ortsz

Questions:

1. Was Snoop Dogg a Crip or a Blood?
   
2. In which year was the first software MP3 encoder released: 1986, 1990, 1994, or 1998?
3. The pairing of salt and pepper as table condiments dates back to which century: 17th, 18th, 19th, or 20th?
4. Which of the following television shows is not a spinoff: The Colbert Report, The Cosby Show, Happy Days, Frasier, Melrose Place, NCIS, or The Simpsons?
5. Which one word can fill both of these blanks: _____ journalism, _____ pornography?
6. What special characteristic have lodestones?
7. The official airspeed record (for a manned, air-breathing jet aircraft) of 3529 km/h (2193 mph) was set in which decade: 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, or 2000s?
8. Given any separation of a plane into contiguous regions, producing a figure called a map, what is the maximum number of colours required to colour the regions of the map so that no two adjacent regions have the same colour?
9. How many centimetres in a metric foot?
10. In poetry, which of the following is not a metrical foot: a pyrrhic, an iamb, a makron, a spondee, or a trochee?

Answers:

1. Crip.
2. 1994. (The filename extension .mp3 was chosen the following year; previously, the files had been named .bit.)
3. 17th century. (Seventeenth-century French cuisine considered pepper the only spice which did not overpower the true taste of food.)
4. The Cosby Show.
5. Gonzo.
6. Magnetism. (Lodestones are naturally magnetised pieces of the mineral magnetite and were used as the first magnetic compasses.)
7. 1970s. (The record was set in 1976 by a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird.)
8. Four.
9. 30.
10. Makron. (A pyrrhic consists of two short syllables; an iamb, a short syllable followed by a long; a trochee, a long followed by a short; and a spondee, two long syllables.)

Questions:

1. Who sponsored the King James Version of the Bible?
   
2. In 1997, who commissioned a copy of the Qur’an written in his own blood?
3. Which of the Founding Fathers of the United States was the last to die: Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, or Alexander Hamilton?
4. The Mariana Islands consist of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands plus which unincorporated US territory?
5. Ulster, Munster, Leinster, and Connacht are the four provinces of what?
6. Who was in 1975 unsuccessfully sued for libel by the parent company of Kentucky Fried Chicken after he publicly referred to their gravy as “sludge” that tasted like “wallpaper paste”?
7. Which element present in radioactive fallout is absorbed by the body and incorporated into the skeleton as if it were calcium?
8. The maximum theoretical yield from 1 kg of matter would be produced by annihilating it with an equal amount of matter. Would the TNT equivalent amount of energy released be 42 tons, 42 kilotons, 42 megatons, or 42 gigatons?
9. The mainly jocular FFF system of units of measurement is based upon the furlong for length, the firkin for mass, and what unit for time?
10. Is the equatorial radius of the Earth greater, lesser, or exactly equal to the polar radius?
11. What is an astronomical unit?
12. How many astronauts have been killed by in-flight accidents?

Answers:

1. King James VI and I.
2. Saddam Hussein. (After the fall of Hussein’s regime, the question of what to do with the Blood Qu’ran posed a dilemma.)
3. James Madison.
4. Guam.
5. Ireland.
6. Colonel Sanders. (Sanders sold the company in 1964.)
7. Strontium.
8. 42 megatons.
9. Fortnight.
10. Greater. (6378.1 km versus 6356.8 km.)
11. A unit of length approximately equal to the mean distance between Earth and the Sun.
12. 18. (Around 520 people—or 523, or 529, depending on the definition used—have been into space.)
    

Questions:

1. In which century was the backslash first introduced?
2. True or false: the Tetris effect is so powerful that people with anterograde amnesia reported dreaming of falling shapes after playing Tetris during the day, despite not being able to remember playing the game at all.
3. For at least one of these country code top-level domains, name the country to which it belongs: .cd, .fm, .mu, .tv.
4. True or false: the Channel Islands were the only part of the United Kingdom to be occupied by Germany during World War II.
5. On which island is the only the divided capital city in the world?
6. Which US state is home to the only state highway in the nation where motor vehicles are banned?
7. Seven people have been declared honorary citizens of the United States, including which British politician?
8. In association football, by what name is the method of “kicks from the penalty mark” usually known?

Answers:

1. Twentieth.
2. True.
3. Democratic Republic of Congo, the Federated States of Micronesia, Mauritius, or Tuvalu.
4. False. (While the Channel Islands were indeed the only part of the British Isles to be invaded, but they are Crown Dependencies, remnants of the Duchy of Normandy, and are not part of the United Kingdom.)
5. Cyprus. (Nicosia is divided between the internationally-recognised Republic of Cyprus and the disputed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.)
6. Michigan. (M-185, on Mackinac Island.)
7. Winston Churchill. (Churchill was one of only two to be given the honour in their lifetimes; the other was Mother Teresa.)
8. Penalty shootout.

Questions:

1. The Chinese characters for the name of which continent mean “negative continent”?
2. A blister known as a Jennerian vesicle develops at the site of injection a few days after receiving which vaccine?
   
3. When pink first became a gendered colour, it was considered more appropriate for boys, while blue was appropriate for girls. In which decade did the colours become inverted to the current norm of pink for girls and blue for boys?
4. On 31 August 1997, Princess Diana, Dodi Fayed, and Henri Paul died after a car accident in Paris; the bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, survived. Which occupant(s) of the car were wearing a seatbelt at the time of the crash?
5. Feathers from which bird are typically used to make feather dusters?
6. True or false: after the murder, beheading, and cannibalisation of Canadian man Tim McLean on a Greyhound bus in 2008, PETA attempted to run an advertisement comparing the incident to the killing of animals for food.
7. Which country was responsible for a program of human psychological experimentation, torture, and systematic sexual abuse, including the use of drug-induced comas, high-voltage electric shocks, and sensory deprivation?
8. Which fairy tale portrays the hero unscrupulously hiding in a man’s house and playing on his wife’s sympathies in order to rob and murder him?
9. Which human Star Wars character was played by the same actor in both Return of the Jedi and all three films of the prequel trilogy?
10. The English language has an subject-verb-object (SVO) word order; while Yoda’s syntax is somewhat inconsistent, academics could extrapolate that “Yodic” has what kind of word order?

Answers:

1. Africa.
2. Smallpox.
3. 1940s.
4. None. (It was initially suggested that Rees-Jones, the sole survivor, was wearing a seatbelt, but investigations proved this was not the case.)
5. Ostrich.
6. True.
7. United States. (Project MKULTRA.)
8. Jack and the Beanstalk.
9. Palpatine.
10. Object-subject-verb.

Questions:

1. What series of instructional books carries the subtitle “A Reference for the Rest of Us!”?
2. That series of books began in 1991 with what computing-related title?
3. Which regime is largely reponsible for the present negative connotations of the word “propaganda”?
4. Which real Soviet counter-intelligence agency, featured in fictional form in early James Bond novels, is an acronym for the Russian phrase meaning “death to spies”?
5. Leo Tolstoy’s last letter before his death was sent to which independence and civil rights activist?
6. Which of the following is not part of the full name of Otto von Habsburg, the last Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary: Felix, Franz, Hubert, Ludwig, Maria, or Xavier?
7. Which Asian country’s monarch is the world’s longest-serving current head of state?
8. Which European country’s king was, in 1931, the only head of state in modern history to exchange fire with a potential assassin?
9. In 2010, the high council of Russian bikers unanimously voted to elevate Vladimir Putin into the Hells Angels with what nickname: Abaddon, Azazel, Baal, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Mammon, or Moloch?
10. Which African nation, colonised in 1820 by freed American slaves, has its capital named after US President James Monroe?
11. From 1878 to 1980, politics in that country were dominated by which party: the Bourbon Democrats, Federalist Party, Liberty Party, New Deal Movement, or the True Whig Party?
12. Which of the following was not one of Mao Zedong’s siblings: Mao Zeguo, Mao Zejian, Mao Zemin, or Mao Zetan?
13. According to the 2000 US Census, how many people live in Central Park: 0, 9, 18, 36, or 72?
14. Which of the following people is not an official honorary Harlem Globetrotter: Henry Kissinger, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, Pope John Paul II, or Whoopi Goldberg?
15. Bevin Boys were British men conscripted during World War II to work in what industry?
16. What is produced from the plant species Camellia sinensis?
17. Which of the following is not a day celebrated in Sweden: October 4, Cinnamon Roll Day; November 30, Cabbage Roll Day; or December 12, Lye Roll Day?
18. Which of the following varieties of Capsicum / pepper, native to the Americas, does not come from the same species: bell peppers, cayenne, habanero, or jalapeño?
19. Which of the following vegetables does not come from the species Brassica oleracea: broccoli, brussels sprouts, bok choy, cauliflower, or cabbage?
20. Which blend of tea has a distinctive aroma derived from bergamot oil?

Answers:

1. For Dummies.
2. DOS for Dummies. (To date, over 1600 For Dummies titles have been published.)
3. Nazi Germany.
4. SMERSH.
5. Mohandas Gandhi.
6. Hubert. (In full: Franz Joseph Otto Robert Maria Anton Karl Max Heinrich Sixtus Xavier Felix Renatus Ludwig Gaetan Pius Ignatius von Habsburg.)
7. Thailand. (King Rama IX has reigned since 1946.)
8. Albania. (King Zog was attacked while he was getting into his car, and he survived by firing back with his pistol.)
9. Abaddon. (Abaddon, meaning “the destroyer” or “the depths of Hell”, is the king of tormenting locusts and the angel of the bottomless pit in the Book of Revelation.)
10. Liberia. (Along with Ethiopia, Liberia is one of only two modern countries in Sub-Saharan Africa without roots in the European Scramble for Africa. Americo-Liberians today make up around 2.5% of the population.)
11. True Whig Party.
12. Mao Zeguo.
13. 18.
14. Martin Luther King, Jr.
15. Coal mining. (Many of them were not released until years after the war.)
16. Tea.
17. Lye Roll Day.
18. Habanero. (Habanero is Capsicum chinense; the rest are C. annuum. Both species evolved from a single common ancester, along with the species C. frutescens, which includes piri piri and tabasco peppers.)
19. Bok choy. (Bok choy comes from the species B. rapa, as do turnips.)
20. Earl Grey tea.

Questions:

1. The common pain reliever para-acetylaminophenol is known by which two generic names, one used in the United States and the other used internationally?
2. The onset of analgesia (pain relief) occurs approximately how many minutes after the oral administration of the aforementioned drug: 1, 5, 10, 15, or 20?
3. What is the world’s most traded spice (by monetary value)?
4. Which river was the subject of the most expensive photograph ever sold?
5. How many species of penguin live north of the equator in the wild?
6. What Christmas activity was banned by the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages?
7. The name of which of Santa Claus’s reindeer comes from a Germanic word for lightning?
8. Which nineteenth-century poem is largely responsible for the modern conception of Santa Claus, including his appearance and his reindeer?
9. Which of the following is not one of Santa Claus’s reindeer, as established in the aforementioned poem: Blitzen, Comet, Cupid, Dasher, Dancer, Donder, Prancer, Rudolph, or Vixen?

Answers:

1. Acetaminophen and paracetamol. (The former is the United States Adopted Name, while the latter is the International Nonproprietary Name.)
2. Ten minutes.
3. Black pepper. (Vietnam is the world’s largest producer and exporter of pepper.)
4. Rhine. (A print of the photograph, Rhein II by Andreas Gursky, was sold at auction for $4.3 million.)
5. One. (The Galapagos Penguin, which, as the name suggests, is endemic to the Galapagos Islands.)
6. Gift giving. (It was banned because of its suspected pagan origins.)
7. Blitzen. (From German; the alternative spelling ‘Blixem’ comes from Dutch. The name of the reindeer Donner—or Dunder, again from Dutch—means ‘thunder’.)
8. A Visit from St. Nicholas. (Also known as The Night Before Christmas.)
9. Rudolph. (Rudolph was invented in 1939. Before the name Rudolph was chosen, Rollo and Reginald were also considered.)

Questions:

1. Which epic poem dated between the 8th and 11th centuries is the oldest extant English manuscript?
2. The first hour of the medieval monastic day began at 6:00 am; which hour of the day was known as noon?
3. In the middle of the 17th century, which Scandinavian country was the third-largest in Europe by land area?
4. In which country is the world’s largest coal exporting port, Newcastle, located?
5. In the eighteenth century, the name of which popular tropical fruit became a verb meaning “to pickle”?
6. In which decade did Momofuku Ando invent instant noodles: 1910s, 1930s, 1950s, or 1970s?
7. True or false: it took ninety years for researchers to successfully breed and domesticate hamsters.
8. Which of the following sports has never been part of the Olympic Games: cricket, croquet, lacrosse, rugby, netball, softball, tug of war, or water motorsports?

Answers:

1. Beowulf.
2. Ninth. (Hence the name noon, from the Latin ‘nona hora’.)
3. Sweden.
4. Australia.
5. Mango. (Today, mangoes account for approximately half of all tropical fruits produced worldwide.)
6. 1950s. (He marketed the first instant noodles in 1958; sales of his most famous product, cup noodles, began in 1971.)
7. True. (The golden hamster was first described scientifically in 1839, but only first bred and domesticated in 1930.)
8. Netball. (Softball was part of the Olympics from 1996 to 2008, while the rest are from the early twentieth century.)
   

Questions:

1. What colour shirts did members of the Nazi Party’s SA organisation wear?
2. Match these battle cries with the corresponding armed services: hooah, hooyah, oorah; US Army, US Marine Corps, US Navy.
3. Which of the following was not a policy introduced by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev: glasnost, okroshka, perestroika, or uskoreniye?
4. At the International Meridian Conference in 1884, which of the following countries did not vote in favour of the Greenwich Meridian: Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, the Ottoman Empire, or Russia?
5. Pretz is the savoury counterpart to which popular Japanese snack food?

Answers:

1. Brown. (The colour was chosen because a large number of brown uniforms ordered for World War I were cheaply available.)
2. Hooah, US Army; hooyah, US Navy; oorah, US Marine Corps.
3. Okroshka. (It’s a cold soup made with kvass.)
4. France. (France abstained, as did Brazil; the only dissenting vote came from San Domingo, now the Dominican Republic.)
5. Pocky.

Questions:

1. In which city is Canada’s only Major League Baseball team located?
   
2. In which country is the river referenced in the idiom “crossing the Rubicon” (meaning to pass the point of no return) located?
3. Which of the following organs were not stored in canopic jars: the heart, intestines, lungs, liver, or stomach?
4. Scurvy is a disease resulting from a deficiency of which vitamin?
5. True or false: U.S. Department of State prohibits foreign service officers from being injected with a needle by a foreign official.
6. Which of the following subjects is trivia: arithmetic, astronomy, music, or logic?
7. The sentence “my pen is in my hand” has the same spelling and meaning in both English and which other Germanic language with over 7 million speakers?
8. Match these fuels with the colour of the containers they are usually stored in: kerosene, diesel, gasoline; red, yellow, blue.

Answers:

1. Toronto.
2. Italy. (In 49 BC, Julius Caesar illegally led his legion across the Rubicon River which separated the province of Cisalpine Gaul from Italy proper, triggering a civil war.)
3. The heart. (Ancient Egyptians, who used canopic jars during the mummification process, considered the heart to be the seat of the soul and left it in the body.)
4. Vitamin C.
5. True.
6. Logic. (In the original seven liberal arts, the trivium consisted of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, while the quadrivium consisted of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.)
7. Afrikaans.
8. Kerosene, blue; diesel, yellow; gasoline, red.

Questions:

1. In 1964, the brother of which famous American author attempted to establish his own nation on a bamboo raft anchored outside the territorial waters of Jamaica?
2. In the US Civil War, the Confederacy’s economic strategy was based on which export?
3. Which of the following citrus fruits existed naturally prior to human cultivation: lemon, lime, grapefruit, tangelo, or tangerine?
   
4. In which year was the last Backstreet Boys album released?
5. According to Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon was originally written in a “reformed” script of which language?

Answers:

1. Ernest Hemingway. (Leicester Hemingway’s micronation of New Atlantis was destroyed by a hurricane after a few years.)
2. Cotton.
3. Lime.
4. 2009.
5. Reformed Egyptian.