Quiz 26

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1. One story states that while returning from his home to the University, a bolt of lightening struck near him. He was terrified by the thunderstorm and cried out "Help! Saint Anna, I will become a monk!". He considered this to be an unbreakable vow and decided to join the monastery. According to another version, he decided to become a monk, saddened by the death of two close friends. He himself seemed melancholic about the decision. But, as fate would have it, he became one of the most influential figures in the history of Christianity within a few decades. Identify this person who, at the height of his struggle, is supposed to have hidden in a castle for about a year as a knight named "Junker Jörg"

2. The honor "Righteous Among the Nations" is awarded by Israel to non-Jews who saved Jews during the holocaust, at great personal risk. Who is the only former member of the Nazi party to be so recognized by the planting of a tree in his name at the Yad Vashem Memorial?

3. It is believed that X himself decapitated Hemu in the Second battle of Panipat (1556) . In 1561, X was assassinated by Mubarak Khan, an Afghan youth, whose father had been killed in a battle with forces led by X. Id X.

4. In 1975, he shot Alfred Duraiappah, the mayor of a major city at point blank range, as he was about to enter a temple in Punnelary. This was the first major political assasination of a man who attained notoriety in later years. Identify.

5. What was formed when Emperor Menelik II brokered a compromise between the "Casablanca Block" (led by Kwame Nkrumah) and the "Monrovian Block" (led by Sedor Senghor) in 1963 ?

6. What are dolls of this type called? (a generic name)

7. Hurling Frootmig is said to be the founder of the _________, who established its fundamental principles of "honesty and idealism", and went bust. Later, after much soul-searching, he re-established the _____ with its principles of "honesty and idealism and where you could stuff them", and went on to lead the ____ to its first major commercial success. Fill up!

8. The name of this language/dialect literally translates to "Language of the officials". The name of this language is derived from the word for "official" because the language was popularised by its use by the beureaucracy. One theory goes that the word for "official" was in turn derived from the sanskrit word for "minister". Which language/dialect?

9. "Theory of ____ and Economic Behavior", a book by John Von Neumann and Oscar Morgenstern, is said to have laid the foundations of this science. So far, it has contributed about 8 Nobel winners. Id.

10. In golf, a shot that causes the ball to bounce over a water obstacle is referred to as a _____ _____. The name is borrowed from an English scientist (see pic) who became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1945. Fill up.

11. Amet, Bhor, Bharuch (Broach), Kakori, Pune, Rayadurg, Sandila, Wer. These are the only Indian cities to have a particular distinction in science. What?

12. The 2002 movie "The Dancer Upstairs" based on a novel of the same name, marked the directorial debut of John Malkovitch. It revolved around an incident that happened in 1992 when Marritza Garrido Lecca, who taught ballet dancing for a living, was identified as harbouring a group of terrorists in her apartment. Investigators fell on her trail after it was discovered that her apartment was producing too much of garbage for a single occupant. When tubes of a psoriasis ointment were found among the refuse, the investigators suspected that X, the leader of the armed insurgency in the country was hidden in the house (he was known to be suffering from psoriasis). The apartment was stormed and X was captured alive. Id X who was later exhibited in a cage.

13. Adolphe Quetelet was a Belgian mathematician, statistician and sociologist who pioneered the use of statistics in social sciences. He founded many statistical organisations and organised the first International statistics conference in 1853. He was one of the first people to use the "normal curve" for a wide variety of statistics, thereby influencing many of his contemporaries. His most famous contribution is the "Quetelet Index" which is still widely used without much modification. How do we better know this index?

14. Simple one: Map of ?

15. In 1897 Representative Taylor I Record introduced a bill in the Indiana General Assembly "A Bill for an act introducing a new mathematical truth and offered as a contribution to education to be used only by the State of Indiana free of cost by paying any royalties whatever on the same, provided it is accepted and adopted by the official action of the Legislature of 1897." This bill was based on the claims of an amateur mathematician named Edwin J Goodwin. After positive recomendations from a committee, the house of representatives passed the bill. Purdue University Professor C A Waldo who was in Indianapolis to secure funds for the Indiana Academy of Sciences, was informed of this development. He coached several Senators overnight to ensure that the Senate postponed the bill indefinitely! What exactly did Goodwin claim to do?

Answers:

1. Martin Luther of the Protestant Reformation fame.
2. Oskar Schindler, whose story retold by holocaust survivor Poldek Pfefferberg, inspired Thomas Kenneally's novel Schindler's Ark (which in turn inspired Spielberg’s Schindler’s List).
3. Bairam Khan, guardian of Akbar.
4. Velupillai Pirabhakaran of the LTTE.
5. Organisation of African Unity headquartered at Adis Ababa, Ethiopia. It was replaced by the "African Union" in 2002.
6. Matryoshka doll or Babushka dolls. Each doll fits inside a larger one. In this picture, the dolls represent the presidents of Russia (USSR). The word Matryoshka denotes a fat Russian woman.
7. The Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.
8. Mandarin ("Mantri" being the Sanskrit word for minister)
9. Game theory. The blank is "games".
10. Barnes Wallis, inventor of the Bouncing Bomb.
11. They have Martian craters named after them.
12. Abimael Guzman, founder of the "Shining Path" movement in Peru.
13. BMI (Body-Mass Index)
14. King Solomon's Mines from the Rider Haggard novel of the same name. "Solomon's Road", "Sheba's Breasts" (just a mountain!) and "mouth of the treasure cave" should have been clues :-)
15. Goodwin claimed to have invented a method of "squaring the circle" i.e. construct a square with the same areas as a given circle, using only a compass and a straight edge, in a finite number of steps. Ferdinand Lindemann had already proved the impossibility of this problem in 1882. But Goodwin twisted the interpretation of the problem considerably and also proposed the value of "Pi" as 3.2!! The bill is popularly known as the "Pi Bill" because of this.

Scores:
Rajesh Mohan -7
Sreeram Iyer-9
Chandrakant Nair-8
Praveen V R-8
Arun A S-6.5
Snehaj-5
Ijaz Aslam-6
Viswas Viswam-7
Rithwik-5
Hrishi-6
Chithananda-14
Nipun-1
Deepak Ranganathan-8
Sreejith-7
Ruchir-5
Vijaykrishnan-7
Sudarshan Narayanan-8