Quiz 24

Question 1

Which city was the capital of Pakistan from independence until the late 1950s?

Answer 1

Karachi

Question 2

According to legend, Captain Venerdecken was in charge of which vessel on its voyage home from the East Indies port of Batavia?

Answer 2

Flying Dutchman

Question 3

Which medically important chemical was fortuitously discovered by the American chemist and physician Samuel Guthrie when, in 1831, he combined alcohol with chlorinated lime in an effort to produce an economically viable pesticide?

Answer 3

Chloroform

Question 4

Diaphoresis is the technical name for which bodily process?

Answer 4

Perspiration

Question 5

Which period of geological time, the second period of the Palaeozoic era, is named after an ancient Welsh people because rocks formed in this period were first studied in Wales?

Answer 5

Ordovician

Question 6

Which Canadian ice-hockey star was voted the Most Valuable Player to his team in the National Hockey League every year between 1980 and 1987?

Answer 6

Wayne Gretsky

Question 7

From 1932 until the 1990s, Russia’s fifth largest city, Nizhny Novrorod, was named after which writer born there in 1868?

Answer 7

Gorky

Question 8

Where would you find Humboldt’s Sea and the Lake of Death?

Answer 8

The Moon

Question 9

In the book Cider with Rosie, by Laurie Lee, what was Rosie’s (suitable bucolic) surname?

Answer 9

Burdock

Question 10

Which Labour MP, at the time the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, did David Cameron advise to “Calm down, dear” at Prime Minister’s questions in April 2012?

Answer 10

Angela Eagle

Question 11

Bernard de Launay became the first prominent casualty of the French Revolution when he was lynched and then decapitated at the hands of a mob on 14th July 1789. Which official post had he held immediately prior to his death?

Answer 11

Governor of the Bastille

Question 12

According the to title of a children’s book by E Nesbit, who are Robert, Anthea, Jane, Cyril, the Lamb and the Psammead?

Answer 12

Five Children And It

Question 13

What was the name for the type of ancient Greek galley, usually used for combat because of its comparative power and speed, with three banks of oars on either side?

Answer 13

Trireme

Question 14

Which of the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, when first presented at the Savoy Theatre in January 1887, was billed as A New and Original Supernatural Opera in Two Acts?

Answer 14

Ruddigore

Question 15

Which 19th century writer was known as the Sage of Chelsea?

Answer 15

Thomas Carlyle

Question 16

The common at the Surrey village of Outwood is notable as the site of what is said to be the oldest working example in Britain of what type of structure?

Answer 16

Windmill

Question 17

Which city in the state of Uttar Pradesh was the scene of the first uprising of the Indian Rebellion, once known as the Indian Mutiny, in 1857?

Answer 17

Meerut

Question 18

The first BBC local radio station was launched on 8th November 1967 in which British city?

Answer 18

Leicester

Question 19

The French word for French is Francais, and the German for German is Deutsch. Which European language calls itself Shqip?

Answer 19

Albanian

Question 20

In which country does a website originate if the suffix to the URL is .lk?

Answer 20

Sri Lanka

Question 21

Which Spanish city, now better known as a tourist destination, was in 1881 the birthplace of Pablo Picasso?

Answer 21

Malaga

Question 22

In the Theban Myths, dramatised by Sophocles, who is the father of Antigone?

Answer 22

Oedipus

Question 23

Laura Jesson and Alec Harvey are the central characters in which 1945 film?

Answer 23

Brief Encounter

Question 24

Ceratopsian dinosaurs are so named because they had what physical features?

Answer 24

Horns

Question 25

Which cloaked and hatted crime figure, popular on American radio and in comics during the 1930s, was played on air for a few months by Orson Welles and was associated with such lines as “The weed of crime bears bitter fruit”?

Answer 25

The Shadow

Question 26

Tent stitch, a fine, usually diagonal stitching used in embroidery is also known by which French term?

Answer 26

Petit point

Question 27

Which of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is said to have been the work of Chares of Lindos, who worked on it for twelve years?

Answer 27

Colossus of Rhodes

Question 28

In which city would you find Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon Tiki raft and the reed boat Ra on permanent display?

Answer 28

Oslo

Question 29

The Rosebay Willowherb has another name which relates to the reason it used to be common on bomb sites. What is that other name?

Answer 29

Fireweed

Question 30

Featuring the cross of Ypres, an oil lamp, known as the Lamp of Maintenance, is the emblem of which international charitable organisation?

Answer 30

TOC-H

Question 31

Whose statue on Grafton Street in Dublin is known colloquially as The Tart With The Cart?

Answer 31

Molly Malone

Question 32

Found mostly in Australia, what kind of creature is a taipan?

Answer 32

Snake

Question 33

According to popular legend, what was the profession of Peeping Tom, the Coventry citizen struck blind for his impudent observation of the naked Lady Godiva?

Answer 33

Tailor

Question 34

Which writer founded the review Les Temps Modernes with Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Raymond Aron and her life-long companion Jean-Paul Sartre?

Answer 34

Simone de Beauvoire

Question 35

What is the name for the eastern part of the Sahara Desert, lying between the Nile and the Red Sea in north-eastern Sudan?

Answer 35

Nubian Desert

Question 36

The hormones insulin and glucagon, which regulate blood sugar, are produced by what organ of the body?

Answer 36

Pancreas

Question 37

Asser, a monk at St David’s in Pembrokeshire, became the counsellor and biographer of which Anglo-Saxon monarch?

Answer 37

Alfred

Question 38

Famous for his report on the Profumo Affair, who was the Master of the Rolls from 1962 to 1982?

Answer 38

Denning

Question 39

Which publishing company, specialists in travel guides, began life in Koblenz in 1827, and lent their name (rather against their will) to a series of air raids launched against British cities in the Second World War?

Answer 39

Baedeker