Quiz 40

Question 1

Which type of cloth is named after a west-central German state with its capital at Wiesbaden?

Answer 1

Hessian

Question 2

The actor Maurice Gosfield, who played Doberman in Sgt Bilko or The Phil Silvers Show as it was properly known, also featured in a cartoon series of a similar style, in which he provided the voice for a character called Benny the Ball. What was the name of that show?

Answer 2

Top Cat

Question 3

What was the name of the German spiked helmet worn especially before and during the earlier part of the First World War?

Answer 3

Pickelhaube

Question 4

What is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet?

Answer 4

Tau/Taw

Question 5

In the human body, what section of the small intestine lies between the duodenum and the ileum?

Answer 5

Jejunum

Question 6

Which state of India, literally meaning Northern State, has the city of Lucknow as its capital?

Answer 6

Uttar Pradesh

Question 7

What is the name of the island that separates the two largest waterfalls at Niagara?

Answer 7

Goat Island

Question 8

Which number is referred to by Australian cricketers as a Dorothy?

Answer 8

Six

Question 9

In 1885, nine-year-old Joseph Meister became the first person ever to be treated by a vaccine, administered by Louis Pasteur. Against what illness was he vaccinated?

Answer 9

Rabies

Question 10

The trilogy of books comprising Palace Walk, Palace of Desire and Sugar Street by Naguib Mahfouz is named collectively after which African capital city?

Answer 10

Cairo

Question 11

Martha Borthwick Chaney was murdered in 1914, along with six others, at Taliesin - the Wisconsin home she had shared with her lover, an American architect. Who was he?

Answer 11

Frank Lloyd Wright

Question 12

Chipolopolo, or the Copper Bullets, is the nickname of which African country’s national football team?

Answer 12

Zambia

Question 13

What term for a specious line of reasoning in which contradictory arguments lead to the same conclusion, often unpleasant, comes from the tax collection policies of the Archbishop of Canterbury appointed by Henry VII in the latter years of the 15th century?

Answer 13

Morton’s Fork

Question 14

After nitrogen and oxygen, which noble gas is the most abundant element in the Earth’s atmosphere, constituting almost one percent of the total?

Answer 14

Argon

Question 15

Haiti occupies the western portion of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Which nation occupies the eastern portion?

Answer 15

Dominican Republic

Question 16

What would you do with a Munsell Tree?

Answer 16

Describe/classify colours

Question 17

The sweets known as Pomfret cakes, or Pontefract cakes, are made using the roots of which plants?

Answer 17

Liquorice

Question 18

The play The Two Noble Kinsmen, attributed to William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, concerns the same characters as the story told by which of Chaucer’s pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales?

Answer 18

The Knight

Question 19

Original editions of the 1973 album by Paul McCartney and Wings, Red Rose Speeding, included an embossed message in Braille on the sleeve reading WE LOVE YA BABY. For which fellow musician was this tribute intended?

Answer 19

Stevie Wonder

Question 20

Which long distance footpath runs from Ininghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire to Overton Hill in Wiltshire?

Answer 20

Ridgeway

Question 21

Who is the malevolent fairy of the ballet Sleeping Beauty, whose evil curse is changed by the Lilac Fairy?

Answer 21

Carabosse

Question 22

Which South Caribbean island off the Venezuelan coast lends its name to a liqueur flavoured with the dried peel of bitter oranges known locally as Laraha?

Answer 22

Curacao

Question 23

Thought to have been born some time between 2BC and 119AD, Lindow Man or Lindow II - the well preserved corpse of the victim of a possible ritual killing - was discovered in 1984 in a peat bog in which English county?

Answer 23

Cheshire

Question 24

A sulphate of which chemical element is most commonly added to garden soil in order to lower its PH level, sometimes to intensify the colour of blue hydrangea blooms?

Answer 24

Aluminium

Question 25

The murder of Laura Palmer is the focus for the plot of early episodes of which American TV series, first shown in 1990?

Answer 25

Twin Peaks

Question 26

Vectis was the Roman name for which part of the British isles?

Answer 26

Isle of Wight

Question 27

Which word, originally used for a blancmange-like desert of sweetened bran or oatmeal boiled into a jelly, is also used to figuratively mean empty flattery or humbug?

Answer 27

Flummery

Question 28

The ceiling of London’s Banqueting House, a pictorial representation of the Apotheosis of James the First, was commissioned by King Charles I from which artist?

Answer 28

Rubens

Question 29

Whose law of elasticity is an approximation that states that the extension of a spring is in direct proportion with the load applied to it?

Answer 29

Hooke’s

Question 30

A Pagan Place, published in 1970, is a childhood memoir by which Irish writer, whose other books include Girls In Their Married Bliss?

Answer 30

Edna O’Brien

Question 31

Surgically, what is removed in an orchidectomy?

Answer 31

Testicles

Question 32

Which ruler introduced the form of trial known as Wager of Battle or Trial by Combat into England?

Answer 32

William I

Question 33

Mercaptans are an important feature of natural gas production. Can you say why?

Answer 33

Added to provide smell

Question 34

What event is referred to in Russia as the Caribbean Crisis?

Answer 34

Cuban Missile Crisis

Question 35

Which collection of stories was first introduced into Europe in a French translation by Antoine Galland at the beginning of the 18th century?

Answer 35

1001 Arabian Nights

Question 36

Who was the first French driver to win the World Formula 1 Championship?

Answer 36

Alain Prost

Question 37

The polecat, the otter, the pine marten, the stoat, the badger and the weasel are the six species native to Britain of which mammal family?

Answer 37

Mustelidae

Question 38

The accolade of Time Magazine Man of the Year was inaugurated in January 1928 when the aviator Charles Lindbergh appeared on the famous front cover. But whom did the magazine name as the first Woman of the Year nine years later?

Answer 38

Wallace Simpson

Question 39

Also called the fennel flower of devil-in-the-bush, by what poetic name is the flowing herb Nigella damascena most commonly known?

Answer 39

Love-in-a-mist

Question 40

In June 1963 who became the first woman in space?

Answer 40

Valentina Tereshkova