Quiz 15

Question 1

What name is given to the zone, or those parts of the Earth and its atmosphere, able to support life?

Answer 1

Biosphere

Question 2

The architect Frank Matcham specialised in the design of what sort of building?

Answer 2

Theatres

Question 3

Which two words, meaning the image of a King, formed the title of the collection of writings supposedly composed by the incarcerated Charles I and published on the day of his burial in 1649?

Answer 3

Eikon Basilike

Question 4

Which British racing driver was killed in a road accident off the racing track just months after winning the world driver’s championship in 1958?

Answer 4

Mike Hawthorn

Question 5

Which branch of mathematics takes its name from the Latin word for a pebble?

Answer 5

Calculus

Question 6

How many gallons of beer are there in a firkin?

Answer 6

Nine

Question 7

The koala bear is not a bear. To which family of animals does it belong?

Answer 7

Marsupials

Question 8

Discovered in 1787 by William Herschel, what’s the largest moon of Uranus?

Answer 8

Titania

Question 9

The mythological lovers Pyramus and Thisbe, whose story is performed by the mechanicals in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, belonged to which ancient civilisation?

Answer 9

Babylon

Question 10

In which borough of New York will you find the city’s Botanical Gardens, and the Poe Cottage, the last home of the writer Edgar Allan Poe before his mysterious death in 1849?

Answer 10

The Bronx

Question 11

In Poe’s story, The Cask of Amontillado, what is the not-very-fortunate fate of the character Fortunato?

Answer 11

Bricked up in a cellar

Question 12

What was the title of the film western, directed by John Huston and released in 1961 that featured Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, both in the final roles of their careers?

Answer 12

The Misfits

Question 13

Violet Gibson was known for her attempt to assassinate which prominent figure in 1926?

Answer 13

Benito Mussolini

Question 14

In an allusion to his ancestor Edward the Confessor, which of the eight later King Edwards was nicknamed Edward the Caresser?

Answer 14

Edward VII

Question 15

Describing whose funeral in New York in 1974 did Alistair Cooke write “When the ten thousand people inside were asked to stand and pray, there was a vast rustling sound, as awesome, it struck me, as that of the seven million bats whooshing out of the Carlsbad caverns in New Mexico at the first blush of dawn?”

Answer 15

Duke Ellington

Question 16

In which German city will you find a statue by Gerhard Marcks which shows a cockerel standing on a cat standing on a dog standing on a donkey?

Answer 16

Bremen

Question 17

What was the name of the Russian coal miner lauded by the communist regime, whose name became a byword for prodigious and highly improbable feats of productivity?

Answer 17

Alexei Stakhanov

Question 18

Sunflower, Surf’s Up and Holland were consecutive LP releases in the early 1970s by which multi-million-selling pop group?

Answer 18

Beach Boys

Question 19

Which is the only one of the chemical elements known as the halogens that is liquid at normal room temperature?

Answer 19

Bromine

Question 20

The opening line of every episode of which US TV police series, which originally ran from 1951-59 was “Ladies and gentlemen, the story you are about to see is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent?”

Answer 20

Dragnet

Question 21

Harry Longabaugh was the real name of which figure from the Wild West?

Answer 21

The Sundance Kid

Question 22

The coccyx, the bony end lower end of the spinal column takes its name from an ancient Greek word for which bird?

Answer 22

Cuckoo

Question 23

Who was the first British Prime Minister to appear in a live TV broadcast?

Answer 23

Neville Chamberlain

Question 24

The three spires of which English cathedral are nicknamed the Ladies of the Vale?

Answer 24

Lichfield

Question 25

A Decemberist was a name given to a member of a revolutionary group called the Northern Society, opposed to the accession of which Russian Tsar in 1825?

Answer 25

Nicholas I

Question 26

The music of the opera Lakme, containing the Flower Duet which often appears often appears among the most popular classical pieces in surveys was composed by whom?

Answer 26

Delibes

Question 27

Although she’s universally known as Anne Frank, the name Anne is actually a pet name or abbreviation of the diarist’s actual first name, which was - what?

Answer 27

Annelies

Question 28

In cell biology, what name is given to the jelly like matter within the cell, but outside the nucleus, which contains the organelles of the cell and in which protein synthesis takes place?

Answer 28

Cytoplasm

Question 29

Often changing his name to reflect the development of his various styles, which Japanese artist born in 1760 is best known for the woodblock print The Great Wave Off Kanagawa?

Answer 29

Hokusai

Question 30

When Margaret Thatcher won the leadership of the Conservative Party in February 1975, she stood against four male candidates and won almost twice as many votes as her nearest rival in the ballot, 146 to his 79. Who was the runner up?

Answer 30

Willie Whitelaw

Question 31

Which old Spanish coin was initially worth two pistoles?

Answer 31

Dubloon

Question 32

Which physicist and mathematician, born in 1642, described himself as “like a boy playing on the seashore whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before him?”

Answer 32

Isaac Newton

Question 33

Critical Path and Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth are works by which American architect and environmentalist who died in 1983

Answer 33

Richard Buckminster Fuller

Question 34

If a regular rectangular box has sides of 5 centimetres, 6 centimetres and 8 centimetres, what is its volume in cubic centimetres?

Answer 34

240

Question 35

Which book ends with the line: “It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognised who it was?”

Answer 35

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Question 36

The wives of which jazz musician, who was married no less that eight times, included the actresses Lana Turner and Ava Gardner and the novelist Kathleen Winsor?

Answer 36

Artie Shaw

Question 37

“God is my oath” or “God is my abundance” is the literal meaning of which girls’ name in common usage?

Answer 37

Elizabeth

Question 38

The Logic of Scientific Discovery, originally published in 1934, is the English title of a seminal work by which Austrian-born British philosopher?

Answer 38

Karl Popper

Question 39

Fallingwater, a private house built above Bear Run Stream in rural Pennsylvania is the work of which great American architect?

Answer 39

Frank Lloyd Wright

Question 40

Pythias, the ward of Hermias of Ataneus, married which Greek philosopher in the city of Assos around 345BC?

Answer 40

Aristotle