Sponsors

Q1. Hercule Poirot, the brilliant Belgian detective, uses two common phrases in his vocabulary : "the little ______" and "order and method“. He boasts to his best friend, Arthur Hastings, that he could solve a case simply by sitting in an easy chair and using his "little ______“. Poirot's reliance on his "little ______" is modelled on Edgar Allan Poe's fictional French detective C.Auguste Dupin, who uses "ratiocination“. Little ______ is also the name of the fan listing dedicated to the character.

Grey Cells.

Q2. Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) is the main circumferential road and highway of a capital city. It is an important commuting artery between the northern and southern parts of the metropolitan area. It figures prominently in the recent history of the nation for being the site of two peaceful demonstrations that toppled the administration of two presidents the People Power Revolution of 1986 against X and the EDSA Revolution of 2001 against Y. Four months later it witnessed protests after the arrest of Y which led to siege of the presidential palace by the supporters of Y which is sometimes called EDSA III. However it failed to topple the president and is considered a failure. Identify X and Y.

X – Ferdinand MarcosY – Joseph Estrada

Q3. The Tower of London was briefly used as the first _______ in the reign of Charles II. The king ordered the removal of ravens following a complaint by John Flamsteed, the person in charge. Charles was then told of the legend that if the ravens ever leave the Tower of London, the White Tower, the monarchy, and the entire kingdom would fall. Charles, following the time of the English Civil War, superstition or not, was not prepared to take the chance, and instead had the _______ moved to X. What?

Royal Observatory to Greenwich.

Q4. Cândido Godói in Brazil has a very high birthrate of twin children, nearly one in five pregnancies. The town's official crest shows two identical profiles and a road sign welcomes visitors to a "Farming Community and Land of the Twins". There is also a museum, the House of the Twins. According to geneticists, the most likely explanation is genetic isolation and inbreeding. Argentine historian Jorge Camarasa attributes this to X, a medical practitioner in Buenos Aires in 1950's. X "had a reputation as a specialist in abortions," and was detained on one occasion for the death of a patient. X was the subject of The Boys from Brazil, a 1976 thriller novel by Ira Levin which was later made into a film in 1978 starring Laurence Olivier, James Mason & Gregory Peck. Identify X.

Doctor Josef Mengele

Q5. The February 19, 1861 edition of the New York World recounted the meeting as follows :"At Westfield an interesting incident occurred. ….. To-day, on reaching the place, he related the incident, and said that if that young lady was in the crowd he should be glad to see her. There was a momentary commotion, in the midst of which an old man, struggling through the crowd, approached, leading his daughter, a girl of apparently twelve or thirteen years of age, whom he introduced to X as his Westfield correspondent. X stooped down and kissed the child, and talked with her for some minutes. Her advice had not been thrown away upon the rugged chieftain.”Who meeting whom?

Abraham Lincoln meeting Grace Bedell.“Shortly after his nomination Mr. Lincoln had received from that place a letter from a little girl, who urged him, as a means of improving his personal appearance, to wear whiskers. Mr. Lincoln at the time replied, stating that although he was obliged by the suggestion, he feared his habits of life were too fixed to admit of even so slight a change as that which letting his beard grow involved.”

Q6. This is a ceremony practiced by a number of Native American tribes. The Canadian Government outlawed it in 1880, and the United States government followed suit in 1904. However, the ceremony is now again fully legal and is still practiced in the United States and Canada. A town in Crook County, Wyoming and a ski resort located on Mount Timpanogos in Utah's Wasatch Range owned by Robert Redford are named after it.

Sun Dance after which Sundance City & Sundance Kid are named.

Q7. No. 617 Squadron of the Royal Air Force was formed for the specific task of attacking Möhne, Eder and Sorpe in Germany in 1943. The operation was codenamed Chastise. The World War II exploits of the squadron were described in Paul Brickhill's 1951 book and a 1954 film both named after their nickname. Identify the nickname.

Dam Busters.

Q8. On 10 December 1956, he brought only his daughter Elizabeth to _______ ceremony. His two sons James and William were studying at Harvard University, and he didn't want to disrupt their studies. King Gustav VI scolded him because of this, and he assured the King that the next time he would bring all his children to the ceremony. In 1972 he did bring all his children to the ceremony. Who?

John Bardeen at the Nobel Prize ceremony. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics twice in 1956 & 1972.

Q9. This anecdote is one of the most popular stories ever. It was part of a book of stories titled The Life of ________ (1800) authored by Parson Weems, an American printer and author, that made ________ a legendary figure. Weems called him "the greatest man that ever lived". The historical reliability of the work is questionable. Another story attributed to ________ is throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac River. Which anecdote?

George Washington and the cherry tree anecdote. "I cannot tell a lie, I did it with my little hatchet”.

Q10. During World War II, the Soviet Union attacked Finland in November 1939, in the Winter War. The Soviet Foreign Minister claimed in radio broadcasts that Russia was not dropping bombs in Finland, but merely airlifting food to starving Finns. The Finns soon renamed the RRAB-3 cluster bomb “_______ bread basket“. The Finns responded with X, first designed during the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War, as "a drink to go with the food“. They were mass-produced by the Alko corporation, the national alcoholic beverage retailing monopoly in Finland, at its Rajamäki distillery. Identify X.

Molotov cocktail (petrol bomb) named after the Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov.

Q11.Herzogenaurach in Bavaria, Germany is situated on the Aurach River. From 1948, the town is split in two like a sort of mini Berlin. The two brothers involved never reconciled and although both are buried in the same cemetery, they are spaced apart as far as possible. “Sneaker Wars” is a book on the rivalry written by Barbara Smit. Name the rivals.

Adidas & Puma

Q12. _____ _____ was created by friends as a humorous tribute to the enormous output of X, one of the most prolific modern writers of mathematical papers. _____ _____was first defined by Casper Goffman, an analyst whose own _____ _____ is 1, in a 1969 article entitled "And what is your _____ _____?".

Erdős number, honoring the late Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős.

Q13. It is used in US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and a few other countries and is the result of Frederick McKay investigating the cause of the Colorado Brown Stain for thirty years. World Health Organization suggests 0.5 to 1.0 mg/L of ______. In the UK, the Green Party refers to ______ as a poison, claim that it violates Article 35 of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, is banned by the UK poisons act of 1972, violates Articles 3 and 8 of the Human Rights Act and raises issues under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Conspiracy theories claim that it was motivated by protecting the U.S. atomic bomb program from litigation, that it is part of a Communist or New World Order plot to take over the world, that it was pioneered by a German chemical company to make people submissive to those in power, that it is backed by the sugar or aluminum or phosphate industries, or that it is a smokescreen to cover failure to provide dental care to the poor.

Water Fluoridation

Q14. It is situated in the city center of Amsterdam and is estimated to be 150 to 170 years old . In 1993, the city of Amsterdam spent €160,000 on a soil sanitation program to save it. For the past several years it has been battling fungus and moth infestation. In 2007 the Borough Amsterdam Centrum declared that it had to be removed due to the risk that it could otherwise fall down. This was revoked by a court hearing after stability tests by Boom-KCB, an engineering firm. A supporting structure was constructed in May 2008, designed to make it possible for it to survive at least five more years. What?

The Anne Frank tree, a horse-chestnut tree featured in Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl.

Q15. In the Roman Catholic tradition, Joseph is the patron saint of workers and protector of the universal Catholic Church. Christians teachings and stories relating to Joseph frequently stress his patience, persistence, and hard work as admirable qualities which believers should adopt. For this reason, he is considered "model of workers”. The Feast of St. Joseph the Worker was introduced by Pope Pius XII in 1955 to be celebrated on ____.

May 1 coinciding with International Workers' Day.

Q16. X achieved distinction as a horticulturist, statesman,

architect, archaeologist, paleontologist, author, inventor and founder of the University of Virginia. X was described as "the walking, talking embodiment of the Enlightenment, a polymath whose list of achievements is as long as it is incredibly varied." When President John F. Kennedy welcomed forty-nine Nobel Prize winners to the White House in 1962 he said, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House — with the possible exception of when X dined alone."

Thomas Jefferson

Q17. The emblem of the Italian Navy is composed of a shield, whose four parts depict coats of arms of Amalfi (on blue field, white cross), Pisa (on red field, white cross), Genoa (on white field, red cross) and Venice (a golden winged lion wielding a sword). They were collectively called _______ ________ a reference to their form of government and their naval supremacy.

The Repubbliche Marinare or "Maritime Republics"

Q18. The Assize of Bread and Ale was a 13th-century

statute instituted during the reign of Henry III that set standards of quality, measurement, and pricing for bakers and brewers. It was the first law in British history to regulate the production and sale of food. Those who were found to have shortchanged customers were liable to severe punishment like losing a hand to an axe. What practice began as a guard against this punishment?

Baker's dozen. The practice of baking 13 items for an intended dozen was to prevent "short measure", on the basis that one of the 13 could be lost, eaten, burnt, or ruined in some way, leaving the baker with the original dozen.

Q19. His name literally meant "the one who comes in, with peace“.

He was an Egyptian polymath, who served under the Third Dynasty king, Djoser, as chancellor to the pharaoh and high priest of the sun god Ra at Heliopolis. He is considered to be the first engineer, architect and physician in history known by name. He was one of only a few commoners ever to be accorded divine status after death. He was also revered as a poet and philosopher. Sir William Osler, calls him the real 'Father of Medicine‘. His is the first entry in Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. Who?

Imhotep, on whom The Mummy (1999) & The Mummy Returns (2001) are based.

Q20. It was officially created on April 18, 1923 on Felix

Dzerzhinsky's initiative and under the sponsorship of the State Political Directorate (GPU), the Soviet political police, the predecessor of KGB, NKVD and MVD. The name meant "Power in Motion“. This term was coined by German inventor Ernst Werner von Siemens. It was initially based in Moscow but later spread to other Soviet cities including Tbilisi, Kyiv and Minsk. In 1937 it was awarded the Order of Lenin. Many of its members were formally ranked MVD or KGB officers. What?

Dynamo Sports Club.