981) Terry Camilleri in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) Rod Steiger in Waterloo (1970) and in 1927 by Albert Dieudonné in an Abel Gance epic named after this person?
Napoleon Bonaparte
Which British motorway runs from Chiswick in London to Pont Abraham in Carmarthenshire and crosses the Severn on the Prince of Wales Bridge (renamed as such in 2018)?
M4
Holding the role from 2009 to 2019 who was the first woman and first LGBT person to be UK Poet Laureate?
Carol Ann Duffy
The Three Tenors consist of Luciano Pavarotti and which two Spaniards?
Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras
Alicia Garza Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi are the founders of which international human rights movement also known by the initials BLM which campaigns against systemic racism and racial violence towards a particular minority ethnic group?
Black Lives Matter
The Russian folk song Korobeiniki is predominantly known outside that nation as the catchy music for which tile-matching video game created in 1984 by Alexei Pajitnov?
Tetris
Which German astronomer is associated with his Three Laws of Planetary Motion with the first being that the orbit of a planet is an ellipse with the sun at one of its two foci?
Johannes Kepler
The names of the French film movement La Nouvelle Vague and the Brazilian music style bossa nova can be translated into English as what two word term which also (rather loosely and particularly in the US) describes the style of music that emerged after punk exemplified by artists such as The Cars or The Knack?
New wave
Which skyscraper in Dubai has at 828 metres tall been the tallest building on earth since it topped out in 2009?
Burj Khalifa
What mode of transport is the best known invention of the British engineer Christopher Cockerell?
Hovercraft
What does the acronym BOGOF stand for in the retail industry?
Buy one get one free
Add together the number of lines in a sonnet and the number of lines in a haiku. Take away the number of lines in a limerick. What number results?
12
The name of which archipelago divided from the southern tip of South America by the Magellan Strait means Land of Fire in Spanish?
Tierra del Fuego
Jade Jones won gold medals for Team GB at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics in which martial art?
Taekwondo
At which narrow coastal pass with a name meaning hot gates did Leonidas lead a force of 300 Spartans against an overwhelmingly larger Persian force ultimately to their deaths?
Thermopylae
Which dating app aimed at the LGBT community announced in June 2020 that it would remove its filter for selection by race after criticism of it had recently intensified?
Grindr
Which day of the week do Germans know as MIttwoch?
Wednesday
Sexual Perversity in Chicago Speed-the-Plow and Glengarry Glen Ross are plays by which US playwright (born 1947)?
David Mamet
Which 1958 Hitchcock film starring James Stewart and Kim Novak was voted the best movie of all time in the 2012 Sight and Sound poll replacing previous incumbent Citizen Kane?
Vertigo
The 2016 track Work From Home from the album 7/27 has become popular again during the Coronavirus lockdown. It is by which US girl band whose name is often shortened to 5H?
Fifth Harmony
43 people died in 2018 when the Morandi Bridge collapsed. In which large Italian city did it cross the river Polcevera?
Genoa
In 1982 Wood Green MP Reg Race became the first MP to use what word in the House of Commons when reading out wording from a prostitute’s phone box card? The middle two letters were asterisked in Hansard and you may take this approach in your answer if you are squeamish about bad language.
Fuck
Which species of shark Rhincodon typus is the largest living fish species and by far the largest non-mammalian vertebrate species found on earth?
Whale shark
Doing so in 1971 and 2006 who are the only BBC Sports Personality of the Year winners to be from the same family?
Princess Anne and Zara Phillips
What was the name of the 2018 sequel to Wreck-it-Ralph which some have claimed refers back to a 2014 nude photo shoot by Kim Kardashian which allegedly achieved the titular action?
Ralph Breaks the Internet
Dorothy Parker and Harpo Marx were members of a group of wits who styled themselves the Round Table of which New York City hotel on West 44th Street at which they met daily for lunch for about ten years?
Algonquin
Scottish artist David Shrigley designed Kingsley the bright yellow jagged mascot for which Scottish League One football club who play at the Firhill Stadium? Alan Hansen and Mo Johnstone began their careers with this side.
Partick Thistle
What Arabic word meaning community is used by Muslims to describe the whole of the global Islamic community bound together by their religion?
Ummah
What two word phrase a translation of the German word “zauberkugel” did German immunologist Paul Ehrlich give to a treatment for a disease which targets a specific microbe without harming the body itself?
Magic bullet
Which Swedish manufacturer of outdoor power products such as trimmers and chainsaws spun off its motorcycle division (which continues to share the same name) in 1987 it being owned by the Austrian KTM group nowadays?
Husqvarna
Staying in the business world the initials LBO stand for what sort of transaction in which one company acquires another using a significant amount of borrowed money to meet the cost of acquisition with the assets of the company being acquired typically being used as collateral for the loan?
Leveraged buyout
The title character of which 1940 Rodgers and Hart musical is a manipulative small-time nightclub performer whose ambitions lead him into an affair with the wealthy middle-aged and married Vera Simpson?
Pal Joey
Also a term familiar from UK planning law what is the name of the environmental movement set up by the Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai in 1977 for which she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004?
Green Belt (Movement)
The twin brothers Chris and Xand van Tulleken present which medically themed children’s series on CBBC which has run since 2012?
Operation Ouch!
What name is shared by the Greek historian who wrote The Histories who devised a namesake Square used to encode messages with an alleged arcade video game said to have produced intense psychoactive and addictive effects in players in the 1980s but of which no trace can now be located?
Polybius
Which winner of the 1961 Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré became in 1955 the first English rider to finish the Tour de France and in 1958 the first to win a stage?
Brian Robinson
Which battle of the early 20th century was the first decisive naval battle fought by modern steel battleship fleets and the first in which wireless telegraphy was crucial?
Tsushima
In 2013 fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld indicated his wish to marry his blue-cream Birman cat: what is the name of that cat who maintains a social media presence to this day despite Lagerfeld’s death?
Choupette
Which singer who finished third in the 2011 series of The X Factor joined the cast of reality show and Michael McPartland favourite Geordie Shore in 2020?
Amelia Lily
Described as the dean of African-American opera composers who won a 2020 Pulitzer Prize for his 2019 opera The Central Park Five? Previous works by him include X The Life and Times of Malcolm X and Amistad.
Anthony Davis
Also referred to as pyroclasts which Greek word meaning ash is given to fragmentary material expelled during a volcanic eruption which may include ash but also larger cinders and blocks of material?
Tephra
Taken from the village near Empoli in which he was born the Italian Mannerist Jacopo Carucci is better known by what name? His Deposition from the Cross in the church of Santa Felicita Florence is widely considered to be his masterpiece.
Pontormo
Also known as the Chicken’s Neck which narrow strip just over 20 kilometres wide separates India’s northeastern states from the rest of India with Bangladesh to the south and Nepal to the north?
Siliguri corridor
Between 1968 and 1980 all four host cities of the Summer Olympic Games had names beginning with which letter?
M (Mexico City Munich Montreal Moscow)
Which South Asian country joined the Commonwealth in its own right in 1972 having declared independence from Pakistan the previous year?
Bangladesh
Michael Myers is the troubled serial killer central to which series of horror films?
Halloween
Which appropriately-named tribe destroyed Rome in 455 CE?
Vandals
Only two pieces can make the first move in chess. If pawns are one then what is the other?
Knights
According to legend the architect Postnik Yakovlev was blinded by Ivan the Terrible after designing which famous cathedral so that he could never create anything so beautiful again?
St Basil’s Cathedral
What is the name of the cold tomato-based vegetable soup that originated in Andalusia and southern Portugal but is now popular throughout Iberia?
Gazpacho
In June 1910 Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG (DELAG) became the world’s first airline to use an aircraft in revenue service when it operated the rigid airships designed by which German count? This man’s name is often used as a synonym for any rigid airship.
Ferdinand von Zeppelin
Grasslands Chant The Stampede and Simba Confronts Scar are all numbers from which stage musical based on a 1994 Walt Disney film of the same name?
The Lion King
This stuffed dog is perhaps the best-known exhibit at a museum in the Russian city of Ryazan named after which Nobel Laureate born in the city in 1849?
Ivan Pavlov
In 2002 the American Vonetta Flowers became the first black person to win a gold medal at the Winter Olympics competing in which sport? The Jamaicans Devon Harris Dudley Stokes Michael White and Freddy Powell also famously competed in the four-man team event in this sport at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.
Bobleigh or Bobsled
The second and third volumes of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital were published posthumously after Marx’s notes were collated by which man with whom Marx had collaborated on Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (The Communist Manifesto)?
Friedrich Engels
A Basset Hound called Jason is the mascot of which American brand of casual footwear?
Hush Puppies
In 1778 the first work ever to be performed at the famous La Scala opera house in Milan was Europa riconosciuta an opera in two acts by which Italian composer? Thirteen years later the death of Mozart led to unfounded rumours that this man had poisoned the Austrian.
Antonio Salieri
In which modern-day country was the Islamic prophet Mohammad born in around 570 CE?
Saudi Arabia
Henry Vandyke Carter was the illustrator of which hugely influential medical textbook first published in 1858? The name of the book was later used with a very minor spelling difference as the title of an American medical drama television series starring Ellen Pompeo.
Gray’s Anatomy
Which singer and actor gained international recognition as the lead singer of the alternative rock band The Sugarcubes before embarking on a solo career that produced hits such as Army of Me and It’s Oh So Quiet? In 2000 she was awarded the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for her role in the Lars von Trier film Danser i mørket (Dancer in the Dark).
Björk
What name is commonly given to the protest of December 1773 in which New England protesters disguised as American-Indians threw the cargoes of the ships Beaver Eleanor and Dartmouth overboard in response to increased taxation?
Boston Tea Party
Current executive chairman Ana Botín is the fourth member of her family to hold that role at which banking and financial services group founded in its namesake European city in 1857?
Santander
The Egyptian god Thoth is commonly depicted with the head of which wading bird considered sacred by the Ancient Egyptians?
(Sacred) Ibis
A jazz festival combining music and leisure activities is held every May in the Belgian village of Liberchies to celebrate its most famous son. After which legendary guitarist is the festival named?
Django Reinhardt
Which country occupies the easternmost point on the African mainland and has the longest coastline of all the continent’s mainland nations? Travelling from west to east it is at this country that the equator reaches the Indian Ocean.
Somalia
This is the logo of which presentation programme that has been a component of the Microsoft Office suite for the last 30 years?
PowerPoint
The large public field in Paris that runs between the Eiffel Tower and the École Militaire is named after which Roman god?
Mars
Following the Hanshin Tigers’ 1985 victory in the Japan Series ecstatic fans threw a statue of which man into the Dōtonbori River in celebration because he looked a little like the team’s star slugger the American Randy Bass? Since this event the team has never again won the Japan Series title leading many to talk of the ‘Curse of the Colonel’.
Colonel Harland Sanders
Its name deriving from the Latin for ‘wedge shaped’ which early form of written expression inscribed on clay tablets by means of a blunt reed for a stylus emerged in Sumer around the 30th century BCE?
Cuneiform
Will Arnett provides the voice of the title character in which American animated TV series about an aging anthropormophic equine left bitter by the fading of his celebrity?
BoJack Horseman
Which letter of the alphabet is used to symbolise the mathematical constant that is the base of the natural logarithm and approximately equal to 2.71828?
e
A propaganda film made at the 1934 Nuremberg Congress of the Nazi Party The Triumph of the Will is the most famous work of which female German director who died in 2003 at the age of 101?
Leni Riefenstahl
Often used as a gemstone what name is given to black volcanic glass that forms from cooling magma?
Obsidian
