The Quiz Club presents

Around the World in 80 Minutes

By Pratyush Mahapatra

Rules

• There are a total of 25 questions in the first round• Each question contains one mark• Giving hints is completely at the discretion of the quiz master • Six teams progress to the final round• No Grammar Nazis here

1. Identify the location (a toughie to start with)

2. Construction on this site began in 1882, and though progress slowed after the creator’s death in 1926, it continues today. The projected year of completion is 2026, exactly a century after the creator’s death. Identify the city where this is based.

3. Where would you have been able to see this (if you would have gone there at the right time)?Need a very specific answer!!

4. Identify the stadium

• It is the largest football specific stadium in the world. It has the honour of being the only stadium in the world to have hosted two FIFA World Cup Finals. In the 1970 World Cup final, Brazil defeated Italy 4–1 and in the 1986 World Cup final, Argentina defeated West Germany 3–2. It also hosted the 1986 quarter-final between Argentina and England in which Diego Maradona scored both the "Hand of God goal" and the "Goal of the Century". The stadium also hosted the "Game of the Century", when Italy defeated West Germany 4–3 in extra time in one of the 1970 semifinals. • Picture in the next slide

5. Identify the place

6. An only international airport where the main road crosses the airport runway. Identify the place.(Video coming up, look for clues :P )

7. What am I talking about?

• A region of vital strategic importance. About 80 miles wide, it is bordered by four other countries.• It takes its name from its shape when viewed on a Map.• It was the scene of a major confrontation in 1962 between India and

China.• Hint: Part of an animal

8. Identify the fictional city that has been inspired from this• Mont Saint-Michel is an island commune in Normandy, France. It is located approximately

one kilometre (0.6 miles) off the country's northwestern coast, at the mouth of the Couesnon River near Avranches. 247 acres (100 ha) in size, the island has a population of 44 (2009).

• The island has held strategic fortifications since ancient times, and since the eighth century AD has been the seat of the monastery from which it draws its name. The structural composition of the town exemplifies the feudal society that constructed it. On top God, the abbey and monastery, below this the Great halls, then stores and housing, and at the bottom, outside the walls, fishermen and farmers' housing.

• Its unique position of being an island only 600 metres from land made it readily accessible on low tide to the many pilgrims to its abbey Equally, this position made it readily defensible as an incoming tide stranded, or drowned, would be assailants. By capitalising on this natural defence.

• This city inspired a very famous fictional city.

9. How do we know this place better?• Alnwick Castle is a castle and stately home in the town of the same

name in the English county of Northumberland. It is the seat of the Duke of Northumberland, built following the Norman conquest, and renovated and remodelled a number of times. It is a Grade I listed building and receives over 800,000 visitors per year.• We know it all too well for another reason.

10. Where would you find this bridge and what significance does it hold?• The Aloi Bridge is an unusual "T"-shaped three-way bridge originally

constructed in 1932. Because of its shape, it was easily recognized from the air. • It sustained heavy damage during 1945. After that, the bridge was

repaired and remained in service for nearly four decades, before it was replaced by a new bridge (built as a replica) in 1983. A surviving portion of a floor girder from the original bridge was subsequently donated to a Peace Memorial Museum.• The bridge was used as a reference for something.

11. Identify the city where this is located

This is a plaque commemorating the spot of a very important historical event.

12. How do we know it today?

• Tenochtitlan was an Aztec city-state located on an island in Lake Texcoco, in the Valley of Mexico. Founded in 1325, it became the capital of the expanding Mexica Empire in the 15th century, until captured by the Spanish in 1521. • At its peak, it was the largest city in the Pre-Colombian Americas. It

subsequently became a cabecera of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. • Traditionally, its name was thought to come from Nahuatl tetl ("rock") and

nōchtli ("prickly pear") and is often thought to mean "Among the prickly pears rocks". Tenochtitlan was one of two altepetl (city-states) on the island, the other being Tlatelolco. The city was closely tied with its sister city, which was largely dependent on the market of Tlatelolco, the most important site of commerce in the area

13. Identify X

• Hiram Bingham, formally Hiram Bingham III, was an academic, explorer, treasure hunter and politician from the United States.

• He was a part of the Yale Peruvian Expedition of 1911. On July 24, 1911, Melchor Arteaga led Bingham to X, which had been largely forgotten by everybody except the small number of people living in the immediate valley (possibly including two local missionaries named Thomas Payne and Stuart McNairn whose descendants claim that they had already climbed to the ruins in 1906). Also the Cusco explorers Enrique Palma, Gabino Sanchez and Agustín Lizarraga are said to have arrived at the site in 1901.

• Bingham returned to Peru in 1912 and 1915 with the support of Yale and the National Geographic Society.

• Because of Bingham’s discovery X has become one of the major tourist attractions in South America, The switchback-filled road that carries tourist buses to the site from the Urubamba River is called the Hiram Bingham Highway.

• Bingham has been cited as one possible basis for the "Indiana Jones" character. His book Lost City of the Incas became a bestseller upon its publication in 1948.

The pic shows the Hiram Bingham Highway

14. Name the monument and the city where it is located.• It was built in 1591 CE and is a monument and mosque. • There are two theories regarding this monument. The first one is, “It was built

at the center of the city, to commemorate the eradication of plague, as the Shah had prayed for the end of a plague that was ravaging his city and vowed to build a Mosque at the very place where he prayed.”• The other theory given by Jean de Thévenot (French traveller of the 17th

century) whose narration was complemented through the available Persian texts, the monument was constructed in the year 1591 CE, to commemorate the beginning of the second Islamic millennium year (1000 AH), the event was celebrated in the far and width of the Islamic world, thus the Shah founded the capital city in the year 1591 to celebrated the event of millennium year (1000 AH) with the construction of the monument.

15. Identify X

• The Wall is a huge structure of ice, stone and magic on the northern border of the Seven Kingdoms. It is home to the Night's Watch, a brotherhood sworn to protect the realms of men from the threats beyond the Wall. The Wall was inspired by Martin's visit to X. Looking out over the hills, Martin wondered what a Roman centurion from the Mediterranean would feel, not knowing what threats might come from the north. This experience was so profound that a decade later, in 1991, he wanted to "write a story about the people guarding the end of the world", and ultimately "the things that come out of the [fictional] north are a good deal more terrifying.”

16. Identify X

• X is the name of a Muisca tribal chief who covered himself with gold dust and, as an initiation rite, dove into the Guatavita Lake.

• Later, it became the name of a legendary city, that fascinated explorers since the days of the Spanish Conquistadors. No evidence for its existence has been found.

• Imagined as a place, it became a kingdom, an empire, and a city of this legendary king. • In pursuit of the legend, Francisco Orellana and Gonzalo Pizarro departed from Quito in

1541 in an expedition towards the Amazon Basin, as a result of which Orellana became the first person known to have navigated the Amazon River along substantially its entire length.

• The original narrative is to be found in the rambling chronicle, El Carnero, of Juan Rodriguez Freyle. According to Freyle, the king or chief priest of the Muisca was said to be ritually covered with gold dust at a religious festival held in Lake Guatavita, near present-day Bogotá Colombia.

17. Identify the place

• It is mentioned in Rigveda and the Avesta. The Rigveda praises it as an ideal city, a vision of paradise set in the mountains. • The area in which it sits was ruled by the Medes before falling to the

Achaemenids. There is a reference to a settlement by the rulers of the Achaemenid Empire, which may be the basis for the future use of the name by Ptolemy.• It became a centre of Zoroastrianism followed by Buddhism and Hinduism.• Alexander the Great explored the valley after his conquest of the Achaemenid

Empire in 330 BC but no record has been made of the city, which may have been only a small town and not worth writing about.• The region became part of the Seleucid Empire but was later gifted to the Indian

Maurya Empire.

18. What are we talking about?

• On the cliff face of a mountain nearby, three colossal statues were carved 4,000 feet apart. One of them was 175 feet (53 m) high standing statue, the world's tallest. The ancient statue was carved during the Kushan period in the fifth century.

• The statues were destroyed by the Taliban in March 2001, on the grounds that they were an affront to Islam. Limited efforts have been made to rebuild them, with negligible success.

• At one time, two thousand monks meditated in caves among the sandstone cliffs. • The caves were also a big tourist attraction before the long series of wars in Afghanistan. • The world's earliest oil paintings have been discovered in caves behind the partially

destroyed colossal statues. Scientists from the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility have confirmed that the oil paintings, probably of either walnut or poppy seed oil, are present in 12 of the 50 caves dating from the 5th to 9th century.

• Picture in next slide

19. Identify this city

• According to the Lonely Planet's ranking, it is also among the world's top ten destinations for urban nightlife.

• The International Sea Trade Port, sheltered by the islands of the Archipelago to the east and the Absheron Peninsula to the north, is capable of handling two million tons of general and dry bulk cargoes per year. It hosted the 57th Eurovision Song Contest in 2012 and will host the 2015 European Games.

• Modi's got inspired when he came to this city which he visited just before becoming Gujarat CM in 2001.

• The city has produced eight grandmasters, including Garry Kasparov. And there is a mass initiation into chess at a very young age.

• Yanar Dag, is a natural gas fire which blazes continuously on a hillside on the Absheron Peninsula near the city.

• The city also has the Ateshgah or "Fire Temple" which is a castle-like religious structure. It is one of the most important centers of Zoroastrianism in the history.

20. Connect :P

21.Which place is this?

22. Identify this place (Hint: One of the most well preserved Roman towns)

23. What was the name of the campaign?• In 2009, Tourism Queensland promoted the Great Barrier Reef as a global tourism

destination with a website encouraging people worldwide to apply for X, to be a "Caretaker of the Islands" to "house-sit" the islands of the Great Barrier Reef for half a year, based on Hamilton Island.

• Benefits included a large salary, free lodging in a multi-million dollar villa, and transportation there and around the islands. The application process required a web video to be submitted, available publicly for consideration for the position. The duties listed were primarily publicity-related with web videos, blogging, and photo diaries. The submission web site crashed two days following the launch of the campaign, from excessive visits and application video uploading.

• By the campaign's end, it has generated more than $200 million in global publicity value for Tourism Queensland. Brisbane advertising agency CumminsNitro was awarded three top awards at the Cannes International Advertising Festival. The campaign was acknowledged as very successful

24. Identify X

• X is mentioned in Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written in c. 360 BC. In Plato's story, X represents the antagonist naval power that, despite ruling many parts of Western Europe and Northern Africa, suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of “Ancient Athens”, the pseudo-historic embodiment of the Plato's ideal state. The tale, one of many such stories in Plato's work, serves as an allegory for a nation's fate due to hubris.

• While present-day philologists and historians unanimously accept the story's fictional character, there is still debate on its origins. Similarly to the story of Gyges, some scholars argue in favor of inspiration from older traditions, in particular Egyptian records of the Thera eruption, the Sea Peoples invasion, or the Trojan War. Others reject this chain of tradition as implausible and insist that Plato designed the story from scratch, drawing loose inspiration from contemporary events like the failed Athenian invasion of Sicily in 415–413 BC, or the destruction of Helike in 373 BC.

• Most of the historically proposed locations are in or near the Mediterranean Sea: islands such as Sardinia, Crete, Santorini, Sicily, Cyprus, and Malta; land-based cities or states such as Troy, Tartessos, and Tantalus (in the province of Manisa, Turkey); Israel-Sinai or Canaan; and northwestern Africa.

25. How do we know the city these days?• New Amsterdam was a 17th-century Dutch settlement established and which served as the

seat of the colonial government in the New Netherland territory. It was renamed in 1665 in honor of after English forces seized control along with the rest of the Dutch colony.

• The settlement, outside of Fort Amsterdam in the New Netherland (1614–1664), was a provincial extension of the Dutch Republic as of 1624. Situated on the strategic, fortifiable southern tip of the island, the fort was meant to defend the Dutch West India Company's fur trade operations in the North River. Fort Amsterdam was designated the capital of the province in 1625.

• The 1625 date of the founding of New Amsterdam is now commemorated in the official Seal of the City. (Formerly, the year on the seal was 1664, the year of the provisional Articles of Transfer, assuring New Netherlanders that they "shall keep and enjoy the liberty of their consciences in religion").

• Long considered a dysfunctional trading post by the English who took it over, historical research has found that the city indeed left its cultural marks on the later city.

See you at Pearl!!