7th January, 2014 The Questions

Specialist Questions
Set by The Dolphin


1. Sport – Sporting venues
2. Acronymical Ms
3. History – Not the 20^th Century
4. Entertainment
5. Geography
6. Art and Culture
7. Science and Nature
8. Dining out

Set by the Dolphin
Vetted by the Park Taverners
Not vetted by the Cock Inn, as they only received the questions in early December, so didn’t have time to go through them.

Thanks.

Sport – Sporting Venues
1. What nickname was given to the 2008 Beijing Olympic stadium?
A. The Bird cage (or Bird’s nest).
2. Which world championship venue takes its name from a vessel which can be used in the manufacture of steel?
A. The Crucible (Sheffield theatre – Snooker world championships).
3. Which major world sporting venue is named after a pioneer aviator, the first man to fly across the Mediterranean Sea?
A. The Roland Garros tennis stadium in Paris.
4. Which international sports stadium is nicknamed “Billy Williams’ Cabbage Patch”?
A. Twickenham.
5. The first major horse race of the flat racing season is the Lincoln Handicap. At which racecourse is it run?
A. Doncaster.
6. What was the name of the great chariot racing stadium in Imperial Rome?
A. The Circus Maximus.
7. In which city is the cricket ground known as the Gabba?
A. Brisbane.
8. At which stadium are the all-Ireland Gaelic football and Hurling finals played?
A. Croke Park, Dublin.
Supplementaries:
9. In which winter sports town would you find the Cresta Run?
A. St. Moritz.
10. Before the main stand of which Premiership Football club was a statue of Michael Jackson erected?
A. Craven Cottage.



Acronymical Ms
Each Q consists of an acronym containing the letter M. Simply say what word the M
stands for.
1. A medical acronym, MRI (as in scanning).
A. Magnetic (Resonance Imaging).
2. A former British transport company, LMS.
A. London, Midland and Scottish Railway Co.
3. A Cold War acronym, MAD.
A. Mutually Assured Destruction.
4. Another Cold War acronym, ICBM.
A. Inter-continental Ballistic Missile.
5. An American multi-national electronic company, IBM.
A. International Business Machines.
6. From the world of higher education, MIT.
A. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
7. A mathematical acronym, LCM.
A. Lowest Common Multiple.
8. A Trade Union, RMTU.
A. Rail, Maritime and Transport Union.
Supplementaries:
9. An independent state, FYROM.
A. Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
10. A military acronym, RSM.
A. Regimental Sergeant-Major.
History
1. Which of Alexander the Great’s generals became ruler of Egypt after Alexander’s death in 323 BC, thereby founding a dynasty which lasted until the Romans occupied Egypt?
A. Ptolemy I, Soter. (Accept Ptolemy).
2. Where, in 793 AD, did the Vikings launch their first raid on English territory?
A. Lindisfarne, or Holy Island.
3. What name was given to the followers of the 14^th century religious reformer, John Wycliffe?
A. Lollards.
4. By what nickname did the early 18^th century politician Charles, Viscount Townshend become known in later life, as a result of his interest in agricultural reform?
A. Turnip Townshend.
5. Who, in the early 18^th century, is credited with the invention of the seed drill?
A. Jethro Tull.
6. Richard Neville, 16^th Earl of Warwick, fought on both sides in the Wars of the Roses. By what nickname is he known to history?
A. The Kingmaker.
7. The term “singeing the King of Spain’s beard” refers to the attack by Sir Francis Drake on which Spanish port in 1587?
A. Cadiz.
8. During her rising against the Romans Boudicca destroyed three towns. One was London; name either of the other two.
A. Colchester or St. Albans. (Camlulodunum and Verulamium).
Supplementaries:
9. Which country’s economy was ruined by the Darien Scheme in the late1690s?
A. Scotland.
10. Which historical figure rode a horse called Marengo?
A. Napoleon.

Entertainment
1. Who won the 2013 series of Strictly Come Dancing?
A. Abbey Clancy.
2. Which actor was most closely associated with the Whitehall Farces?
A. Brian Rix.
3. Name either of the two camp business partners played by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams, who appeared each week in the 1960s Radio comedy Round the Horne.
A. Julian and Sandy.
4. Which singer had the backing band “the Heartbreakers”?
A. Tom Petty. (But also accept Johnny Thunders).
5. Which singer had the backing band “the Attractions”?
A. Elvis Costello.
6. Who is the star of the 2013 Zombie film World War Z?
A. Brad Pitt.
7. Which comedy film actor’s real name was Arthur Jefferson?
A. Stan Laurel.
8. Which comic creation, who later moved to TV, first appeared as the “Sports Desk” reporter on the Radio 4 spoof current affairs programme On the Hour in 1991?
A. Alan Partridge.
Supplementaries:
9. Which actor and game show host plays DS Ron Brookes in the TV crime series Law and Order UK?
A. Bradley Walsh.
10. What was the Beatles’ first UK number 1 single on 2^nd May, 1963?
A. From me to you.
Geography
1. What name do we give to the area of sea which the French call the Pas de Calais?
A. The Straits of Dover.
2. Which stretch of water gives access to the Persian Gulf from the Gulf of Oman?
A. The Straits of Hormuz.
3. What is the capital of the Orange Free State in South Africa?
A. Bloemfontein.
4. What is the capital of the Australian state of Victoria?
A. Melbourne.
5. What is the longest river in Northern Ireland?
A. The River Bann.
6. What is the highest mountain in Turkey?
A. Mount Ararat.
7. What name was given by the 19^th Century British explorer John Gregory to the continuous geographic trench 6000 km in length which runs from Northern Syria to central Mozambique?
A. The Great Rift Valley.
8. What name is given to the highly volcanic tectonic plate boundary which separates the Eurasian plate from the North American plate in the north, and the African plate from the South American plate in the south?
A. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
Supplementaries:
9. Until 1956 the shipping forecast area German Bight was named after which North Sea island off the coast of Germany?
A. Heligoland.
10. What is a barchan (or barkhan)?
A. A type of desert sand dune.
Art & Culture
1. In Botticelli’s painting The Birth of Venus, What is Venus standing on?
A. A shell.
2. Which eponymous literary figure starts his adventures as surgeon on board the ship the Antelope?
A. Lemuel Gulliver.
3. Which opera portrays the tragic love story of an Ethiopian princess with a conquering Egyptian general, her people’s enemy?
A. Aida.
4. Which poet, in his most famous work, set out to “justify the ways of God to men”?
A. Milton (Paradise Lost).
5. What violent action by Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner leads to the becalming of his ship and the death of all the crew (except him) from thirst?
A. He shoots an albatross.
6. Which opera portrays the tragic love story of impoverished poet Rodolfo and the consumptive seamstress Mimi?
A. La Bohème.
7. Which eponymous protagonist of a 19^th century novel was controversially described in the novel’s subtitle as “a pure woman”?
A. Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
8. Of which famous painting is Willy Lott’s cottage a feature?
A. The Haywain. (By Constable).
Supplementaries:
9. Of which classic 19^th century novel is Raskolnikov the protagonist?
A. Crime and Punishment.
10. Who composed the oratorio The Creation?
A. Haydn.


Science & Nature
1. Which chemical element has the atomic number 48 and symbol Cd?
A. Cadmium.
2. Which chemical element has the atomic number 34 and the symbol Se?
A. Selenium.
3. What name is given to a hernia caused by the protrusion of the upper part of the stomach into the thorax through a tear or weakness in the diaphragm?
A. A Hiatus or hiatal hernia.
4. What name is given to the series of muscular contractions which propel food through the digestive tract?
A. Peristalsis. (Also accept catastalsis).
5. In which scientific field did Mary Anning of Lyme Regis (1799 – 1847) achieve fame?
A. Palaeontology (accept any answer which refers to fossils).
6. What name, commemorating a 19^th Century naturalist, is given to the line dividing Asian fauna from Australasian?
A. The Wallace Line.
7. Greater Spotted, Lesser Spotted and North Island Brown are 3 of the 5 types of which flightless bird?
A. Kiwi.
8. Which seabird has varieties called sooty and arctic?
A. Tern.
Supplementaries:
9. How is the Nuffield Radio Astronomy laboratory better known?
A. Jodrell Bank.
10. What type of rock is formed by the cooling of molten rock from within the Earth?
A. Igneous.
Dining Out
1. From which country does Tokay wine come?
A. Hungary.
2. What name is given to the chilled soup made mainly from potatoes, leeks, onions and cream?
A. Vichyssoise.
3. What meat is used in the Chinese dish char siu?
A. (Roast) pork.
4. What, in a Tapas bar, are albòndigas?
A. Meat balls.
5. What is the popular English name for the Indian fish dish bumallo?
A. Bombay Duck.
6. What is the main ingredient of the Swedish dish gravad lax?
A. Salmon.
7. What name is given to the thick Scottish soup whose main ingredients are smoked haddock, potatoes and onions?
A. Cullen skink.
8. From which country does Pinotage wine come?
A. South Africa.
Supplementaries:
9. What in an Italian restaurant are grissini?
A. Bread sticks.
10. What is the difference between prosciutto crudo and prosciutto cotto?
A. One is raw, the other cooked.
General Knowledge
1. Liverpool has three universities; Liverpool and John Moores are two, what is the third?
A. Hope.
2. What is meant by “French leave”?
A. Leave of absence without permission.
3. What is the fictional setting of Anthony Hope’s 1894 novel The Prisoner of Zenda?
A. Ruritania.
4. Which European monarch abdicated in April, 2013, after 33 years on the throne?
A. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.
5. What appears in the centre of the flag of Cyprus?
A. A map of Cyprus.
6. In which constellation would you find the stars Betelgeuse and Rigel?
A. Orion.
7. In Trigonometry the three most common functions are sine, cosine and what?
A. Tangent.
8. 9 missing episodes of Dr. Who were recently found in which African country?
A. Nigeria.
9. Who is the current Shadow Foreign Secretary?
A. Douglas Alexander.
10. Which people sought to escape British control in the 1830s by embarking on the Great Trek?
A. The Boers, or Afrikaaners.
11. Where, according to tradition, did Horace Greeley suggest that a young man should go to make a better life for himself?
A. West.
12. Which US city fields sports teams called Seahawks and Mariners?
A. Seattle. (American football and Baseball).
13. According to the Gospel account, who was the brother of Martha and Mary?
A. Lazarus.
14. Who or what is the character “Richard Parker” in the book and film The Life of Pi?
A. A tiger (in the life-raft).
15. Which country’s national anthem is sung in five different languages?
A. South Africa.
16. Rwanda is a former colony of which country?
A. Belgium.
17. In the nursery rhyme “I had a little nut tree” name either of the two items which grew on the tree.
A. A silver nutmeg or a golden pear.
18. What was the nickname of the jazz saxophonist Julian Edwin Adderley?
A. Cannonball.
19. In Magritte’s painting The Son of Man, What is covering the face of the man in the bowler hat?
A. An apple.
20. Who directed and starred in the 1960 film The Alamo?
A. John Wayne.
21. Which is the deepest lake in England?
A. Wast Water. (258 ft or 79 metres).
22. By what name is Dvořàk’s 9^th symphony popularly known?
A. From the New World. (Accept “the New World”).
23. With which field of the arts were Sir Robert Helpmann and Sir Frederick Ashton principally associated?
A. Ballet.
24. In which Shakespeare play would you hear reference to “the winter of our discontent”?
A. Richard III.
25. Who was the winner of the 2013 Open Golf Championship?
A. Phil Mickelson.
26. Who is the Governor of the Bank of England?
A. Mark Carney.
27. What kind of creature is Fuleco, the mascot for the 2014 World Cup?
A. A three-banded armadillo – accept armadillo.
28. Which territory, still in British hands, was acquired by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713?
A. Gibraltar. (Britain also acquired Minorca, but that has since been returned to Spain.
29. What is meant by postponing something “until the Greek Kalends”?
A. Putting it off altogether (the Greek dating system didn’t use Kalends).
30. What honorary political title is held by Sir Peter Tapsell?
A. Father of the House of Commons.
31. The Battles of Quebec and Plassey were actions in which 18^th century war?
A. The Seven Years War.
32. Based on the derivation of its name, of what material is the xylophone made?
A. Wood. (The Greek word xylon means wood).
33. In which Staffordshire town is the country’s tallest war memorial, the Nicholson War Memorial?
A. Leek.
34. Holden Caulfield is the protagonist of which 20^th Century novel?
A. The Catcher in the Rye.
35. Which popular name is given to the houseplant St. Paulia?
A. African Violet.
36. In heraldry what kind of creature is a Talbot?
A. A good-mannered hunting dog. (Accept dog).
37. With which instrument would you associate the jazz musician Oscar Peterson?
A. The piano.
38. Which international footballer, after his country was knocked out of the World Cup, declared that he wouldn’t be watching the finals as without him they wouldn’t be worth watching?
A. Zlatan Ibrahimovich (Sweden).
39. In geography/geology, what is a tombolo?
A. A narrow spit or strip of land connecting an island to neighbouring land. Accept isthmus, spit or bar as reasonable answers.
40. The formula V = πr²h (Pi r squared times height )enables you to calculate what?
A. The volume of a cylinder.
41. Which supermarket chain was awarded supermarket of the year for 2013 by Which magazine?
A. Aldi.
42. Which classic Science Fiction film features a space craft which shares its name with the title of a novel by Joseph Conrad?
A. Alien. (The space craft and novel are called Nostromo).
43. Which major Allied offensive of World War 2 began on 23^rd October, 1942?
A. El Alamein, or Operation Lightfoot. (Strictly, the 2^nd Battle of El Alamein).
44. According to tradition, who is king in the Kingdom of the Blind?
A. The one-eyed man.
45. The name of which mountain completes the title of this book by Ernest Hemingway: The Snows of.....?
A. Kilimanjaro.
46. Edinburgh has three universities; Edinburgh and Napier are two, what is the third?
A. Herriott-Watt.
47. Who is the current Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police?
A. Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe.
48. What was the maiden name of the Tennis player Evonne Cawley?
A. Goolagong.
49. Which British physicist was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2013 for a theoretical discovery recently confirmed by experiments with CERN’s Large Hadron Collider?
A. Peter Higgs.
50. Which Chelsea player was sent off last year for kicking ball boy Charlie Morgan?
A. Eden Hazard.
51. Carioca is the name given to an inhabitant of which South American city?
A. Rio de Janeiro.
52. From which musical do the songs “One Night in Bangkok” and “I know him So Well” come?
A. Chess.
53. In which constellation would you find the star Aldebaran, and the star cluster, the Pleiades?
A. Taurus.
54. Which English town has railway stations named North Western and Wallgate?
A. Wigan.
55. Which super group of the 1970s had hit albums including Tarkus, Pictures at an Exhibition and Brain Salad Surgery?
A. Emerson, Lake and Palmer (accept ELP).
56. Recently sold for $142 million, a triptych by Francis Bacon consists of three studies of which artist friend of Bacon?
A. Lucian Freud.
57. Which Roman general, whose son-in-law and biographer was the historian Tacitus, served as governor of the province of Britannia from 77 – 85 AD, greatly extending Roman rule into the north?
A. (Gnaeus Julius) Agricola.
58. “We were eyeball to eyeball and I think the other guy just blinked”. This was US Secretary of State Dean Rusk’s comment on which event of 1962?
A. The Cuban Missile Crisis.
59. With what is the Chilcot Enquiry concerned?
A. Britain’s involvement in the Iraq War.
60. Which canal provides a short cut from the Clyde estuary to the Inner Hebrides avoiding the long detour around the Kintyre Peninsula?
A. The Crinan Canal.
61. The oldest alliance in world diplomacy still in force was signed in 1373 between England and Which country?
A. Portugal.
62. In Greek myth, which nymph was punished by Hera for her relationship with Zeus by being deprived of speech, except to repeat what others said?
A. Echo.
63. Which US city fields sports teams called Steelers and Pirates?
A. Pittsburgh. (American football and Baseball).
64. Who is the current leader of the House of Commons?
A. Andrew Lansley.
65. In 2008 Kate Winslet won her first Best Actress Oscar for which film?
A. The Reader.
66. Which Lake District town is famous for its Mint Cake?
A. Kendal.
67. According to the saying, what are fine words unable to do?
A. Butter parsnips. (“Fine words butter no parsnips”).
68. According to Ralph Waldo Emerson, the nation will beat a path to your door, if you build a better what?
A. Mousetrap.
69. What was the maiden name of the Tennis player Billie-Jean King?
Moffit.
70. Which major Allied offensive of World War 2 began on 17^th September, 1944?
A. Arnhem, or Operation Market Garden.
71. Which hero of Greek myth was married to Medea?
A. Jason.
72. Which American singer/songwriter/guitarist, who died in April this year, was the opening act of the legendary Woodstock Festival of 1969?
A. Richie Havens.
73. Which poet wrote “fools rush in where angels fear to tread”?
A. Alexander Pope. (An Essay on Criticism).
74. What appears in the centre of the flag of India?
A. A wheel.
75. In which Irish county are the Mountains of Mourne?
A. County Down.
76. What is the fictional setting of James Hilton’s 1933 novel The Lost Horizon?
A. Shangri La.
77. In the financial acronym LIBOR what does the letter I stand for?
A. Interbank.
78. Who was the first person to win £1 million on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
A. Judith Keppel.
79. In heraldry what kind of creature is a Martlet?
A. A bird.
80. What is the name of the game in which players take turns to remove a block from a tower and balance it on top, creating a taller and increasingly unstable structure as the game progresses?
A. Jenga.
81. By what name is Beethoven’s 6^th symphony popularly known?
A. The Pastoral Symphony.
82. Which climbling plant, often cultivated as an ornamental garden evergreen, has the botanical name “hedera helix”?
A. Ivy.
83. From which musical do the songs “Love Changes Everything” and “The First Man you Remember” come?
A. Aspects of Love.
84. Which supermarket chain has the advertising tagline “Every little helps”?
A. Tesco.
85. The original Star Trek series was set in which century?
A. The 23^rd.
86. For achievement in which field is the Stirling Prize awarded?
A. Architecture.
87. What is the subtitle of the second film in the Hobbit series, released in December, 2013?
A. The Desolation of Smaug.
88. Which Roman general defeated Hannibal and the Carthaginians at the Battle of Zama, 202 BC?
A. (Publius Cornelius) Scipio. (Given the title Africanus by the Senate in honour of his victory).
89. When Churchill declared that an Iron Curtain had fallen across Europe he said it stretched between two cities. Name either.
A, Stettin (in the Baltic) and Trieste (in the Adriatic).
90. Which bank promotes itself with the slogan “the World’s local bank”?
A. HSBC.
91. What is the name of the BBC drama series starring Matthew Macfadyen and Jerome Flynn as Victorian police officers investigating murderous goings-on in Whitechapel?
A. Ripper Street.
92. The beetle known as Spanish fly produces a substance called cantharidin; for what has this traditionally mainly been used?
A. As an aphrodisiac.
93. How long is a US senator’s term of office?
A. 6 years.
94. According to nursery rhyme tradition, where would you go to see a fine lady with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes?
A. Banbury Cross.
95. Kingsley Amis, Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver and now William Boyd have all written novels featuring which protagonist?
A. James Bond.
96. According to the Gospel account, who was the mother of John the Baptist?
A. Elizabeth.
Supplementaries:
97. What is considered to be the native language spoken by Jesus?
A. Aramaic.
98. In what field is a Sommelier a specialist or expert?
A. Wine.
99. El Al is the national airline of which country?
A. Israel.
100. What is the meaning of a road sign showing a red car to the right of a black car in a red circle?
A. No overtaking.
101. Driving Ambition is the autobiography of which former England cricket captain?
A. Andrew Strauss.
102. Name either of the two main ingredients of Bubble and Squeak.
A. Cabbage and Potatoes.
103. Which football league side did Macclesfield Town recently beat 4 – 0 in the FA Cup?
A. Swindon Town.
104. Which borough of New York City is named after a city in the Netherlands?
A. Haarlem.