Quiz 49 Flashcards
At 1053 feet of 321 metres, the Vaalserberg is the highest point in which European country?
Netherlands
In 1907 Rudyard Kipling became the first Englishment to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. It was twenty five years before another Englishman won the same award. Who was he?
John Galsworthy
The Second World War song Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition was by which American songwriter, who went on to major success with broadway musicals?
Frank Loesser
In the Walt Disney film of Snow White, the wicked stepmother visits snow white in disguise and gives her a poisoned apple. But in the Grimm Brothers telling, she makes two previous attempts, unsuccessfully, using other objects. Can you name one of those other objects?
Laces or Stays, and a Comb
The tsomgomby or kilopilopitsofy, which is said to resemble a hornless cow, and the tratratratra, described as a lemur the size of a gorilla, are mythical beasts claimed to inhabit which African country?
Madagascar
During the reign of which English king did the Addled Parliament sit, so-called because they never passed a single act?
James I
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, which decade saw the first recorded use of the word hip, in the modern sense of being well informed, knowledgeable and aware?
1900s
Which other novelist did William Fauklner describe as the nicest old lady I ever met?
Henry James
The French actress Simone Signoret won an Oscar for her performance as Alice Aisgill, the mistress of the main character, in which very British film released in 1959?
Room at the Top
Which Greek philosopher, who lived between about 460 and 370 BC, earned the epithet the Laughing Philosopher because of his supposed inablility to restrain his mirth at the prospect of human life?
Democritus of Abdera
The Bishop of Urgel and the President of France act as joint Heads of State of which European principality?
Andorra
The first US satellite to go into orbit, launched in January 1958, enabled the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belt around the Earth. What was the satellite called?
Explorer I
Although they’re thought of as coming from very different generations, the writers George Bernard Shaw and George Orwell both died in the same year. Which year?
1950
Tyre, Sidon and Byblos were the main cities of which ancient people?
Phoenicians
Malcolm Morley became the first winner of what, in November 1984?
Turner prize
A blivet is an optical illusion or undecipherable paradox that takes which form?
The impossible fork
The test cricket match between New Zealand and Zimbabwe in November 2011 was the first Test match in which the captains of both teams had the same surname. Which common English surname was that?
Taylor
She’s a big lass and a bonny lass and she likes her beer is how which character is described, in a traditional folk song from the north east of England?
Cushy Butterfield
Which law of physics is expressed in the equation F=ma?
Newton’s Second Law of Motion
In the 1933 film She Done Him Wrong, who was the actor to whom Mae West said, Why don’t you come up and see me sometime?
Cary Grant
In the 2012 James Bond film Skyfall, what is Skyfall?
A house - Bond’s childhood home
The 1942 report of Social Insurance and Allied Services, popularly known as the Beveridge Report, famously identified five Giants that needed to be defeated. One was Want. Can you name two of the other four, exactly as they were named in the report?
Disease, Ignorance, Illness, Squalor
If you sufferd from Siderodromophobia, what would you fear?
Railways
Like his elder brother John, the American politician Bobby Kennedy had the middle initial F. In his case, what did it stand for?
Francis
