Quiz 03

Question 1

Exhibited in 1849, Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s first major canvas The Girlhood of Mary, Virgin, bore his signature, the date and the letters PRB. What did PRB stand for?

Answer 1

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Question 2

Which prolific female novelist who died in the year 2000 was married twice, both times to men with the surname McCorquodale?

Answer 2

Barbara Cartland

Question 3

What’s the name of the gorge, descending to more than 36,000 feet below sea level, that marks the lowest point of the Marianas Trench in the north-western Pacific, and is thus the deepest point anywhere on the Earth’s surface?

Answer 3

Challenger Deep

Question 4

The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice are among the works of art criticism by which writer, who died in 1900?

Answer 4

John Ruskin

Question 5

Which writer, himself a noted theatre critic, defined a critic as a man who knows the way but cannot drive the car?

Answer 5

Kenneth Tynan

Question 6

Obtained from the tree of the species Quercus suber, what material forms the centre of the best quality cricket balls?

Answer 6

Cork

Question 7

Night-Writing - a letter code devised in 1819 by the French army captain Charles Barbier for passing secret messages silently in the dark - gave rise to which form of communication still in use today?

Answer 7

Braille

Question 8

The words “Mistah Kurtz - he died”, used by T S Eliot as an epigraph for his poem The Hollow Men are taken from which novel, first published in 1899?

Answer 8

Heart of Darkness

Question 9

The novel Heart of Darkness inspired a movie of 1979, in which the character played by Dennis Hopper refers back to the final works of T S Eliot’s The Hollow Men. Which film is it?

Answer 9

Apocalypse Now

Question 10

The Hungarian ballerina Romola de Pulsky married a dancer and choreographer in Buenos Aires in 1913, and published a biography in 1952 chronicling the latter years of her husband’s life. Who was he?

Answer 10

Nijinsky

Question 11

Which Greek sculptor, active in the 5th century BC, created the huge Statue of Zeus at Olympia which was named one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and also supervised the friezes for the Parthenon which are now preserved as the Elgin Marbles?

Answer 11

Phidias

Question 12

Which two seas are connected by the Suez Canal?

Answer 12

Mediterranean and Red

Question 13

Which American broadcaster, who died in 2009, used to sign off his news programmes with the phrase “And that’s the way it is”?

Answer 13

Walter Cronkite

Question 14

In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which character does Alice encounter sitting on a mushroom and smoking a hookah?

Answer 14

Caterpillar

Question 15

In seventeenth and eighteenth century London, Garraway’s, Johnathan’s and Lloyd’s were all famous what?

Answer 15

Coffee shops

Question 16

How many oxygen atoms are there in a single molecule of sulphuric acid?

Answer 16

Four

Question 17

Ansel Adams is a renowned name in which of the arts?

Answer 17

Photography

Question 18

Having written many of their biggest hit songs, including Easy, Still and Three Times A Lady, the soul singer Lionel Ritchie left which group to pursue a solo career in the 1980s?

Answer 18

Commodores

Question 19

What’s the common English name for the species of small bird whose taxonomic name is Troglodytes troglodytes?

Answer 19

Wren

Question 20

Which Arabic word meaning benefits or a source of improvement has come to be widely used in Indian cookery to mean a mixture of spices, and can be preceded in familiar phrases by the words garam or tikka?

Answer 20

Masala

Question 21

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, what forename did she give to Dr Frankenstein, the Modern Prometheus?

Answer 21

Victor

Question 22

How is the artist born in Crete in 1541, and named Domenikos Theotokopoulus, better known?

Answer 22

El Greco

Question 23

Which term, originally a nonsense word invented by Edward Lear, is now used for a three pronged fork, shaped like a spoon with one sharp edge?

Answer 23

Runcible

Question 24

A 22 storey triangular shaped tower on the corner of Broadway and 23rd St in Manhattan, built by the architect Daniel H Burnham in 1902, is Manhattan’s oldest remaining skyscraper, and was added to the US National Register of Historic Places in 1979. By what name is it commonly known?

Answer 24

Flatiron Building

Question 25

The last recorded words of a certain British monarch were “My dear boy, this is death”. Who made this astute utterance and then died, on 26th June 1830?

Answer 25

George IV

Question 26

The 19th century Edinburgh anatomist Robert Knox is said to have been the principal client of which notorious pair of Irishmen?

Answer 26

Burke and Hare

Question 27

Which two sports are named in the full title of the All England Club at Wimbledon?

Answer 27

Tennis and Croquet

Question 28

CITES is an acronym for the agreement between nations sometimes referred to as the Washington Convention, regulating international trade in plant and animal species considered to be rare or at risk. What do the letters CITES stand for?

Answer 28

Convention for International Trade in Endangered Species

Question 29

The first ten amendments to the constitution of the United States, passed in 1791, are collectively known by what name?

Answer 29

Bill of Rights

Question 30

Which former child actor, whose best known roles include Richie Cunningham in the teen comedy series Happy Days, became one of Hollywood’s top directors with successes such as Frost/Nixon, The Da Vinci Code and Apollo 13 among his credits?

Answer 30

Ron Howard

Question 31

What would or could result from a casus belli?

Answer 31

War

Question 32

Which three word name is most commonly used in the UK for the game sometimes known as Rochambeau in the United States and as Jan Ken Pon in Japan?

Answer 32

Paper Scissors Stone

Question 33

What’s the equivalent decimal value of eight shillings and sixpence?

Answer 33

42.5 p

Question 34

In Charles Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby, what’s the full name of the wicked headmaster at the grim Yorkshire school Dotheboys Hall, at which Nicholas is employed as a schoolmaster?

Answer 34

Wackford Squeers

Question 35

In which continent would you find Wilkes Land, Queen Maud Land and Marie Byrd Land?

Answer 35

Antarctica

Question 36

Which famous sports team, founded in the late 1920s, originally featured members from a semi-professional team known as the Savoy Big Five?

Answer 36

Harlem Globetrotters

Question 37

What name is given to the peninsula that forms the detached former northern portion of Lancashire, preserved in the name of a borough in what is now Cumbria?

Answer 37

Furness

Question 38

Which word is used to mean both a pidgin language which has become the native speech of a particular people, and a style of cuisine typical of New Orleans and the Mississippi delta?

Answer 38

Creole

Question 39

In a film of 2015, the actor Alex Jennings played two aspects of the personality of which writer, in a device which allowed the character to be portrayed having arguments with himself?

Answer 39

Alan Bennett

Question 40

The more common name for calcium magnesium carbonate is also the name of a range of Alps in north-eastern Italy. What is it?

Answer 40

Dolomite