Quiz 49

Question 1

At a height of 1053 feet or 321 metres, the Vaalserberg is the highest point in which European country?

Answer 1

Netherlands

Question 2

In 1907 Rudyard Kipling became the first Englishman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. It was twenty five years before another Englishman won the same award. Who was he?

Answer 2

John Galsworthy

Question 3

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?

Answer 3

Frank Loesser

Question 4

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?

Answer 4

Laces or Stays, and a Comb

Question 5

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?

Answer 5

Madagascar

Question 6

During the reign of which English king did the Addled Parliament sit, so-called because they never passed a single act?

Answer 6

James I

Question 7

Which other novelist did William Faulkner describe as “the nicest old lady I ever met”?

Answer 7

Henry James

Question 8

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?

Answer 8

Room at the Top

Question 9

Which Greek philosopher, who lived between about 460 and 370 BC, earned the epithet the Laughing Philosopher because of his supposed inability to restrain his mirth at the prospect of human life?

Answer 9

Democritus of Abdera

Question 10

The Bishop of Urgel and the President of France act as joint Heads of State of which European principality?

Answer 10

Andorra

Question 11

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?

Answer 11

Explorer I

Question 12

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?

Answer 12

1950

Question 13

Tyre, Sidon and Byblos were the main cities of which ancient people?

Answer 13

Phoenicians

Question 14

Malcolm Morley became the first winner of what, in November 1984?

Answer 14

Turner prize

Question 15

A blivet is an optical illusion or undecipherable paradox that takes which form?

Answer 15

The impossible fork

Question 16

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?

Answer 16

Taylor

Question 17

“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?

Answer 17

Cushy Butterfield

Question 18

Which law of physics is expressed in the equation F=ma?

Answer 18

Newton’s Second Law of Motion

Question 19

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”?

Answer 19

Cary Grant

Question 20

In the 2012 James Bond film Skyfall, what is Skyfall?

Answer 20

A house - Bond’s childhood home

Question 21

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?

Answer 21

Disease, Ignorance, Illness, Squalor

Question 22

If you suffered from Siderodromophobia, what would you fear?

Answer 22

Railways

Question 23

Like his elder brother John, the American politician Bobby Kennedy had the middle initial F. In his case, what did it stand for?

Answer 23

Francis

Question 24

What’s the name of the naturally occurring 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?

Answer 24

Electrum

Question 25

Which three Greek letters make up the name of an achievement-based honour society across a number of American universities, that originated at William and Mary College in Virginia in 1776?

Answer 25

Phi Beta Kappa

Question 26

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?

Answer 26

Lake Eyre

Question 27

Golden sombrero, platinum sombrero and titanium sombrero are (rather unflattering) terms in which sport?

Answer 27

Baseball

Question 28

Originally only issued to army recruits, but later available to civilians, which useful device was invented in the 1890s by Karl Eisner?

Answer 28

Swiss army knife

Question 29

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?

Answer 29

George Romero

Question 30

In 1925 the German scientists Walter Noddack, Otto Berg and Ida Tacke detected which new element in platinum ore and columbite?

Answer 30

Rhenium

Question 31

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?

Answer 31

Hector Berlioz

Question 32

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?

Answer 32

Jack Haldane

Question 33

What part of the brain stem, occupying its lower half, contains within it centres for regulation of the heart, respiration, salivation and swallowing?

Answer 33

The medulla oblongata

Question 34

According to Charles Dickens, in The Old Curiosity Shop, If there were no bad people, there would be no good - what?

Answer 34

Lawyers

Question 35

In the late 1800s, the Canadian railway engineer Sir Sandford Fleming put forward a proposal that gave rise to which enduring international convention?

Answer 35

Patents

Question 36

Camp David, the US Presidential retreat, is located in which state of the USA?

Answer 36

Maryland

Question 37

ZIP codes are the US equivalent of postcodes. What do the letters ZIP stand for?

Answer 37

Zone Improvement Plan

Question 38

In 1959, which British city became the first to adopt the postcode system?

Answer 38

Norwich

Question 39

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?

Answer 39

Strychnine