Quiz 49 Flashcards
At 1053 feet of 321 metres, the Vaalserberg is the highest point in which European country?
Netherlands
In 1907 Rudyard Kipling became the first Englishment to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. It was twenty five years before another Englishman won the same award. Who was he?
John Galsworthy
The Second World War song Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition was by which American songwriter, who went on to major success with broadway musicals?
Frank Loesser
In the Walt Disney film of Snow White, the wicked stepmother visits snow white in disguise and gives her a poisoned apple. But in the Grimm Brothers telling, she makes two previous attempts, unsuccessfully, using other objects. Can you name one of those other objects?
Laces or Stays, and a Comb
The tsomgomby or kilopilopitsofy, which is said to resemble a hornless cow, and the tratratratra, described as a lemur the size of a gorilla, are mythical beasts claimed to inhabit which African country?
Madagascar
During the reign of which English king did the Addled Parliament sit, so-called because they never passed a single act?
James I
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, which decade saw the first recorded use of the word hip, in the modern sense of being well informed, knowledgeable and aware?
1900s
Which other novelist did William Fauklner describe as the nicest old lady I ever met?
Henry James
The French actress Simone Signoret won an Oscar for her performance as Alice Aisgill, the mistress of the main character, in which very British film released in 1959?
Room at the Top
Which Greek philosopher, who lived between about 460 and 370 BC, earned the epithet the Laughing Philosopher because of his supposed inablility to restrain his mirth at the prospect of human life?
Democritus of Abdera
The Bishop of Urgel and the President of France act as joint Heads of State of which European principality?
Andorra
The first US satellite to go into orbit, launched in January 1958, enabled the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belt around the Earth. What was the satellite called?
Explorer I
Although they’re thought of as coming from very different generations, the writers George Bernard Shaw and George Orwell both died in the same year. Which year?
1950
Tyre, Sidon and Byblos were the main cities of which ancient people?
Phoenicians
Malcolm Morley became the first winner of what, in November 1984?
Turner prize
A blivet is an optical illusion or undecipherable paradox that takes which form?
The impossible fork
The test cricket match between New Zealand and Zimbabwe in November 2011 was the first Test match in which the captains of both teams had the same surname. Which common English surname was that?
Taylor
She’s a big lass and a bonny lass and she likes her beer is how which character is described, in a traditional folk song from the north east of England?
Cushy Butterfield
Which law of physics is expressed in the equation F=ma?
Newton’s Second Law of Motion
In the 1933 film She Done Him Wrong, who was the actor to whom Mae West said, Why don’t you come up and see me sometime?
Cary Grant
In the 2012 James Bond film Skyfall, what is Skyfall?
A house - Bond’s childhood home
The 1942 report of Social Insurance and Allied Services, popularly known as the Beveridge Report, famously identified five Giants that needed to be defeated. One was Want. Can you name two of the other four, exactly as they were named in the report?
Disease, Ignorance, Illness, Squalor
If you sufferd from Siderodromophobia, what would you fear?
Railways
Like his elder brother John, the American politician Bobby Kennedy had the middle initial F. In his case, what did it stand for?
Francis
What’s the name of the naturally occuring alloy of gold and silver, which in its refined form contains between 55 and 80 percent gold, that was first used to make coins as long ago as the 7th century BC?
Electrum
Which three Greek letters make up the name of an acheivement-based honour society across a number of American universities, that originated at William and Mary College in Virginia in 1776?
Phi Beta Kappa
What’s the name of the shallow lake in South Australia, first sighted by settlers in 1840, which is normally a salt marsh and fills completely only twice a century, on average?
Lake Eyre
Golden sombrero, platinum sombrero and titanium sombrero are (rather unflattering) terms in which sport?
Baseball
Originally only issued to army recruits, but later available to civilians, which useful device was invented in the 1890s by Karl Eisner?
Swiss army knife
The term splatter movie is said to have been coined by which film director, who first used it to describe his own film Dawn Of The Dead?
George Romero
In 1925 the German scientists Walter Noddack, Otto Berg and Ida Tacke detected which new element in platinum ore and columbite?
Rhenium
Which French composer set out on a journey from Italy to Paris in 1831, intent upon the murder of his fiancee Camille Moke after learning that she had abandoned him for a wealthy piano manufacturer?
Hector Berlioz
Which biologist and geneticist, born in Oxford in 1892, wrote the futuristic utopian work Daedalus, introducing his vision of ectogenesis that raised the prospect of test tube babies?
Jack Haldane
What part of the brain stem, occupying its lower half, contains within it centres for regulation of the heart, respiration, salivation and swallowing?
The medulla oblongata
According to Charles Dickens, in The Old Curiousity Shop, If there were no bad people, there would be no good - what?
Lawyers
In the late 1800s, the Canadian railway engineer Sir Sandford Fleming put forward a proposal that gave rise to which enduring international convention?
Patents
Camp David, the US Presidential retreat, is located in which state of the USA?
Maryland
ZIP codes are the US equivalent of postcodes. What do the letters ZIP stand for?
Zone Improvement Plan
In 1959, which British city became the first to adopt the postcode system?
Norwich
The seeds of the native deciduous Asian tree Nux vomica are the major source of which highly poisonous alkaloid, used in some places as a pesticide?
Strychnine
