Rosebery #20 Flashcards
What type of patients does an oncologist treat?
cancer
What poem by Emma Lazarus contains the lines, “Give me your tired, your poor,/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free?”
“The New Colossus”
By what name is NaClO, or sodium hypochlorite, more commonly known?
(liquid) bleach
What 2011 film, based on Michael Lewis’s book of the same name, is an account of the 2002 season of Billy Beane’s Oakland Athletics baseball team?
Moneyball
In which city was the Tomb of Mausolus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World?
Helicarnassus
What papal fortress, now a museum, was originally the tomb of the Emperor Hadrian?
(Castel) Sant’ Angelo
The Mughal emperor Shah Jahan commissioned the construction what iconic mausoleum?
Taj Mahal
What theory, developed by statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb, deals with unexpected outlier events and their game-changing effects? It refers to a bird that was once thought not to exist.
Black Swan (Theory)
Black swans do exist and are native to what country?
Australia
In Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake, what is the name of the character who is the Black Swan?
Odile
Who won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the 2010 psychological horror film Black Swan?
Natalie Portman
After nitrogen and oxygen and not including water vapour, what are the next two most abundant gases in the atmosphere?
argon and carbon dioxide
What was the currency of France before the introduction of the Euro?
franc
What was the currency of Germany before the introduction of the Euro?
(Deutsche) mark
What was the currency of Italy before the introduction of the Euro?
lira
What was the currency of Spain before the introduction of the Euro?
peseta
For what phrase is the initialism DNA generally assumed to stand?
deoxyribonucleic acid
For what phrase is the initialism POW generally assumed to stand?
prisoner of war
For what phrase is the initialism HTML generally assumed to stand?
hypertext markup language
For what phrase is the acronym NATO generally assumed to stand?
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
For what phrase is the initialism CPR generally assumed to stand?
cardiopulmonary resuscitation
For what phrase is the initialism GDP generally assumed to stand?
gross domestic product
For what phrase is the initialism LED generally assumed to stand?
light-emitting diode
For what phrase is the initialism IMF generally assumed to stand?
International Monetary Fund
Mozzarella cheese is traditionally made from the milk of which animal?
(Italian or water) buffalo
In which science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick, later adapted as a film and a TV show, do three “precogs” foresee all crime before it occurs?
(The) Minority Report
What is the genus of the female hominid skeleton known as Lucy?
Australopithicus
The sieve of Eratosthenes is an ancient algorithm for finding what kind of numbers?
prime (number)
What financial institution sponsors the Giller Prize for Canadian literature?
Scotiabank
Who directed What We Do in the Shadows before directing Thor: Ragnarok?
(Taika) Waititi
What tiny island kingdom is ruled by the al-Khalifa royal family?
Bahrain
Name one of the other two tennis tournaments that, along with Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, is a Grand Slam tournament.
Australian Open or French Open
In what city is the Royal Military College of Canada located?
Kingston
What branch of the Army reserves is tasked with providing a military presence in Canada’s sparsely settled northern, coastal, and isolated areas?
(Canadian) Rangers
What is the lowest rank in the Royal Canadian Air Force?
aviator
What 1899-1902 war saw the first significant overseas deployment of Canadian military forces?
(Second) Boer War (accept South African War)
I am an American novel first published in Canada in 1881. I have been adapted for the screen dozens of times, including one adaptation starring Mickey Mouse. I am set in England during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI. I was written by Mark Twain and am the story of Tom Canty trading places with his royal doppelganger. What am I?
The Prince and the Pauper
“Spam,” originally simply a brand of canned cooked pork, is a portmanteau of which two words?
spiced ham
“Pokémon” is a portmanteau of which two words, which were the original Japanese title for the franchise?
Pocket Monster(s)
What verb was coined by combining the name of a Massachusetts governor with a word for an amphibian to describe politically contrived redistricting?
gerrymander(ing)
In 1964, the name “Tanzania” was chosen for the country resulting from the union of Tanganyika with what archipelago?
Zanzibar
The rhinovirus, the most common viral infectious agent in humans, is the predominant cause of what ailment?
(common) cold
What type of cells, identified by the first letter of the gland where they originate, does HIV attack?
T(-cells)
During the 2009-10 season, the influenza strain H1N1 caused a respiratory infection that was commonly referred to by what name?
swine flu
TMV, the first virus to be discovered, attacks which cash crop?
tobacco
It is the Tobacco Mosaic Virus.
What was the name of the title character in Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame?
Quasimodo
What character is introduced as “not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm” in the opening line of Gone With the Wind?
Scarlett O’Hara
What author created the villainous character Simon Legree in her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin?
(Harriet Beecher) Stowe
What character, later portrayed by Humphrey Bogart, was first introduced in Dashiell Hammett’s novel, The Maltese Falcon?
Sam Spade
What name was given to the containers used to store and preserve the internal organs of the deceased that was going to be mummified in Ancient Egypt?
canopic jars
The heart was left in the body because it would be weighed against the feather of Ma’at by which deity?
Anubis
What British archaeologist became world-famous after discovering the intact tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun?
(Howard) Carter
What classic B-movie actor portrayed Kharis the Mummy three times in the 1940s, in addition to portraying the Wolf Man, Frankenstein’s Monster, and Count Dracula?
Lon Chaney (Jr.)
Which simple machine is divided into three types: first class, second class, and third class?
lever
What bird, often portrayed as a trickster, is a central figure in the mythologies of many Indigenous cultures of the Pacific Northwest?
raven
The name for what invention of NASA researcher Jack Cover was derived from a book from his childhood, Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle?
taser
What former professional Major League Baseball and National Football League player was nicknamed “Prime Time?”
(Deion) Sanders
The Early Netherlandish painters such as van Eyck were the first to use what type of paint in art?
oil (paint)
What actress of the silver screen was born Frances Ethel Gumm in 1922?
Judy Garland
“Act naturally,” “clearly confused,” “passive aggressive,” and “small crowd” are all examples of what type of figure of speech?
oxymoron
In what sport, invented in the 1960s, do players use solid paddles to hit a perforated polymer ball over a net?
pickleball
Igor Gouzenko, whose 1945 defection exposed Stalin’s efforts to steal nuclear secrets, was a Soviet embassy clerk in what city?
Ottawa
Dendrology is the study of what type of organism?
tree(s)
In what country can you find the Murray, Darling, Yarra, and Murrumbidgee rivers?
Australia
The Volga, Ural, and Terek rivers flow into what sea, often classified as a large lake?
(Caspian) Sea
The Three Gorges Dam spans what river in China?
Yangtze (River)
Glial cells provide support and protection for what other type of cells in the brain and spinal cord?
nerve cells (or neurons)
What now-disparaged surgical procedure involved severing most of the connections to and from the prefrontal cortex?
lobotomy (or leucotomy)
Which lobe, located at the back of the brain, is nevertheless the visual processing center?
occipital (lobe)
What gland in the brain helps regulate the body’s circadian rhythms by secreting melatonin?
pineal (gland)
According to the RIAA, the best-selling jazz album of all time is Kind of Blue by which trumpeter?
Miles Davis
Often played in the pizzicato or slap style, what orchestral stringed instrument has been a feature of jazz ensembles since the 1890s?
double bass
What was the signature song of the scat singer Cab Calloway, which he famously performed in the 1980 movie The Blues Brothers?
Minnie the Moocher
I held the title of Count of Quaregna and Cerreto in the Kingdom of Sardinia. I was a professor of physics at the University of Turin and an early proponent of the metric system. In 1811, I published an “Essay on Determining the Relative Masses of the Elementary Molecules of Bodies and the Proportions by Which They Enter These Combinations.” In honor of my contributions to molecular theory, the constant that is the number of molecules per mole of substance is named for me. Who am I?
(Amadeo) Avagadro
Fans of which NFL team are referred to as “cheeseheads” and often seen wearing yellow foam wedge-shaped cheese hats?
(Green Bay) Packers
What word is used to describe the shock wave that results from the rapid expansion of air surrounding an atmospheric electrostatic discharge?
thunder
In the 1990s, the sculptor Louise Bourgeois began using what arthropod as a central image in her art?
spider
An oenophile (pronounced “ee-neh-phile”) is a connoisseur of what type of beverage?
wine
What is the better-known pen name of Georges Prosper Remi, the Belgian cartoonist best known for creating The Adventures of Tintin?
Hergé
What word is used to describe a magically-animated anthropomorphic being created from material such as mud or clay in Jewish folklore?
golem
A SWAT team is a particular type of law enforcement unit. What does SWAT stand for?
Special Weapons and Tactics
What is the most-trafficked mammal in the world? It is also notable for its large, protective keratin scales.
pangolin (or scaly anteater)
Slate is a metamorphic rock originating from what most-common sedimentary rock?
shale
According to the 1999 movie, what is the first rule of Fight Club?
You do not talk about Fight Club.
What phrase, which translates as “already seen,” describes the feeling that one has lived through the present situation before?
déjàvu
Ron Leishman and Richard Comely created which maple-leaf-costumed independent comic superhero in 1975?
Captain Canuck
What is the basic unit of information in information theory and computing, representing a logical value that can have only one of two values?
bit
Bloomsday, celebrated annually in Dublin, is a celebration of the life and works of which modernist author? The day is named for Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of his novel Ulysses.
James Joyce
