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 aTrivia Quiz. Instead, I am calling it a Knowledge Quiz.
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Knowledge Quiz, No. 53
The answers are at the bottom
1. How many eyes does a bee have?
2. In Einstein's famous equation, E=mc², what does the "C" stand for?
3. Who discovered the planet Uranus?
4. What was the Renaissance?
5. How many signers of the U.S. Constitution met with untimely deaths?
6. What is Michelangelo's earliest known painting?
7. Why do icebergs float?
8. What famous murder took place on March 15th?
9. That does the word Lego mean?
10. In the play, Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, who killed Macbeth?
11. Holden Caulfield is the main character in what book?
12. On what object are you most likely to see the initials YKK?
13. Who was the mythological goddess portrayed in the famous Ancient Greek statue known as The Winged Victory?
14. Which U.S. president served only 31 days in office?
15. What is the capital of New Zealand?
16. Who invented the polio vaccine?
17. In the Biblical Old Testament book of Exodus, how did Moses heal the bitter waters of Marah?
18. Who was the first Tsar of Russia?
19. When does a human being first acquire fingerprints?
20. One of the most famous operettas is "Die Fledermaus". What does "Die Fledermaus" mean?
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Answers
1. A bee has five eyes. They have two compound eyes on each side of their head. They also have three simple eyes, which are located on top of their head, called ocelli. Each compound eye is made up 150 tiny structures called ommatidia. These structures let the bee see not only patterns but polarized light. The number of ommatidia in the bee's eyes allows it to find different types of flowers, but the bee still can't resolve objects at a distance as well as a human.
2. Einstein’s formula E=mc² says that mass and energy can turn into each other. In the equation, "C" represents the speed of light. Einstein is best known in popular culture for his mass–energy equivalence formula E=mc², which has been dubbed "the world's most famous equation." In E=mc², Einstein concluded that mass (m) and kinetic energy (E) are equal, since the speed of light squared (c²) is constant. In other words, mass can be changed into energy, and energy can be changed into mass.
3. Uranus was discovered by William Herschel (1738 - 1822), an English musician who was born in Germany. He had a very successful music career; he composed 24 symphonies and he played numerous instruments. Herschel spent a lot of his leisure time reading, taking a special interest in scientific matters, and this led to his interest in astronomy. In 1771, he started constructing his own telescopes and it was one of these telescopes that he was using on March 13th, 1781.Herschel originally believed he had discovered a comet, but he had actually discovered an entirely new planet. Herschel originally wanted to name the planet Georgius Siderius, which translates as "The Georgian Star." This name clearly didn't fit in with previous planets which had all been named after mythological gods.German astronomer Johann Elert Bode proposed the name Uranus after the Greek God of the sky and this name was chosen, thus making it the only planet to be named after a Greek God rather than a Roman God.
4. The European Renaissance covers the period between the 14th and 17th. The Renaissance began in Italy about 1350 and in the rest of Europe after 1450 and it lasted until about 1620. It was a historical era with distinctive themes in learning, politics, literature, art, religion, social life, and music. The changes from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance were significant, but not as great as historians once thought. Renaissance developments influenced subsequent centuries, but not so much that the Renaissance as a whole can be called "modern."The word renaissance itself is the French word for "rebirth" and was first used to describe the period in the 19th century. It looked to move away from the religious thought of the middle ages and was seen as a rebirth of classical learning and a rediscovery of ancient Rome and Greece.
5. While Benjamin Franklin made it into his 80s, five other signers of the Constitution never got anywhere near that far. Alexander Hamilton and Richard Spaight were both killed in duels, George Wythe died from arsenic poisoning, and Gouverneur Morris died when he tried and failed to remove a bullet from his body with whale bone. However, the most fascinating premature death belongs to John Lansing who left his hotel room to mail a letter one day and was never heard from again.
6. The painting that is acknowledged to be Michelangelo's first painting is "The Torment of Saint Anthony," which he painted when he was 12 or 13.It was known for centuries that Michelangelo had painted an engraving of Saint Anthony by Martin Schongauer, but it could never be proven that this was the painting. In fact, when the painting was displayed in Florence in 1999 it was attributed to the "Workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio," where Michelangelo was a student.In July, 2008, the painting was sold at auction, again attributed to the "Workshop of Domenico Ghirlandaio." It was sold to Adam Williams for around $2 million who was convinced that it was painted by Michelangelo.The painting underwent conservation and technical research at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York where it was decided that it was indeed painted by Michelangelo. It was then sold on to the Kimbell Art Museum for around $6 million where it is on display today.
The Torment of St. Anthony
7. Icebergs are made of fresh water but they float on oceans which contain salt water. Fresh water is less dense and therefore lighter than sea water.
8. The Ides of March is a day on the Ancient Roman calendar that corresponds to March 15. In modern times, the Ides of March is best known as the date on which Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC. Caesar was stabbed to death at a meeting of the senate. As many as 60 conspirators, led by Brutus and Cassius, were involved. According to Plutarch, a seer had warned that harm would come to Caesar no later than the Ides of March. This meeting is famously dramatized in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, when Caesar is warned by the soothsayer to "beware the Ides of March.
9. The Lego Group began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen, a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932. In 1934, his company came to be called "Lego", from the Danish phrase "leg godt", which means "play well". It expanded to producing plastic toys in 1947. In 1949 Lego began producing, among other new products, an early version of the now famous interlocking bricks, calling them "Automatic Binding Bricks".
10. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) wrote his play, Macbeth, in approximately1606. It is considered one of his darkest and most powerful tragedies. Macbethis Shakespeare's shortest tragedy (Hamlet is the longest), and it tells the story of a brave Scottish general named Macbeth who receives a prophecy from three witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the throne for himself. Macbeth dies when Macduff kills him in battle during Act 5.
11.Holden Caulfield is the main character in the 1951 novel by J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in theRye. Caulfield as the novel's protagonist and anti-hero. The novel also deals with complex issues of identity, belonging, loss, connection, and alienation. Around 250,000 copies are sold each year with total sales of more than 65 million books.
12. The YKK Group is the world's largest zipper manufacturer in the world. YKK, the Japanese zipper manufacturer makes roughly half of all the zippers- more than 7 billion zippers each year. Founded by Tadao Yoshida in Tokyo in 1934, YKK stands for Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikikaisha. YKK has manufacturing facilities in 71 countries. A single YKK factory site in Macon, Georgia, USA, produces 7 million zippers a day, in a total of 1,500 styles in more than 427 standard colors. That facility is the biggest zipper manufacturer in the world.
13. In the Ancient Greek religion Nike was a goddess who personified victory and was also known as the Winged Goddess of Victory. The Roman equivalent was Victoria. Depending upon the time of various myths, she was described as the daughter of the Titan Pallas and the goddess Styx, and the sister of Kratos (Strength), Bia (Force), and Zelus (Zeal). Nike is seen with wings in most statues and paintings, one of the most famous being the Winged Victory of Samothrace. And, Nike is one of the most commonly portrayed figures on Greek coins.
The Winged Victory
14. William Henry Harrison served the shortest term of any U.S. president. Harrison died on his 32nd day in office of complications from pneumonia, serving the shortest tenure in United States presidential history. His death sparked a brief constitutional crisis, but that crisis ultimately resolved many questions about presidential succession left unanswered by The Constitution until passage of the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
15. The capital of New Zealand is Wellington. It has a population of 393,600 and is located at the south-western tip of the North Island. It is also the southernmost capital city in the world. The 2014 Mercer Quality of Living Survey ranked Wellington 12th in the world. Wellington takes its name from Arthur Wellesley (1769-1852), the first Duke of Wellington who was responsible for the English victory and the of Napoleon's French forces at the Battle of Waterloo, Belgium (1815). Wellington never set foot on New Zealand.
16. In 1952, Doctor Jonas Salk (1914 - 1995) began human trials of Salk's polio vaccine. Among those first test subjects were Salk's own wife and children And in 1953,Salk announced the invention of his vaccine to fight a disease that at the time was paralyzing between 13,000 and 20,000 children a year. His work has dramatically reduced the instances of polio across the world, nearly eliminating it. Salk decided that the people owned the patent, not him, in part due to the fact that it was their millions through the March of Dimes (an anti-polio fund supported by individual contributions) that paid for its development. "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?" Salk asked.
17. According to the International Standard Version Bible's book of Exodus,15: 24-25, So the people grumbled at Moses, saying, "What shall we drink?" Then he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree, and he threw it in the waters, and the waters became sweet. There He (God) he made them a statue and regulation, and there He tested them. And He said, "If you will give earnest heed to the voice of the LORD your God, and do what is right in His sight, and give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians; for I, the LORD, am your healer. Thus, Moses healed the bitter water s of Marah by castinga tree into them.
18. Ivan IV (1530 - 1584; aka: Ivan, the Terrible) became the first Tsar of Russia in1547. His reign transformed Russia into a multiethnic nation and extended Russian territory to the Pacific Ocean, spanning it to almost one billion acres. He was a complex man and was intelligent, an able diplomat, a patron of arts and religiously devout. But, he was also prone to have rages and outbreaks of paranoia and mental illnessall of which increased with age. In one such outburst, he killed his chosen heir Ivan Ivanovich. Yet, he was loved by his people.
Ivan, the Terrible, an 18th Century Portrait
19. A fetus acquires fingerprints at the age of three months.
20. In English, Die Fledermaus, means The Bat. It is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée. The original source for Die Fledermaus is Das Gefängnis (The Prison), a farce by German playwright Julius Roderich Benedix (1811–1873). The operetta premièred on 5 April 1874 at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna and has been part of the regular repertoire ever since. The very famous and melodic overture to Die Fledermaus can be heard on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPybrOxRoT4