Rosebery #10 Flashcards
What term is used to describe a substance that is not consumed by or produced in a chemical reaction but that increases the rate of the reaction?
catalyst
Who performed the song and dance “Singin’ in the Rain” in the 1952 film of the same name?
(Gene) Kelly
What National Football League team is the primary tenant of Mile High Stadium, located in Denver, Colorado?
(Denver) Broncos
What fictional character was named for the train station where he was found with a note attached to his coat reading, “Please look after this bear?”
Paddington (Bear)
What coloratura soprano role in Mozart’s The Magic Flute is famously difficult to sing, requiring a high F in both arias?
Queen of the Night
Which opéra comique features the “Habanera” in Act 1 and the “Toreador Song” in Act 2?
Carmen
What Italian composer composed more than 30 operas, including Rigoletto, Il trovatore. La traviata, and Aida?
(Giuseppe) Verdi
In biology, with the exception of botany where the term “division” may be used instead, what level of classification ranks below Kingdom and above Class?
phylum
Which Animalian phylum has the largest number of extant species, at over 1 million?
Arthropoda (or arthropods)
Animals of the phylum Porifera may be described as what? They were the first to branch off the evolutionary tree from the common ancestor of all animals.
sponge(s)
To which phylum do humans belong?
Chordata (or chordates)
Identify both the title and the creator of the supernatural television show that ran for 7 seasons on the WB and starred Sarah Michelle Gellar as the title character.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
and Joss Whedon
Near the end of every episode, Dora the Explorer would announce to her viewers, “¡Lo hicimos!” What is the English translation of this phrase?
We did it.
What word, from the Spanish for “rough or wild,” came to mean, in western North America, an untrained horse or one that habitually bucks?
bronco
The title of which song, written in 1970 by the Puerto Rican singer José Feliciano, translates as “Happy Christmas?”
Feliz Navidad
From the Spanish for “fox,” what was the alter ego of the fictional character Don Diego de la Vega?
(El) Zorro
What place was previously known as Abyssinia?
Ethiopia
What place was previously known as Siam?
Thailand
What place was previously known as Helvetia?
Switzerland
What place was previously known as Zaire?
Democratic Republic of the Congo (or D.C.R.)
What place was previously known as Ceylon?
Sri Lanka
What place was previously known as Gaul?
France
What place was previously known as Burma?
Myanmar
What place was previously known as Rhodesia?
Zimbabwe
What DC Comics superhero was raised in the fictional town of Smallville, Kansas?
Superman
What former Olympic gold medal-winning decathlete made headlines in 2015 when she announced that she was a trans woman and changed her name to Caitlyn?
(Bruce) Jenner
What epic poem, in Dryden’s translation, begins, “Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc’d by fate,/And haughty Juno’s unrelenting hate,/Expell’d and exil’d, left the Trojan shore?”
(The) Aeneid
How many justices sit on the Supreme Court of Canada?
nine
Which classic comedy duo of the 1920s and 1930s starred in the films The Music Box, Sons of the Desert, and Another Fine Mess, among many others?
(Stan) Laurel and (Oliver) Hardy
What early political economist observed, in his 1798 An Essay on the Principle of Population, that “the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence?”
(Thomas Robert) Malthus
What indie rock band from Montreal won the 2018 Juno Award for Album of the Year for “Everything Now?”
Arcade Fire
The fastest-growing plant in the world is the world’s tallest grass. What is it?
bamboo
Who rode a donkey alongside and served as squire to Don Quixote de la Mancha?
Sancho Panza
Who was accompanied by his French manservant Jean Passepartout in his travels Around in the World in 80 Days in the novel by Jules Verne?
Phileas Fogg
Who briefly carried the One Ring after Frodo was captured by Shelob and then the orcs in Mordor?
Sam(wise) Gamgee
Who was the voice of the character of Donkey in the animated film Shrek and its sequels?
(Eddie) Murphy
I am a medical procedure that is performed around the world, more than 20 million times annually. I am occasionally performed without any medical reason, upon the request of the patient. I have been performed for thousands of years but before the development of antiseptics in the 1800s, survival rates were low. Surgeons performing me start by making an incision across the lower abdomen, followed by an incision in the uterus. What am I?
C(aesarian) section (or Ceasarian delivery)
Who painted the painting entitled, in full, Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq, but more commonly known as The Night Watch?
Rembrandt (van Rijn)
What English Romantic painter was known for his expressive use of colour, imaginative landscapes, and turbulent marine paintings?
(Joseph Mallord William) Turner
What early 20th century artistic movement was founded by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso?
Cubism
Which American painter was dubbed “Jack the Dripper” by Time magazine in 1956?
(Jackson) Pollock
Which gaseous chemical element glows reddish orange when an electric charge passes through it?
neon
At standard temperature and pressure, what is the least dense solid element?
lithium
Joseph Priestley and Carl Wilhelm Scheele both independently discovered which gaseous element?
oxygen
What was the first synthetic (man-made) element?
technetium
Jeanne Mance was one of the founders of the city of Montreal, specifically founding the city’s first what?
hospital
Activist Nellie McClung was instrumental in making which province the first province to give women the right to vote and run for public office?
Nellie McClung
In a case now considered one of the most significant civil rights cases of the 20th century, Viola Desmond was charged with tax evasion after she sat in the “whites only” section of what?
(movie) theatre
Who was Canada’s first woman in space after a 1992 mission on board the shuttle Discovery and subsequently NASA’s head of space medicine for more than a decade?
(Roberta) Bondar
In which Olympic sport is the second highest score waza-ari and the highest score ippon?
judo
What Korean martial art, characterized by its emphasis on high and fast kicks, was developed in the 1940s and 1950s?
taekwondo
Since 1867, the Marquess of Queensberry Rules have been the generally accepted code of rules for which sport?
boxing
What umbrella term is used to describe the several hundred different fighting styles of Chinese martial arts?
kung fu (or wushu)
What classic problem in mathematics asks, “Given a list of cities and the distances between each pair of cities, what is the shortest possible route that visits each city?”
travelling salesman (problem)
What basketball player holds the all-time records for total points scored and points per game in a season? Both records were achieved in the 1961–62 season.
(Wilt) Chamberlain
What country’s legislative assembly is known as the Knesset? It first met in 1949.
Israel(‘s)
Most of the thermal radiation emitted by objects near room temperature is in which part of the electromagnetic spectrum?
infrared
What fictional character, who was given the “simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name,” according to his creator Ian Fleming, was also known by his code number 007?
(James) Bond
Which musical instrument was known in Renaissance England as a sackbut? Its modern name is from the Italian for “large trumpet.”
trombone
Which Canadian author wrote “Hag-Seed,” a modern-day re-telling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest?
(Margaret) Atwood
What is a sphygmomanometer used to measure?
blood pressure
“Start spreadin’ the news, I’m leavin’ today,” is the first line of what song, famously sung by Frank Sinatra?
(Theme from) New York, New York
Celebrated every autumn (in the northern hemisphere), what is the Hindu festival of lights?
Diwali (or Dipavali)
What term is used to describe the point about which a lever pivots?
fulcrum
If the driver gear has fewer teeth than the driven, the speed of the rotation is decreased. What is increased?
torque
To which family of simple machines is the screw considered to belong?
inclined plane(s)
What much-quoted Victorian poet and playwright said, “I can never travel without my diary, one should always have something sensational to read on the train?”
Oscar Wilde
In what city was Oscar Wilde born? He also attended university there before continuing his studies at Oxford.
Dublin
In which of Oscar Wilde’s plays does Lady Bracknell famously exclaim, “A handbag?”
The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years’ hard labour for what crime?
Gross Indecency (with Men)
Approximately 15% of the Universe’s total mass is believed to be baryonic. What term is used to describe the non-baryonic 85%?
dark (matter)
What do we call the extremely luminous active galactic nuclei at very high redshifts, first observed as quasi-stellar radio sources?
quasar(s)
In 1978, Penzias and Wilson received the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering what evidence of the Big Bang origin of the universe?
(Cosmic) Microwave Background
accept CMB
I was tried in absentia and condemned to death as a public enemy, after which I committed suicide. My mother helped me become my great-uncle’s heir and was then involved in his murder. I later had her murdered. I made public appearances as an actor, poet, musician and charioteer, which my critics claimed undermined the dignity of my office. My palace, the Domus Aurea, was built following the Great Fire of Rome, which some people believe I instigated in order to clear the land. Who am I?
(Emperor) Nero
What brand of candy advertises that it, “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand?”
M&Ms
What technology company, whose name has become a verb, was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin?
Google (LLC)
Who developed the psychoanalytic theory of personality development, which argued that personality is formed through conflict between the id, ego, and superego?
(Sigmund) Freud
Which Greek letter looks like the English letter X?
chi
Who was the first person to achieve a score of a perfect 10 in gymnastics at the Olympic Games, competing for Romania in 1976?
(Nadia) Comaneci
The characters in Richard Adams’ 1972 adventure novel Watership Down are all what?
rabbits
To 1 significant digit, what is standard atmospheric pressure in SI units?
100 000 pascals
or 100 kilopascals
What 2015 Academy-Award-winning film from director George Miller was both the fourth installment in and reboot of a franchise?
Mad Max: Fury Road
Who was the two-faced Roman god of beginnings who gave his name to the first month of the year?
Janus
What Holocaust survivor said, “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim?”
(Elie) Wiesel
What Disney villainess wanted to make a coat of puppy fur in the film 101 Dalmatians, based on the book by Dodie Smith?
Cruella de Vil
Alert Bay, British Columbia, is home to an wooden artifact that, despite the fact that it is constructed from two pieces, is claimed to be the world’s tallest what?
totem pole
What Blizzard Entertainment’s “hero shooter” game’s playable characters include Tracer, D.Va, Zenyatta, Mercy, and Junkrat?
Overwatch
The remains of which English king were discovered under a city council car park in 2012 and later reburied in Leicester Cathedral?
Richard III
