Quiz 34 Flashcards
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?
Louis and Mary Leakey
What is the longest river in Afghanistan, sharing its name with a province of that country?
Helmand
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?
Norris McWhirter
According to WS Gilbert in the operetta Princess Ida, Man is Nature’s sole - what?
Mistake
Which small appellation in the French Bourdeaux wine region shares a name with a brand of car made by the General Motors Company?
Cadillac
If you are betrayed or cheated, you are said to have been sold down the river. The phrase originated in reference to which river?
Mississippi
The biennial plant Isatis tinctoria was formerly cultivated as a source of which dye?
Woad
Which Previuan city was the capital of the Inca Empire at the time of the Spanish conquest?
Cuzco
In Greek mythology, which favourite of Aphrodite became a hunter and died after being gored by a boar?
Adonis
In the strict Inuit sense a canoe occupied by one man is known as a kayak. What, in that culture, is an umiak?
Woman’s canoe
Antigua and Barbuda are part of an island state in the Caribbean. What are the literal meanings of the two words Antigua and Barbuda?
Ancient and Bearded
Which Hindu diety, often portrayed in paintings as having blue skin, is the eighth incarnation or avatar of Vishnu?
Krishna
Alfred Hitchcock made three films based on stories by Daphne du Maurier - Rebecca, being arguably the most famous. What are the other two?
Jamaica Inn, The Birds
What is the characteristic of a plant described as saprophyte?
Lives on decaying matter
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?
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac
Which of the original Jackson Five is missing from this list: Jackie, Marlon, Michael, Tito -?
Jermaine
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?
Baron Wilson of Rievaulx
Nigel Moleswort, the schoolboy malcontent created by Ronald Searle and Geoffrey Willans, attended which terrible prep school?
St Custards
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?
Orkney
Princess Mary, daughter of Charles I, was the first holder of which official title?
Princess Royal
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?
David Niven
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?
Strathearn
The Seagram building in New York and the Convention Hall in Chicago are among the major works of whichGerman architect who died in 1969?
Miles Van Der Rohe
Which city, in what is now Turkey, is the setting for Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors?
Ephesus
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?
Whites
Stirling Edge and Swirral Edge are dramatic features negotiated by walker climbing which English mountain?
Helvellyn
What were the three forenames of JRR Tolkein?
John Ronald Reuel
The Emperor Cludius’s fourth wife, Agripinna the Younger, was also related to him in another way. How?
Niece
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?
Old father time weathervane
The babirusa, an animal native to parts of the Indonesian Archipeligo, is most closely related to which domesticated farm animal?
Pig
Wagner’s opera Lohengrin was first performed in 1850 and conducted by his future father-in-law. Who was he?
Franz Liszt
Drat! And Double Drat! Was the catchphrase of which often thwarted villain, in the Hanna Barbera animated series Wacky Races and its spin-offs?
Dick Dastardly
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?
William IV
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?
Dorothea Lange
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?
Dupont and Dupond
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?
Falklands
Which is the only Swiss city to be classed as a World Heritage Site?
Berne
Flying fish, of which some 64 species have been identified, belong to which taxanomic family?
Exoceotidae
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?
Wolfson
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?
snug as a gun
