Wednesday 26 September 2007

THE 41st QUIZ

Another short one today. I've been busy writing my weekly quiz for my local. I think the landlord wants it to be a permanent thing - he intimated that he's fed up with me winning every week. At least if I'm writing it, I can't win.

Anyway, to the quiz:


1. Although Podgorica is its de facto capital, which city is designated as Prijestonica, or the old royal capital, of Montenegro?
2. Which transition metal of the platinum group was named in 1803 by William Hyde Wollaston after an asteroid that had been discovered the previous year?
3. Declared one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers, what collective name has been given to the dams, sluices, locks, dikes and storm surge barriers built in the southwest of the Netherlands between 1950 and 1997?
4. Who was Commander-in-Chief of the British Grand Fleet at the Battle of Jutland in 1916?
5. The first major combat operation in NATO's history was a sustained air campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 30th August to 20th September 1995. What was the NATO codename given to the campaign?
6. South Africa has three capital cities, which city is the judicial capital?
7. Established in 1602, which city’s stock exchange is considered to be the world’s oldest?
8. Remembered as the founder of seismology, which English astronomer and geologist published ‘Essay on the Causes and Phenomena of Earthquakes’ in 1760, in which he described earthquakes as wave motions in the Earth’s interior created by layers of rocks rubbing against one another?
9. Who became the first king of a united Norway after the Battle of Hafrsfjord, probably fought in 872AD?
10. In Robert Louis Stevenson's novella ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde’, what was Dr Jeckyll's first name?
11. Painted in the 1660s, ‘Self Portrait as a Lutenist’ shows which Dutch genre painter sitting cross-legged on a chair playing a lute?
12. Which are the only two groups beginning with the letter ‘Z’ to have had more than one UK top ten hit?
13. The Riigikogu is the name given to the unicameral parliament of which country?
14. By what name was the American painter Anna Mary Robertson better known?
15. Meaning ‘book language’ and used by around 85% of the population, which is the most commonly used of the two official written standards of Norwegian, the other being Nynorsk?
16. A young murderer, who is the title character of a 1944 French novel who briefly lived with a drag queen called Divine and a pimp called Darling Daintyfoot before being arrested and tried, and executed?
17. It is often claimed that Milton based his ‘Paradise Lost’ partly on ‘Lucifer’ and ‘Adam in Ballingschap’, works by which Dutch author and playwright?
18. Which 18th Century French physician is known as the 'father of modern dentistry'?
19. Killed at the Battle of Fitjar in 961AD, who was the first Christian King of Norway?
20. Which oddly-named city in Alberta was described by Rudyard Kipling as "all hell for a basement" referring to the vast reserves of natural gas beneath it and is thus known colloquially as the Gas City?


And the answers:


1. CETINJE
2. PALLADIUM
3. DELTA WORKS
4. ADMIRAL JELLICOE
5. OPERATION DELIBERATE FORCE
6. BLOEMFONTEIN
7. AMSTERDAM
8. JOHN MICHELL
9. HARALD FAIRHAIR
10. HENRY
11. JAN STEEN
12. ZZ TOP & THE ZUTONS
13. ESTONIA
14. GRANDMA MOSES
15. BOKMÃ…L
16. OUR LADY OF FLOWERS
17. JOOST VAN DEN VONDEL
18. PIERRE FAUCHARD
19. HAAKON I (or HAAKON THE GOOD)
20. MEDICINE HAT

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