Quiz 34

This set was contributed by Rajesh. Please send in your attempts to rajquiz at gmail dot com or leave them as comments on this post.


1)Nobel winner Alexis Carrel's dream was a future in which the human body would become "a machine with constantly reparable or replaceable parts". Carrel hoped that his own scientific nous combined with X's machine making proficiency would make his fantasy about immortal machine enabled human beings a reality.X was internationaly famous by then after his feat that won him The Orteig Prize.X created a perfusion pump that could keep a human organ alive outside of the body. It was called the "Model T" pump. In later years, X's pump was further developed by others, eventually leading to the construction of the first heart-lung machine. Id X

2)The director hadn't seen the first print and was aghast of the shortcomings of the movie when he watched for the first time and wrote an apology to Wheeler who had arranged for a premier .
"The first half, in particular, was full of blemishes-abrupt transitions from shot to shot, scene to scene, destroying the mood, the rhythm, the continuity; imperfect fades and dissolves; uneven print quality, and at least one scene-the stormy night-ruined by inadequate sound.... I was so depressed I couldn't even write and tell you how sorry I was that such a print should have been sent to NY." - .Id the director

3)He entered political life in the service of the Indian princes, becoming secretary to the chancellor of the Chamber of Princes (organization of rulers of the princely states). He also served as the foreign minister of the state of Patiala and as foreign minister and later as chief minister of the state of Bikaner (1944-47). After India gained its independence, he was entrusted with greater responsibilities as ambassador to China , Egypt , and France . He was a member of the States Reorganisation Commission. Who?

4)The song was associated with a distinctive fast dance though originally it had no dance, until a Venezuelan Flamenco instructor created it for her class to dance to, and it eventually caught on with the rest of the world. The dance is performed in time with the refrain of the song. To perform the dance,
* One places his/her arms forward, palm down, right arm, then left arm.
* Then the dancer turns his arms over so that his palms are up, right, then left.
* The dancer puts his hands on his shoulders, first right hand on left shoulder, then left on
right.
* Then the dancer puts his hands on his head, again right, then left.
* The dancer then places his arms on his hips, right hand on left hip, then left on right
* Then the dancer's hands go on their respective hips (or pelvis), right then left
* The routine finishes with a pelvic rotation in time with the line "___ _________!"
* Then the dancer turns 90 degrees clockwise and repeats the same motions throughout the
whole song.

Al Gore danced the "Al Gore version" during his speech to the 1996 Democratic National Convention. This included standing in one place for a moment, then uttering "Want to see it again?". Identify the song

5)New Zealand has three official languages. English ,Māori. and _______________. Charles-Michel de l'Épée created alphabet for this language which is basically unchanged till now. Charles developed this from Juan Pablo Bonet's 'Reducción de las letras y arte para enseñar a hablar a los mudos'.Id this language

6)When parsis first came to India , Jadi Rana, the local Shilhara king set five conditions to which the migrants agreed. They were - they should learn Gujarati language, women should wear local costume, they should explain their their religion to the king, they should lay down their arms and a curious 5th clause about their marriage ceremony. What?

7)In 1930, the Aga Khan Trophy was offered for the first Indian to fly solo from India to England or vice versa. X competed, taking off from Karachi to London. When he landed at Aboukir Bay in Egypt, he found that Aspy Engineer, the other contender, flying from London to Karachi, was stranded in the desert airfield for want of a spark plug. X sportingly parted with his spare one and they continued their journey in opposite directions. Aspy beat him by a couple of hours. 'I
am glad he won,' said X, 'because it helped him get into the Royal Indian Air Force.' (Aspy was to be the second Indian to be the chief of the Indian Air Force). Id X


8)Id the archer
































9)The expression "Don't worry, be happy" by X was printed up on inspiration cards and posters in the 60's. In Bobby McFerrin noticed a similar poster and inspired by the expression's charm and simplicity, McFerrin wrote the now famous song, which was included in the soundtrack of the movie "Cocktail", and became a hit single the following year.It won the grammy for Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. In an interview McFerrin
said, "Whenever you see a poster of X, it usually says 'Don't worry, be happy,' which is a pretty neat philosophy in four words, I think." Id X

10)Who came out with these obituaries/remembrances?

Quiz 33

This quiz was contributed by Chandrakant Nair. Please post your answers as comments on this page or mail to captain dot chandrakant at gmail dot com

1. Sir Henry Percy , 2nd Earl of Northumberland was one of the major characters of William Shakespeare’s play Henry IV , Part 1 . In 1882 , a group of grammar school boys from the bible class of the All Hallows Church in London formed a sporting team and named it after Sir Henry . Just name the team .


2. On Feb 28 , 1983 an estimated 106 millions Americans tuned into CBS to watch a 2 ½ hr show titled “Goodbye , Farewell and Amen” . This , to date , holds the record for the most watched single episode on American television history . So , who was bidding goodbye ?

3. He is an amateur British actor and a black belt in Taekwon-do . He is a regular at domestic as well as international championships , his best performance being a bronze medal at the Action International Martial Arts Association World Championships in Dublin in 2004 . He will be starring in Manoj Night Shyamalan’s next venture ‘ The Last Airbender ’ set for release in 2010 . Just identify him .


4. This form of poetry traces its origin back to 1974 . It re-entered public consciousness in April 2006 through the blog of Gregory Pincus , a prominent blogger . An example is given below :

“I

hate

quizzers

really, I

want to kill them and

bathe in their warm blood and entrails’’

What is this form of poetry known as / What forms the basis for this form of poetry?


5. In March 1994 , a worldwide essay competition was held for schoolchildren by a scientific organisation where they had to write about their favourite heroine and her achievements . About 3,500 entries were received and the winning entry belonged to Valerie Ambrose , aged 12 , from Connecticut . Her essay was about Isabella Van Wagener , an African- American reformist who lived during the civil war era and travelled up and down the country tirelessly to educate people about their right to freedom and support oppressed women and liberate them . What happened as a result of this essay contest ?


6. It was probably the first ever anaesthetic . It was the active ingredient of the Vin Mariani which was the favourite drink of Pope Leo XIII and Pope Saint Pius X . It was also described by AC Doyle as one of Sherlock Holmes’ favourites . Even Ernest Shackleton and Robert Scott took it along to Antarctica . It was the subject of a song by JJ Cale which was covered later by someone else to make it famous. What are we talking about ?

7. English inventor William Congreve thoroughly examined them and reverse engineered them to make copies that were later used successfully in the Naval raid on Boulogne (1806), Siege of Copenhagen (1807) and also against Fort Washington (New York) during the American Independence War . This eventually resulted in their inclusion in the US National Anthem, "The Star Spangled Banner” as follows ( the blank in the excerpt ) :

“O! say can you see by the dawn's early light

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming.

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,

O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming.

And the ___________ red glare , the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there” .

What did Congreve reverse engineer ?

8. There are many mentions of this Kingdom in the various Indian epics . The Mahabharata describes it as having taken part in the Kurukshetra war on the Pandavas’ side . Karna hated people from this kingdom because of their cultural similarity with Shalya , his arch-enemy . They are described as having taken their origin from the froth from the mouth of Kamadhenu . Which kingdom ?

9. This stamp was released by the US postal service to mark the birth centenary of Ogden Nash in 2002 . The stamp features six of his poems . What other unique ‘distinction’ does this stamp hold ?

10. Works of art such as these ( see pic ) get their popular name from the fact that they were created to illustrate the teachings of the Bible to a predominantly illiterate population . What are these called ?

11. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre was formed in 1946 as a result of an earthquake in April 1946 in the Aleutian Islands which resulted in what is called the Aleutian Island Earthquake Tsunami . The tsunami killed about 165 people in Alaska and Hawaii even though they had been warned in advance . What was the reason for so many people dying ?

12. Excerpt from a George Orwell essay in 1945 in the British newspaper Tribune :

“ Nevertheless, looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity . James Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications—that is, the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of _______ _____ with its neighbours ” .
Just fill in the blanks .

13. Ellen Crosby ( see pic ) won the women’s singles and the women’s doubles ( with her sister Grace ) titles at the 1890 US Open championships . Who was the sisters’ more famous first cousin ?

14. The name of this institution comes from the common name of the plant Croton Capitatus . In 2008 , it was ranked the 36th best educational institution in Scotland , outranking famous names like Loretto School . Which institution ?


15. Lawrence Sperry , a daredevil pilot and mechanical genius , born in 1892, is credited with the invention of the autopilot . He also invented the turn and bank indicator, retractable landing gear, and perfected the aerial torpedo. During his short remarkable life of 31 years , he held 24 patents . He and one Waldo Polk are considered to be the first members in an ‘organisation’ (logo in the pic ) which was ‘formed’ in November 1916 . Just name the ‘organisation’ .

16. The most commonly repeated version of the origin of this phrase dates back to the Second World War . The phrase referred to using up a whole aircraft ammunition belt , which used to be about 8.2 metres long then . Which phrase ?


17. Mahatma Gandhi wrote this about famous American writer Henry David Thoreau :

“Thoreau was a great writer, philosopher , poet , and withal a most practical man, that is, he taught nothing he was not prepared to practice in himself. He was one of the greatest and most moral men America has produced. At the time of the abolition of slavery movement, he wrote his famous essay “On the Duty of ______________ ____________________ ”. He went to gaol for the sake of his principles and suffering humanity. His essay has, therefore, been sanctified by suffering. Moreover, it is written for all time. Its incisive logic is unanswerable”

This essay by Thoreau pioneered something which greatly influenced Gandhiji’s actions . Just fill in the blanks.

18. One theory says that it is so because Jonathan Davis wrote it using his left hand . Another one says that Jonathan wanted it to resemble the way a child would have written it . Yet another theory is that it is based on a Scottish tradition of writing the names on graves . What ?

19. Who is the gentleman in the pic ? Also identify what he is on ?

20. Sharmila Tagore did it in her 1969 film Aradhana . In a remarkable tale of coincidence , her son Saif Ali Khan did the same thing 35 years later in his film Parineeta . What did they both do ?

Answers:

1. Due to heroics in various battles, Sir Henry was nicknamed ‘Hotspur’. The team, therefore, is Tottenham Hotspur.

2. MASH

3. Dev Patel

4. If you notice , you will find that line 1 has 1 syllable , line 2 has 1 syllable , line 3 has 2 , line 4 has 3 etc . This form of poetry is called the FIB and is based on the FIBONACCI Sequence

5. The name Sojourner for the Mars Rover . Isabella van Wegener was nicknamed Sojourner Truth because she travelled up and down the country

6. Cocaine

7. Tipu Sultan's Rockets

8. The Kingdom of Kerala :-)

9. The first stamp in US postal history to feature the word 'sex' even though it was used in a sense to indicate gender . It is the first word on the 6th line , if u notice carefully .

10. Poor Man’s Bible

11. This tsunami is popularly known as the "April Fool Tsunami" as it happened on the 1st of April . People didn’t take the warnings issued seriously because of this.

12. Cold War

13. Franklin Roosevelt

14. Hogwarts

15. The Mile High Club

16. To go the whole 9 yards

17. Civil Disobedience

18. The reverse ‘R’ in the logo of Korn . Jonathan Davis is the lead singer .

19. Richard Dawkins ; The Atheist Bus.

20. Both of them travel on the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway in hit songs from the movies.

Scores:

Anand Shankar - 5.5

Rajesh Mohan - 4

Ajay Parasuraman - 11.5

Praveen D - 7

Chaitra - 3

Confused dreams - 3

Yossarian Caulfield Singhania - 19

Jithin - 7.5

Pankaj Singh - 18.5

Arun Hiregange - 7

Chithananda - 16.5

Sreejith - 6.5

Shrey - 18.5

Ranjit C - 7

Manjith-6

Sreeram-8

Rithwik-18

Open Quiz at Cusat on March 5

The event that started it all is back!
Dept. of Safety Engg will be organising the Open quiz on 5th march at CUSAT.The details are as given below.

Venue: SMS hall,CUSAT
Time : Registration from 1 PM. Prelims 1.30 PM
Format: Open 2 member team.
QM : Anil Raghavan of Greycells

The organisers are trying to give decent cash to all finalists. There will be a token entry fee. For details on venue, location & faqs, contact kunal at 9995049637/arjun 9447719755. Those interested can have a look at www.safecusat.com

Quiz 32

This set was contributed by Rahul Girish Kumar. Please send in your attempts to rahulgirishkumar at yahoo dot co dot in or leave them as comments on this post.

1. The Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto once made a curious statistical observation regarding the distribution of wealth in the Italian society. To his amazement, he found that the same rule held true in a variety of fields/situations. His observation is now a well known (also fairly disputed) principle/rule in the field of economic mathematics. What observation did he make?

2. "Lord" Timothy Dexter was an eccentric American businessman, was peculiarly lucky . He was successful enough to attract a wife, a rich widow Elizabeth Frothingham, and buy a big house. He was considered a lackwit by his social contemporaries, and they gave him bad business advice in order to discredit him and make him lose his fortune. But somehow, all these resulted in enormous gains for him. He is well known for being the only man to defy a well known idiom in English language, by actually embarking on a mad venture, taking the advice of rival merchants plotting to ruin him, and, much to their shock, making a huge profit. What is this well known idiom?
(Hint : there are very well known versions of this in Malayalam, using, for example, words like "Dubai"..."Rajasthan"...etc )


3. In 1913, he went to University College Dublin to study law, but was expelled from Ireland in 1916 after becoming involved with the Sinn Féin movement. This involvement had brought him into close contact with Eamon de Valera, Michael Collins, Patrick Pearse, Desmond FitzGerald, Eoin MacNeil, James Connolly and others. He then returned to his country, and became heavily involved in the labour movement, becoming the general secretary and then president of the Railwaymen's Federation and twice serving as president of the Trade Union Congress in his country. He became a member of the Imperial Legislative Assembly in 1934. He also served as the 4th President of his country, from 1969-1974. Who?

4. He was considered one of the foremost art historians of his time. In 1945, he was given the esteemed position of Surveyor of the King’s, and later the Queen’s, Pictures, one of the largest private collections in the world. He held the position for 27 years, and was vital in the expansion and cataloguing of the Queen’s Gallery, which opened in 1962.As World War II was ending, he successfully undertook a special mission to the defeated Germany on behalf of the British Royal Family, to recover incriminating letters written by the Duke of Windsor to Adolf Hitler. In 1979, when some of his 'other' activities became known, Queen Elizabeth II stripped him of his knighthood, and he was removed as an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College. Who is this infamous Englishman?


5. __________________ traces four generations of the narrator's family, ranging from the beginnings in the Jew Street of Mattancherry in Fort Kochi, to his later life in Mumbai, and the ultimate effects upon the narrator. The narrator is an exceptional character, who’s physical body ages twice as fast as a normal person's does and also has a deformed hand. He leads an interesting life, especially in his relationships with women, including his mother Aurora, who is a famous national artist, his first female tutor, and a charismatic, demented sculptress named Uma. Name this very famous book.

6. His ancestry can be traced to Malik Bin Dinar, the legendary Islamic missionary who came to India in the 8th Century .He spent his youthful years in Sri Lanka, Malayasia and Singapore, toiling for the betterment of his family. He later became the owner of twenty six cashew factories and twenty five thousand workers working directly under him - a fact that led Fortune magazine to rate him as the largest single employer (individual) in the world. Which Malayali?


7. Canadian Captain Arthur "Roy" Brown is generally credited with this 'feat'. Yet, after 90 years of controversy and contradictory hypotheses, exactly who fired the fatal shot remains uncertain. Many sources, including a 1998 article by Dr. Geoffrey Miller, a physician and historian of military medicine, and also a U.S. Public Broadcasting Service documentary made in 2003, have suggested that Sergeant Cedric Popkin was the person most likely to have killed __________. Who is the subject of all these speculations?

8. For what specific reason did Britain annex the islands of Tristan Da Cunha in 1816?


9. The title of this work literally translates to “For ____”. The scholars are not entirely certain who "_______" was. The most reasonable theory is that name originally used was "Therese", Therese being Therese Malfatti von Rohrenbach zu Dezza (1792-1851), When the work was published in 1865, the discoverer of the work, Ludwig Nohl, mistranscribed the illegible title as "____". It might also have been a nickname for Therese. Another theory is that '_____' was used to describe a sweetheart in those days. What/Who is being talked about? (all blanks contain the same word)

10. He devised a scale to measure certain ability and assigned himself a modest 25 on this scale. His friend John Edensor _________ received a 30. To the eminent David Hilbert, he assigned an 80.Whom did he give a 100? What was he measuring?

Answers:

1. 80% of wealth is owned by 20% of population, which led to Pareto distribution curve

2. "selling coals to newcastle". He made a profit doing this.the malayalam usages are "gulfilottu petrol export cheyyal" etc

3. V V Giri.

4. Anthony Blunt, who was part of the Cambridge Five

5. The Moor's Last Sigh

6. Tangal Kunju Musaliyar or TKM after whom TKM college etc are named.

7. Shooting down Manfred Richtofen, the Red Baron

8. Tristan de Cunha was the closest island to St Helena. The Brits were worried that French would annex it and try to liberate Napoleon.

9. "Fur Elise" by Beethoven

10. Ramanujan. G. H. Hardy was measuring "originality". The blank was Littlewood.

Scores:

Shrey-10
Harikrishnan-6
Basab-9
Jithin-4
Arun Hiregange-4
Anand-4 (given points for Elba)
Rithwik-7.5
Deepthi Mani-6
Rajesh-2
Manjith-2.5
Sreeram-6.5

Quiz 31

This set was contributed by Manjith. Please send in your attempts to kmanjith at yahoo dot com or leave them as comments on this post.

1. According to Time Magazine, in 1966, Hunuddin Asamov, the Mayor of the city, wrote an open letter to the two men. He wrote "We have planted parks and gardens, over 2,000,000 trees, 1,500,000 shrubs and 80 million flowers...Moreover, we Uzbeks have a saying: If two neighbors have an argument, go to the third, and you will always achieve peace." Kosygin, in his invite, is believed to have said "Have pulao and the kababs of ___". Who were being invited and to which city?

2. The title character of this work was the daughter of Ethiopian King Amonasro. The girl and her father were captured and sent into slavery by the armies of the Pharaoh of Egypt. The work is mistakenly believed to have been commissioned to commemorate a special occasion. But in reality it debuted in December, 1871, two years after the occasion. What work?

3. The title of this book was inspired by the line "The sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing" from John Keats's poem, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci”. The preface to the book evokes an imaginary small town in a bucolic setting recently afflicted by a "strange stillness". Which landmark book?

4. The rock star's family surname was taken from the town of Valsad in Southern Gujarat. The Parsi family migrated to an African country so that his father could retain his job as a clerk at the British colonial office. When a revolution broke out in the country in 1964, his family moved to London. In 1970, he launched a band which has attained iconic status. He is regarded as one of the most famous personalities to have come from the African country. In 2006, a celebration planned for his 60th birth anniversary got cancelled after Islamic organizations petitioned the Govt against it, pointing out that his lifestyle violated Islamic laws.

5. According to the inscription on it, it was cast by Shah Nazir under the orders of Shah Wali Khan, the chief minister of Ahmad Shah Abdali in 1755-1756 AD. Story goes that each non-Muslim family of Lahore had to give one metallic vessel for its construction. Ahmad Shah Abdali used it against the Marathas in the Third Battle of Panipat (1761 AD). After the battle, due to the lack of suitable means of transportation, he left it with the Governor of Lahore. It changed hands many times. The British, who owned it after the Anglo-Sikh war of 1845, placed it in the Lahore museum in 1870. It is popularly known due to its presence in a 1901 novel. It gets mentioned in the childhood memoirs of the title character. Which famed weapon and which book?

6. In his autobiography Life Worth Living, which was published in 1939, X wrote about this strange occurrence, which arose from a conversation with his great friend Y.

"At the beginning of the war of 1914 the acting king of ___was a German prince ... but this king, scenting some discomfort in remaining, decided to go for a holiday to his ancestral castle in Germany. At the end of the war, in consequence, ____did not possess a king. British prestige at the moment was high. With a degree of intelligence I would not have attributed to the ___ until I saw their Bishop, they had decided that the best thing they could do for a king was to obtain the services of 'an English country gentleman with ten thousand a year'."

X was keen on the idea, but didn't have the money himself; Y, who might have been able to find it, seemed to go cold on the idea, eventually reminding X of "the inconvenience of having to live in a lonely castle on an island, and perhaps of a bullet in the ribs". Y might have had a point: Essad Pasha was proclaimed king of ___ in June 1920, and was assassinated shortly afterwards when he returned from exile in France for his inauguration. Id X, Y and the subject of this discussion.

7. In March 2001, Taco Bell came out with a special offer. It placed a 40 feet by 40 feet target with a bell at the center in the South Pacific Ocean near Australia. The target had the words "Free Taco here" painted on it. The company announced that "If __ rings our bell, we will offer a free taco to everyone in the U.S.’’. The company did not have to hand out the free lunch because on ___ easily missed the target 23 March. Fill up.

8. This mythical being takes its name from the Irish "bean sidhe" or "bean si" which means "woman of the fairy mounds". According to Irish legend, this mythical being would sing a lament, when a member of any of the great Milesian families (aristocrats) of Ireland died, even if the person had died far away and news had not yet reached the family. Her wailing was thus seen to symbolize death. This mythical fairy is a common presence in many fictional works. Identify.

9. This wooden statue (Pic A), looking out of the King's Head Hotel, was a famous attraction in the city of Coventry. The hotel was completely destroyed in the Blitz during WWII. The statue has since been removed and a replacement (Pic B) has been built in Broadgate Street. Who does the statue represent?

A

B










10. Id the two men at the center of this photograph (tall guy and the man in black), taken at a place called Gran Sasso.

Answers:

1. Lal Bahadur Shastri and General Ayub Khan being invited to Tashkent.

2. Aida, the opera by Verdi. Contrary to popular belief, it was not composed to mark the inauguration of Suez Canal (1869).

3. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. The book's preface speaks about the chirping of birds disappearing from the town. ("On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins ... and scores of other bird voices, there was now no sound."). The book created awareness about the harmful effects of DDT and was deeply influential in the environmental movement.

4. Farooq Bulsara aka Freddie Mercury. Bulsara is derived from current day Valsad.

5. Zam Zama, which came to be known as "Kim's gun" after the Kipling novel.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamzama)

6. X=C B Fry, Y=K S Ranjit Singhji. The discussion was about Fry being offered the throne of Albania..Fry had been a consultant to the Indian delegation at the League of Nations, at the behest of Ranji. It was here that the offer is supposed to have reached Fry.

7. Space station Mir, which was decommissioned.

8. Banshee

9. Peeping Tom. The second picture has Lady Godiva blanked out.

10. Otto Skorzeny after rescuing Mussolini from the resort in Gran Sasso where he had been held captive by the new Italian Govt. This daring rescue was codenamed "Operation Oak".

Scores:

Arun Warrier-6

Muni Darsan-3.5

Ajay Joy-4.5

Rithiwk K-7

Praveen V R-7.5

Rahul Girish Kumar-7

Atul V Nath-3.5

Sreeram-8.5

Rajesh M-5

Shrey-10

Jithin -5.5

Kishore-3

Ijaz Aslam-5.5

Raouf-5

Deepthi Mani-7

Captain Chandrakant-6

Quiz 30

This set was contributed by Manjith. Please send in your attempts to kmanjith at yahoo dot com or leave them as comments on this post.

1. According to an observation by the Englishman Sir Emerson Tennent, before the British cut down the "Tal" or "Palmyra" palm trees to make way for coconut estates, the whole peninsula used to get invaded by ____ that were fond of eating the ripe Tal fruits. All the ___ herd in the neighboring districts crossed over to the peninsula at a place which has been appropriately named "____ _____" (or "Ali Man kada" in native language) due to the seasonal migration of animals. At that season, the whole peninsula was infested with these animals and their export formed a part of the traditional economy of the region. The corridor also had great strategic importance as a vital link between the peninsula and the rest of the country. Name the peninsula and the popular name for "Ali Mankada".

2. This reclusive lady of Indian music was originally named Roshanara Khan. It is said that her dad, a musical maestro did not wish to educate her in music but was forced to change his mind after he came home one day to discover her teaching her brother. Within a few years she became an accomplished player of the "Surbahar". Meanwhile one of her father's students fell in love with her and asked the Guru for the daughter's hand. Thus at the age of 14, she married him and converted to Hinduism. Id the lady, her father, brother and husband.

3. On April 30, 1908, Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki hurled a bomb at the horse carriage of Magistrate Kingsford, a judge known for handing down particularly harsh sentences against nationalists. However, the bomb missed its target and instead landed in another carriage and killed two British women, the wife and daughter of barrister Pringle Kennedy. The incident took place in Muzaffarnagar in Bihar. But it is more famously known by the name of the place where the conspirators were tried. Id the popular name by which this land mark trial is known.

4. Id the Boer leader and president of Transvaal who has the largest game reserve in South Africa named after him

5. For several years "The Pride of Matchingham" had been the chief rival to X for the championship. Later, the far more challenging "Queen of Matchingham" was brought in from Kent. Despite the competition, X managed several prizes in its class over the years. Id X, the victim of several hilarious kidnapping attempts in literature.

6. In 1928, the Italian aeronautical engineer and explorer Umberto Nobile crashed with the entire crew of the "Airship Italia" on ice, 20km north of the island of Spitsbergen. Which famous personality disappeared while on a rescue mission to save Nobile (with whom he had a bitter quarrel in the past) and was never seen again?

7. In Sept, 1977 Hamida Djandoubi who had tortured and murdered his former girl friend, became the last victim of this device. Which device?

8. The Knights Hospitalier (also known as The Order of St John) was an organization formed to provide care for poor and injured pilgrims to Jerusalem. After the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem in 1187, they returned to Europe. After serving as a military force for some time, they finally found a new base in 1530 when Charles V of Spain, as King of Sicily, gave them ____, Gozo and the North African port of Tripoli in perpetual fiefdom in exchange for an annual fee of a single _____ ______, which they were to send on All Souls Day to the King's representative, the Viceroy of Sicily.
The story of this annual tribute was fictionalized to great effect in a celebrated novel and movie of the same name.

9. Colour coded version of a message. By what name is it known in scientific circles?

10. It was originally meant to be held at New Delhi since Jawaharlal Nehru had expressed strong support for the idea. But the Suez Crisis and a shortage of finance prompted a cancellation. Cyrus Eaton, a Canadian businessman had written a letter offering financial support if it was held in his home town of ____ in Nova Scotia, Canada. This offer was taken up, thus giving international fame to a small village overlooking the Northumberland Strait. Id.

Answers:

1. Jaffna Peninsula and Elephant pass which leads from the mainland to the Jaffna peninsula

2. Annapoorna Devi. Her father was Ustad Alauddin Khan and brother was Ali Akbar Khan. Pandit Ravi Shankar was the student of Alauddin Khan.

3. Alipore Bomb Case.

4. Paul Kruger, after whom the Kruger National park is named.

5. The Empress of Blandings, the prize pig of Earl Emsworth in the Blandings novels of P.G. Wodehouse.

6. Roald Amundsen. Nobile designed the "Norge" on which Amundsen reached the North Pole and became the first person to reach both poles

7. Guillotine.

8. Maltese Falcon. Malta was one of the territories given to the knights by the Italian King. The movie “The Maltese Falcon” references this story in its plot.

9. Arecibo message, sent by the SETI project to outer space. The message was a creation of Frank Drake and Carl Sagan.

10. Pugwash where the "Pugwash conferences on science and world affairs" was held in 1957.

Scores:

Praveen V R-3.5
Shabeer Muhammed-2
Muni Darsan-2
Arjun L -7
Arun A S-5
Sreeram Iyer-5.5
Rajesh Mohan-4.5
Captain Chandrakant-7
Viswas-4.5
Hrishi-6
Rithwik-4.5
Jithin-6
Anon-0.5

Quiz 29

Greycells Blog is the profiled blog on http://www.quizblogs.com/ !! Do check out the profile :-) Quizblogs.com is a single platform that brings quiz/trivia blogs together.

This set was contributed by Sreeram. Please send in your attempts to sreeram.b.iyer at gmail.com or leave them as comments on this post.

1. The Iliou persis (English: Sack of Ilium) is a lost epic of ancient Greek literature. The Iliou persis was sometimes attributed by ancient writers to Arctinus of Miletus. The Iliou persis was probably composed in the seventh century BCE, but there is much uncertainty. Ancient sources date Arctinus to the eighth century, but evidence concerning another of his poems, the Aethiopis, suggests that he lived considerably later than that. (courtesy : wiki)‏
The most famous recital of "the sack of illium" happened in the first century AD when someone dressed himself in stage costume and sang it from beginning to end. Many historians, though, doubt the truth of the incident.
Who was the singer ?

2. Alfred Shaw was a great 19th century bowler who represented England and Nottinghamshire. Among other things, he delivered the first ball of what is now considered as the first Test match. One of his last wishes was “bury me 22 yards from Arthur”. Arthur was Arthur Shrewsbury, another Notts man and the second best batsman of his time (WG Grace being the finest).
Some months after Shaw died, to everyone's consternation, it was discovered that his grave had been constructed 27 yards from that of Shrewsbury. Discussions ensued on how to move the grave to fulfil Shaw's last wish. Finally the secretary of Nottinghamshire came up with an explanation of why the grave was fine where it was, which satisfied everyone.
What was his reasoning ?

3. Yitzhak Rabin was given the honour of naming it. Fancy names like "Sons of Light", "Daring" and Salvation" were suggested. Rabin went for a very simple name. The name also evoked God's creation of the world, which was very apt from Israel's point of view. What name ?

4. There are mountain peaks which claim to be higher than Everest if different yardsticks, other than the height above sea level, are used for measuring them.Mouna Kea in Hawaii starts off from the base of the Pacific Ocean but has a base to summit height of about 10000m.Another claimant to the title is Chimborazo in Ecuador. Under what condition does Chimborazo become taller than Everest ?

5. It was a popularly debated question in the 19th century. In 1872, Leland Stanford requested the photographer Eadweard Muybridge help in settling the dispute. Muybridge developed a scheme for instantaneous motion picture capture, took photographs and settled the question. He worked further on the issue and took photographs in fast motion using a series of twenty-four cameras, taking pictures at 1/1000th of a second. He even developed a machine called zoopraxiscope which could project successive photos of that sort as in a motion picture.
What was the question that Muybridge originally set out to solve ?

6. The pictures below are those King Saud bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia (1902-1969), and Faisal II of Iraq (1935-1958), the last king of Iraq who was assassinated at the age of 23.
Which fictional father and son did they inspire ?










































7. BLF is an a organisation founded in 1995 by the London based social historian and leftist Keith Flatt. On the occasion of its founding, Flatt claimed that "Xs are politically progressive. All the great revolutionary socialists had a X. Stalin had a Y." BLF has been running a yearly award since 2000, and the winners include Andrew Flintoff (2004 and 2005) , Monty Panesar (2006) and Robert Plant (of Led Zeppelin) (2007). Hashim Amla is another nominee. Expand BLF and name the award.


8. What editorial decision did Times announce last month thus (couple of words blanked out) :
"Key to policy at The Times on the usage of ____ is that they are adjudged to be recognisable to a majority of our readers. After the recent events this name has been used extensively in other media to which our core British readership is exposed. It would be foolish to ignore that context. We also have a global online audience to consider."

9.Gary Dexter writes a weekly column in Daily Telegraph on the origin of book titles, some of which were recently published as the book ‘Why not Catch-21 ?’. This is from a recent column (see also the book covers below):
We tend to think of the novel X (1974) as having a title of unique quirky brilliance. But it drew for inspiration on a whole corpus of earlier books, many of which had been extremely well-known and successful.
They included "... Archery" (Eng trans. 1953) by Eugen Herrigel, a German philosophy professor ; "....Flower Arrangement “ (Eng trans. 1958) by Gustie Herrigel; "... Photography" (1969) by Robert Leverant; and several others.
They all have 'in' rather than 'and' in the titles: but X was not first in this either, since Ray Bradbury had written an influential and frequently-anthologised essay on the craft of fiction, "... Writing", as long before as 1958.
What is the 1974 book whose title was possibly inspired by these ? In its introduction, the author warned that the book should not be considered as a factual guide for the orthodox Buddhist practice hinted by the title.

10. Dr BV Keskar was the Information & Broadcasting minister in the Nehru government.
Perhaps his most infamous contribution was that, in an attempt to preserve the “purity” of Indian culture, for several years from 1954 he banned something that was very popular in India. The main beneficiary of this ban was a neighbouring country who made millions from Indian companies by promoting the banned thing.
What did he ban and who gained from it ?

Answers:

1. Nero reputedly sang this while playing the fiddle/lyre
2. Shaw always took a 5 yard run-up
3. Six Day War. "War of Daring" and "War of Salvation" were considered, but Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli Chief of Staff during the war prefered "Six Day War".
4. Chimborazo is located almost on the equator, and is the tallest peak if the height is measured from the centre of earth to the summit.
5. Whether all the four legs of a horse leave the ground at the same time during a gallop

6. Prince Abdullah and Emir Mohammed Ben Kalish Ezab of Khemed in Tintin comics

7. BLF is the Beard Liberation Front
8. The usage of Mumbai instead of Bombay.
9. Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance

10. He banned film music on All India Radio. Radio Ceylon with its programs like Binaca Geethmala was the main beneficiary.


Scores:

Rajesh-4
Manjith-3
Rithwik-5
Jithin-3
Chithananda-7
Praveen V R-5
Hrishi-3
Abdul Raouf-4
Arjun Lakshman-7