Quiz 34 Flashcards

1
Q

Remains of Homo habilis, an early species of man whose name means handy man because it’s known to have used tools, were first discovered in the 1960s at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania by which married couple of palaeontologists?

A

Louis and Mary Leakey

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2
Q

What is the longest river in Afghanistan, sharing its name with a province of that country?

A

Helmand

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3
Q

Which well-known editor and publisher, whose twin brother was murdered by the IRA in 1975, had been the official timekeeper when Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile in 1954?

A

Norris McWhirter

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4
Q

According to WS Gilbert in the operetta Princess Ida, Man is Nature’s sole - what?

A

Mistake

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5
Q

Which small appellation in the French Bourdeaux wine region shares a name with a brand of car made by the General Motors Company?

A

Cadillac

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6
Q

If you are betrayed or cheated, you are said to have been sold down the river. The phrase originated in reference to which river?

A

Mississippi

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7
Q

The biennial plant Isatis tinctoria was formerly cultivated as a source of which dye?

A

Woad

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8
Q

Which Previuan city was the capital of the Inca Empire at the time of the Spanish conquest?

A

Cuzco

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9
Q

In Greek mythology, which favourite of Aphrodite became a hunter and died after being gored by a boar?

A

Adonis

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10
Q

In the strict Inuit sense a canoe occupied by one man is known as a kayak. What, in that culture, is an umiak?

A

Woman’s canoe

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11
Q

Antigua and Barbuda are part of an island state in the Caribbean. What are the literal meanings of the two words Antigua and Barbuda?

A

Ancient and Bearded

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12
Q

Which Hindu diety, often portrayed in paintings as having blue skin, is the eighth incarnation or avatar of Vishnu?

A

Krishna

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13
Q

Alfred Hitchcock made three films based on stories by Daphne du Maurier - Rebecca, being arguably the most famous. What are the other two?

A

Jamaica Inn, The Birds

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14
Q

What is the characteristic of a plant described as saprophyte?

A

Lives on decaying matter

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15
Q

Which French chemist’s law states that when any two gases react together, the volumes in which they do so are in a ration of simple whole numbers?

A

Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac

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16
Q

Which of the original Jackson Five is missing from this list: Jackie, Marlon, Michael, Tito -?

A

Jermaine

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17
Q

Although he was born in Huddersfield in 1916, when he became a Peer the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson took what title, after what many would say is a somewhat more picturesque place in North Yorkshire?

A

Baron Wilson of Rievaulx

18
Q

Nigel Moleswort, the schoolboy malcontent created by Ronald Searle and Geoffrey Willans, attended which terrible prep school?

A

St Custards

19
Q

Holm of Grimbister, which has only one dwelling, and is cut off from the mainland at high tide, is part of which UK island group?

A

Orkney

20
Q

Princess Mary, daughter of Charles I, was the first holder of which official title?

A

Princess Royal

21
Q

Which British actor and author, born in 1910, once shared a house with Errol Flynn on Santa Monica beach in Los Angeles, which they named Cirrhosis by the Sea?

A

David Niven

22
Q

Which Earldom, the site of a picturesque valley in Scotland, was bestowed on Prince William on the occasion of his marriage to Catherine Middleton on 29th April 2011?

A

Strathearn

23
Q

The Seagram building in New York and the Convention Hall in Chicago are among the major works of whichGerman architect who died in 1969?

A

Miles Van Der Rohe

24
Q

Which city, in what is now Turkey, is the setting for Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors?

A

Ephesus

25
Q

Which London club, the oldest of the St James’s gentlemen’s clubs, was founded by an Italian, whose real name is believed to have been Franceso Bianco?

A

Whites

26
Q

Stirling Edge and Swirral Edge are dramatic features negotiated by walker climbing which English mountain?

A

Helvellyn

27
Q

What were the three forenames of JRR Tolkein?

A

John Ronald Reuel

28
Q

The Emperor Cludius’s fourth wife, Agripinna the Younger, was also related to him in another way. How?

A

Niece

29
Q

What famous feature of Lords Cricket Ground was presented in 1926 by the architect Sir Herbert Baker, who had also designed the WG Grace memorial gates for the same venue a few years earlier?

A

Old father time weathervane

30
Q

The babirusa, an animal native to parts of the Indonesian Archipeligo, is most closely related to which domesticated farm animal?

A

Pig

31
Q

Wagner’s opera Lohengrin was first performed in 1850 and conducted by his future father-in-law. Who was he?

A

Franz Liszt

32
Q

Drat! And Double Drat! Was the catchphrase of which often thwarted villain, in the Hanna Barbera animated series Wacky Races and its spin-offs?

A

Dick Dastardly

33
Q

The Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, now occupied by a regularly changing series of art, was originally intended on its construction in 1841 to carry an equestrian statue, until the money to construct it failed to materialise. Who was to be the subject of the statue?

A

William IV

34
Q

Which New Jersey born documentary photographer, who worked for the body known as the Farm Security Administration during the 1930s, is credited with bringing the realities of the deprivation of the Depression era to a wider public?

A

Dorothea Lange

35
Q

In the original French-language versions of the Tintin stories by Herge, what were the names of the almost-identical bowler-hatted characters known in English as Thomson and Thompson?

A

Dupont and Dupond

36
Q

Which archipeligo in the South Atlantic took its English name from a central channel or sound between the two main islands, in turn named by Captain John Strong who landed on the islands in 1690?

A

Falklands

37
Q

Which is the only Swiss city to be classed as a World Heritage Site?

A

Berne

38
Q

Flying fish, of which some 64 species have been identified, belong to which taxanomic family?

A

Exoceotidae

39
Q

Which two colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, both with the same name, are named after a Scottish businessman and philanthropist, the Chairman of Great Universal Stores from 1946?

A

Wolfson

40
Q

Digging, probably the most often anthologised poem of Seamus Heaney, begins with the lines: Between my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rest - what are the next four words?

A

snug as a gun