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