I dislike the term trivia. No
knowledge is trivial. All information contributes to the whole of an
intelligent human being. And, it is an essential part of critical thinking.
That is why I did not call this a Trivia Quiz. Instead, I am calling
it a Knowledge
Quiz.
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* * *
Knowledge Quiz, No. 55
The answers are at the bottom.
1.In which war
did the United States fight Canada?
2.Why did Ida Straus give up her space on a Titanic lifeboat?
3.Who created the plan for the for the Bay of Pigs invasion
of Cuba?
4.In which country do jails have no prison guard,
gates or uniforms?
5.Who killed John Lennon?
6.How old
was Mozart when he wrote his first symphony?
7.Which of Earth's oceans is the smallest and
shallowest?
8.What was the
first human organ to be successfully transplanted?
9. How much did the U.S. pay
to buy Alaska from Russia?
10.In what language was most of the New
Testament of the Bible written?
11.What is Art Deco?
12.In which play by William Shakespeare do the
following characters appear: Iago, Desdemona, Michael Cassio and Bianca?
13. What Federal badge did President Richard
Nixon give to Elvis Presley?
14. Who is the current Emperor of Japan?
15. What is onomatopoeia?
16. What is the capital of Liberia?
17. Who painted the painting, Girl
with the Pearl Earring?
18. Who was the first Russian Tsar?
19. What is a parable?
20. Who wrote the classical music piece, The
Four Seasons?
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Answers
1. During the War of 1812, U.S. forces invaded Canada. U.S.
President James Madison approved a three-pronged assault against Canada. Former
U.S. President Thomas Jefferson dismissively referred to the conquest of Canada
as "a matter of marching." However, British military experience
prevailed over inexperienced American commanders. The American Brigadier
General William Hull invaded Canada on July 12, 1812 from Detroit, with an army
mainly composed of militiamen. British Major General Isaac Brock drove back the
Americans and forced Hull to surrender at Detroit. In 1815, the war ended with
a military stalemate. The British ceased aiding Indian attacks on American
territory, and the United States never again attempted to invade Canada.
2. Isidor and Ida Straus, the owners of Macy's department
store in New York City, were a couple deeply in love. According to witness
accounts, when Ida went to board the lifeboat, she set one foot in, then
realized that her husband was not getting on because only women were permitted
on the lifeboats. Preferring to die with her husband rather than survive
without him, she ignored his objections and returned to the ship, giving her
spot on the boat to her maid. Ida handed the maid her fur coat, saying the maid
would have better use for it than her, then went to be with her husband.
3. Officials
of the Eisenhower Administration, alarmed at the socialist leanings of the new
Castro government in Cuba, in March, 1960, gave the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency 13.1 million
dollars to develop a plan for the overthrow of Fidel Castro. Working with Cuban
exile leaders in South Florida, the intelligence agency began covertly training
counter-revolutionary forces, known collectively as Brigade 2506. After his
November, 1960, election to the presidency, John F. Kennedy was informed of the
ongoing preparations for an invasion and reluctantly gave his blessing to the
venture although many of his military advisers warned him the planned invasion
had little chance of success. They were right. The attempted invasion turned
into a disaster for the U.S.
4. In Finland, prisons have no
front gates, and walls and fences have been replaced by unobtrusive
surveillance cameras and electronic alert networks. Inmates' cells look like
college dormitory rooms. the prison guards are unarmed and wear either civilian
clothes or uniforms free of emblems and prisoners and guards are on a
first-name basis. Generous home leave is available, particularly for prisoners
nearing the end of their sentence while for others, there are houses on the
grounds with privacy assured, where they can spend up to four days at a time
with visiting spouses and children. The guiding philosophy is that loss of
freedom is the major punishment. Finland has an incarceration rate of 52 prisoners per 100,000 population which is
the lowest prison rate among European Union countries.
5. Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon outside The Dakota
apartment building in New York City on December 8, 1980. Chapman fired at
Lennon five times, hitting him four times in his back. Chapman remained at the
scene reading J. D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye until the police
arrived and arrested him. He repeatedly said that the novel was his statement
and he later claimed that his life mirrored that of Holden Caulfield, the
protagonist of the book.
6. The Symphony No.
1 in E flat major was written
in 1764 by Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart (1756 -1791) at the age
of eight. By that time, he was already well-known as a performer, but had
composed little music. The piece was written on the Mozart family's Grand Tour of
Europe in London during the summer of 1764. The symphony was first
performed on February 21, 1765. The work shows the influence of several
composers, including his father and the sons of Johann
Sebastian Bach, The autograph score of the symphony is today preserved in
the Biblioteka
Jagiellońska in Kraków Poland.
7. The Arctic Ocean, located in the Northern Hemisphere and
mostly in the Arctic north polar region, is the smallest and shallowest of the
world's five major oceanic divisions. Although the Arctic Ocean is by far the
smallest of the Earth’s oceans, having only a little more than one-sixth the
area of the next largest, the Indian Ocean, its area of 5,440,000 square miles
is five times larger than that of the largest sea, the Mediterranean.
8. The first human organ transplant was a kidney transplant
performed in 1954. The donor of the kidney was the identical twin of the
recipient and therefore there was no immune rejection of the organ. The
recipient lived for eight years following the transplant and the surgeon who
performed the transplant, Dr. Joseph Murray, went on to win the Nobel Prize for
this work.
9. On March 30, 1867, U.S. Secretary of State William H.
Seward agreed to purchase Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million. At the time,
critics thought Seward was crazy and called the deal "Seward's
folly." Seward was laughed at for his willingness to spend so much on
"Seward's icebox" and Andrew Johnson's "polar bear garden."
The Senate ratified the treaty that approved the purchase by just one vote.
10. Most of the New Testament was written in Ancient Greek. At that time, it was consider the language of
scholars and people of intelligence.
11. Art Deco (aka: Deco) is a visual arts design style that first appeared
in France after World War I. It was popular internationally in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. It was an eclectic style that combined traditional motifs with Machine Age imagery and materials. The
style was often characterized by rich colors, bold geometric shapes and lavish
ornamentation.
12. Iago, Desdemona, Michael Cassio and Bianca are all
characters in William Shakespeare's c.1605 play, The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice (aka: Othello). Because of its themes of
racism, love, jealousy, betrayal, revenge and repentance, Othello is still often performed and has been
the basis for many operatic, film, and literary adaptations. The plot is based on a short story Un
Capitano Moro (A
Moorish Captain) by the Italian novelist and poet Giovanni Battista Giraldi (1504 – 1573) and was first published in 1565.
13. In 1970, Elvis was looking
for a national honor so he wrote a letter to President Richard Nixon making his
case for becoming a "federal agent at large" for the Federal Bureau
of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Elvis who ironically became a drug addict
told Nixon that he wanted to provide an anti-drug influence to hippies. He argued
that the Beatles were an anti-American entity and said he wanted to use his
celebrity to "restore some respect to the flag". Presley was
successful in persuading Nixon who awarded Presley with a badge from the
Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.
15. An onomatopoeia is a word that imitates, resembles or suggests the source of the sound
that it describes. Common occurrences of onomatopoeias include animal noise
words such as "oink", "meow", "roar" and
"chirp". Onomatopoeias are not the same across all languages. They
conform to some extent to the broader linguistic system of which they are a part. For
instance, the sound of a clock may be tick
tock in English, dī
dā in Mandarin, or katchin
katchin in Japanese.
16. Monrovia is the capital
city of the West
African country of Liberia. Monrovia had a population of 970,824 as of
the 2008 census. With 29% of the total population of Liberia, Monrovia is the
country's most populous city. It is also Liberia's cultural, political and
financial hub. Founded in 1822, Monrovia was the first permanent Black
American settlement in West Africa. Monrovia is
named in honor of U.S. President James Monroe, a prominent supporter of the
colonization of Liberia. In 1822, with the aim of establishing a self-sufficient colony for
emancipated American survivors of slavery, the U.S. established the settlement
of Christopolis in Liberia. In 1824, the city was renamed to Monrovia after James
Monroe, then
President of the United States, who was a prominent supporter of the colony in
sending freed Black slaves to Liberia and who saw it as preferable to emancipation in America.
17. Girl with a Pearl Earring (Dutch: Meisje met de parel) is an oil painting by 17th-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. It is
a painting of a girl with a headscarf and a pearl earring. The painting has been in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague, Netherlands, since 1902. The work
is oil on canvas and is 44.5 cm
(17.5 in) high and 39 cm (15 in) wide. It is signed
"IVMeer" but not dated. It is believed to be have been painted around
1665.
Girl with
a Pearl Earring by Vermeer
18.
The first Russian Tsar was Ivan IV
Vasilyevich (aka: Ivan, the Terrible,
1530 – 1584). He was the Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533 to 1547 and Tsar of All the Russias from 1547 until his death. His long reign saw
the conquest of the Khanates
of Kazan, Astrakhan and Siberia made Russia into a multi-ethnic and multi-continental state spanning almost
one billion acres, approximately 4,046,856 km2 (1,562,500 sq mi). He was
intelligent and religious but he was
also given to rages and prone to episodic outbreaks of mental
illness and paranoia which increased with age. In one such outburst, he killed his chosen
heir, Ivan Ivanovich. He was also an able diplomat, a patron of
arts, treated the nobility harshly and was very popular with the Russia people.
19.A
parable is a short
story which conveys a moral or a lesson. The word parable is rooted in the Greek word parabolḗ which means comparison.
Jesus often used parables as a teaching tool.
20.The Four Seasons was composed by
Antonio Vivaldi (1678 - 1741). The Four Seasons
(Italian: Le quattro stagioni) is a set of four violin concertos. It was composed
around 1720. It is Vivaldi's
best-known work and is among the most popular pieces in the Baroque music
repertoire. The concertos were first published in 1725 as
part of a set of twelve concerti, Vivaldi's Op. 8,
entitled Il cimento
dell'armonia e dell'inventione (The
Contest Between Harmony and Invention). Vivaldi dedicated their
publication to a Bohemian patron, Count Václav Morzin of Vrchlabí (1676–1737).
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