ortsz

Questions:

1. In which year did the dot-com bubble burst?
2. Around the same time, Time Warner merged with which internet company in what is often considered the worst merger in history?
3. What is a duel between three opponents called?
4. Which country’s vice president suggested, in the lead up to war, that his country’s president and the enemy’s president settle their differences in a duel held in a neutral land with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan presiding as the supervisor?
5. The Chemical Corps is a branch of which country’s army?
6. True or false: the class of warship known as destroyers takes its name from the French admiral Benoit d’Estroiller.
7. Who was the only King of France ever to be executed?
8. In which profession is a toque commonly worn?
9. What is the second-most expensive spice after saffron?
10. The name of which US city means “wild onion”?

Answers:

1. 2000. (The technology-heavy NASDAQ Composite stock market index peaked on March 10, 2000; ten days later, it had dropped ten percent; within a year, it was worth half its peak; the NASDAQ bottomed out in October 2002 at less than a quarter of its peak value.)
2. AOL. (After the merger, AOL Time Warner reported a loss of $99 billion in 2002.)
3. A truel.
4. Iraq. (In the lead-up to the 2003 US invasion.)
5. United States.
6. False. (Destroyers were originally known as torpedo-boat destroyers.)
7. Louis XVI. (After the French Revolution.)
8. Cooking. (It’s the hat.)
9. Vanilla.
10. Chicago. (The name is a French rendering of the Native American Miami-Illinois language word “shikaakwa”.)