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