Quiz 36

Question 1

Who or what in the Arthurian legends was Dagonet, later Sir Dagonet?

Answer 1

Arthur’s jester

Question 2

In which decade was the last Mary Poppins story by PL Travers published?

Answer 2

1980s

Question 3

Which high-ranking religious office in the Shi-ite sect of Islam means sign, or Token of God?

Answer 3

Ayatollah

Question 4

What alternative name, referring to its habit of flocking together in groups of twelve is given to the Australian Grey Jumper or Lousy Jack bird, Struthidea cinerea?

Answer 4

Apostle

Question 5

The film tune Song from Moulin Rouge, which became a no 1 hit in Britain and the US in 1953, was composed by which avant-garde French composer?

Answer 5

Georges Auric

Question 6

During the First World War, the Carlton Hotel in London employed a kitchen assistant who called himself Nguyen That Tanh. He would later become more famous under what name?

Answer 6

Ho Chi Minh

Question 7

What do the following novels all have in common: The Last Tycoon by F Scott Fitzgerald, Sanditon by Jane Austen, and The Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson?

Answer 7

Unfinished at the author’s death

Question 8

In which country is Batman airport?

Answer 8

Turkey

Question 9

The Man from Hell’s River was one of the first films to feature which Hollywood movie star discovered in Europe shortly after World War One by Lee Duncan, a US soldier?

Answer 9

RinTinTin

Question 10

Which Chilean poet, who won the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature, took his pen name from a Czech poet.

Answer 10

Pablo Neruda

Question 11

An attercop is an Old English word for what type of creature?

Answer 11

Spider

Question 12

Which was the last ship in the British navy in which sailors slept in hammocks?

Answer 12

Royal Yacht Britannia

Question 13

Which battle, the bloodiest of the American Civil War, was fought on the 17th September 1862?

Answer 13

Antietam

Question 14

Which familiar sporting term is thought to have been first used to describe the achievement of HH Stephenson which playing for the All-England cricket XI at Hyde Park in Sheffield in 1858?

Answer 14

Hat-trick

Question 15

Which name, long associated with exploration and adventure, did Amy Johnson give to the De Havilland Gipsy Moth in which she made her pioneering solo flight from Britain to Australia in May 1930?

Answer 15

Jason

Question 16

Nut-Crack night is an alternative name for what?

Answer 16

Halloween

Question 17

The New York born illustrator James Montgomery Flagg is best known for which piece of artwork, produced for the American division of Pictorial Publicity under the chairmanship of Charles Dana Gibson?

Answer 17

Uncle Sam

Question 18

The steamship Stella and the HMS Victory are among the vessels to have foundered on which treacherous rocks off Alderney in the Channel Islands?

Answer 18

The Casquets

Question 19

What name is given to the general neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway, for example seeing numbers as colours?

Answer 19

Synaesthesia

Question 20

George Stephenson’s first successful steam locomotive, used for hauling coal at Killingworth Colliery on Tyneside, was named after which major figure of the Napoleonic Wars?

Answer 20

Blucher

Question 21

According to the title of a 1956 book by AJ Liebling, which sport is The Sweet Science?

Answer 21

Boxing

Question 22

Which composer, born in 1858, was an activist in the UK women’s suffrage movement and wrote March of the Women, the song adopted as the suffrage anthem?

Answer 22

Ethel Smythe

Question 23

The formula V=pir^2h gives the volume of which three dimensional shape?

Answer 23

Cylinder

Question 24

“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted, persons attempting to find a moral in it will by banished, persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.” In which American novel of 1884 will you find this warning?

Answer 24

Huckleberry Finn

Question 25

Which Dorset town has a harbour wall known as The Cobb, that featured prominently in the film The French Lieutenant’s Woman?

Answer 25

Lyme Regis

Question 26

The 1944 Education Act is often known by the name of the politician who was President of the Board of Education at the time. Who was he?

Answer 26

RAB Butler

Question 27

The Sentinel, a short story published in 1951, became the basis of a spectacular science-fiction film made twenty years later. Which film was that?

Answer 27

2001: A Space Odyssey

Question 28

What name is given to the radiation theoretically emitted from just outside the event horizon of a black hole, first proposed in 1974?

Answer 28

Hawking radiation

Question 29

In 2014, who became the first person ever to have won both the Turner Prize and an Oscar?

Answer 29

Steve McQueen

Question 30

Halcyon is a poetic name for which bird?

Answer 30

Kingfisher

Question 31

NHK is the official public broadcaster of which country?

Answer 31

Japan

Question 32

The VLT, situated on the mountain Cerro Pranal in Chile, has four 8.2m telescopes named Anty, Kueyan, Melipal and Yepn, which are the names for the Sun, Moon, Southern Cross and Venus in the language of the Mapuce people/ What do the letters VLT stand for?

Answer 32

Very Large Telescope

Question 33

The name Yorick, most familiar as that of Hamlet’s long-dead jester, is the Danish equivalent of which common boy’s name in English?

Answer 33

George

Question 34

How are the British TV journalists Peter Snow and Jon Snow related?

Answer 34

Cousins

Question 35

Which London landmark gave its name to a now-disused underground station located just to the east of Tottenham Court Road on the Central Line?

Answer 35

British Museum

Question 36

Which quarterback led the San Francisco 49ers to Super Bowl wins in 1982, 1985, 1989 and 1990?

Answer 36

Joe Montana

Question 37

Three scientists shared the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics. Marie and Pierre Curie were two of them. Who was the third?

Answer 37

Henri Becquerel

Question 38

The term for which salad dish of chopped meat, eggs and anchovies in vinegar and oil is also used to refer figuratively to any medley or multifarious mixture?

Answer 38

Salmagundi

Question 39

The stories of Armistead Maupin, published as Tales of the City, are about which city?

Answer 39

San Francisco

Question 40

What do you fear if you suffer from pogonophobia?

Answer 40

Beards