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. 56
The answers are at the bottom.
1. What is the dot above the letter i and j called?
2. What is the human body's heaviest organ?
3. In 1984, who attempted to assassinate British Prime Mister Margaret Thatcher?
4. By what name is the condition of somnambulism better known?
5. What historic event in Mexico does Cinco de Mayo celebrate?
6. What is a palindrome?
7. What scale would you use to measure the hardness of a rock?
8. Who painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?
9. Of what were the Academy Award Oscars made during World War II?
10. What illegal substances were originally in Coca-Cola?
11.Where on the human body do you find lunulae?
12. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, what is the greatest number of children born to one woman?
13.What does a pluviometer measure?
14.Why is Florence Nightingale often referred to as "The Lady with the Lamp"?
15. What word is used for a group of goldfish?
16. What was the first TV series to filmed before a live studio audience?
17. How many of the 88 keys on a standard piano are white?
18. What kind of pasta is shaped like a bowtie?
19. What was the real name of the popular French playwright Moliere?
20. What is the capital of Ukraine?
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Answers
1. The small distinguishing mark you see over a lowercase i and a lowercase j is called a tittle, a name that seems like a combination of “tiny” and “little,” and refers to a small point or stroke in writing and printing. Derived from the Latin word titulus, meaning “inscription, heading,” the tittle initially appeared in Latin manuscripts beginning in the 11th century as a way of individualizing the neighboring letters i and j. With the introduction of the Roman-style typeface in the late 1400's, the original large mark was reduced to the small dot we use today.
2. The skin is the body's heaviest organ. To many peoples' surprise, the skin is indeed an organ. The skin of an average adult weighs between 8-10 pounds. The liver, which is the second heaviest organ weighs in at between three and four pounds. The skin of an average adult has a surface area of over 21 square feet and accounts for 6% to 10% of your body weight, edging out the liver, which accounts for approximately 2.5% of your body weight. Just a single square inch of skin contains 3 primary layers, 11 miles of blood vessels, 650 sweat glands, 60,000 melanin-maker cells, and over 1,000 nerve endings.
3. Margaret Thatcher became a target of the IRA during her time as Prime Minister, and in 1984 she only narrowly avoided being killed by a bomb they planted for her. She had just left the bathroom when, a few minutes later, an explosion went off that might have killed anyone inside. Undeterred, she stuck to her schedule for the next day, delivering a defiant speech, saying, "The fact we are gathered here, now, shocked but composed and determined, is a sign not only that this attack has failed, but that all attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail." It seems oddly symbolic of Thatcher's time in office: "Plenty didn't like her politics, but you could never question her resolve."
4. Sleepwalking, also known as somnambulism is a sleep disorder belonging to the parasomnia family. Sleepwalkers arise from the slow wave sleep stage in a state of low consciousness and perform activities that are usually performed during a state of full consciousness. Sleepwalkers often have little or no memory of the incident, as their consciousness has altered into a state in which it is harder to recall memories.
5.Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican holiday held on each year on May 5. The date is observed to commemorate the ill-equipped Mexican army's unlikely victory over French invasion forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, under the leadership of General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín. Cinco de Mayo is sometimes mistaken to be Mexico's Independence Day which is Mexico's most important national holiday. It is celebrated on every year on September 16.
6. A palindrome is a word or sentence that reads the same forward as it does backward. Some examples of palindromic words are mom, dad, noon, civic, radar, level, rotor, kayak, reviver, racecar, redder, madam, and refer. The word "palindrome" was coined by the English playwright Ben Jonson in the 17th century, and comes from the Greek word palindromos, which means ‘running back again’.
7. The Mohs scale of mineral hardness is based on the ability of one natural sample of mineral to scratch another mineral visibly. This scale is a chart of relative hardness of the various minerals (1 - softest to 10 - hardest). It was created in 1812 by the German geologist and mineralogist .Friedrich Mohs and is one of several definitions of hardness in materials science, some of which are more quantitative.
8. Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475-1564) was an Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer. Michelangelo was considered to be one of the most powerful painters in the Italian high Renaissance era. Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, Rome, which took approximately four years to complete (1508–1512).
9. Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.
10. Coca-Cola was invented by a Confederate soldier after the civil war. John Stith Pemberton was wounded in battle and became addicted to his treatment, morphine. So, he started experimenting with various concoctions to treat his addiction and found that a combination of cocaine and alcohol was a good and legal substitute. Originally called French Wine Coca, it was combined the two with a few other ingredients and some changes to make a drink that would later be known as Coca-Cola. The first to go was alcohol because of both local laws and eventually national Prohibition Laws. Eventually, the company got rid of cocaine too but they did so 11 years before the drug became illegal. Coca-Cola was viewed as an intellectual drink for whites who used to sip their cokes at the whites-only soda fountains. But, when Coca-Cola started selling their soda in bottles, it suddenly became accessible to minorities. And while many whites felt they could handle cocaine, they were convinced that blacks could not. The media fueled a wave of hysteria around cocaine addictions in minority communities and said that it lead in rapes and violence against white communities. So, it was social pressure and not law which took the cocaine out of Coca-Cola. It was replaced with more sugar and caffeine.
11. The lunula ("little moon" in Latin; plural, "lunulae") is the crescent-shaped whitish area of the bed of a fingernail or toenail. The lunulae is the visible part of the root of the nail. It is located at the end of the nail (that is closest to the skin of the finger), but it still lies under the nail. It is not actually white but only appears so when it is seen through the nail. The lunula is most noticeable on the thumb; however, not everyone's lunula is visible.
12. The greatest officially-recorded number of children born to one mother is 69. It was to the wife of Feodor Vassilyev (her name is unknown), a peasant from Shuya, Russia. Between 1725 and 1765, in a total of 27 pregnancies, she gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, 7 sets of triplets, and 4 sets of quadruplets. 67 of them survived infancy. The case was reported to Moscow by the Monastery of Nikolsk on Feb 27, 1782, which had recorded every birth.
13. A pluviometer, also known as an ombrometer, is a type of instrument used by meteorologists and hydrologists to gather and measure the amount of liquid precipitation over a set period of time. Most rain gauges generally measure the precipitation in millimeters equivalent to liters per square meter. The level of rainfall is sometimes reported as inches or centimeters.
14. Florence Nightingale was a British nurse during World War I. Her most famous work was done in Crimea where she went to assist the roughly 18,000 soldiers overwhelming England's atrociously-maintained medical facilities. Upon her arrival, she was greeted by soldiers laying in their own excrement as rats darted through the hospitals. She set to work cleaning the units, setting up numerous patient services, and tending to patients around the clock. By the time she was done, the mortality rate had dropped by two thirds. She earned the nickname "The Lady with the Lamp" for her habit of visiting the wounded late into the night, providing care by lamp-light.
15."Troubling" is the collective term for a group of goldfish. Many people say that goldfish have a memory of just a few seconds, but this is a myth! Goldfish have a memory span of at least three months! Goldfish were first domesticated in China more than a thousand years ago, and several distinct breeds have since been developed. Goldfish breeds vary greatly in size, body shape, fin configuration and coloration. Among the various colors and color combinations are white, yellow, orange, red, brown, and black.
16. Premiering in 1951, The U.S. television show, I Love Lucy, was the first television series to be filmed in front of an audience. This was made possible by the use of multiple cameras. This implementation allowed the show to benefit from the strengths of both stage plays (live audience) and film (camera angle options, point of view, etc.). This approach produced a perfect marriage between cinema and theater; television and plays. I Love Lucy is often regarded as one of the greatest and most influential sitcoms in history.
17. Almost every modern piano has 52 white key and 36 black keys for a total of 88 keys in all.
18. Farfalle are a type of pasta. Commonly known as "bow-tie pasta", the name is derived from the Italian word farfalla (butterfly). The "e" at the end of the word is the Italian feminine plural ending, making the meaning of the word "butterflies"
19. The French playwright Jean-Baptiste Poquelin is better known by his stage name, Molière (1622–1673). He is considered to be one of the greatest comedy playwrights in Western literature. Among Molière's best-known works are The Misanthrope, The School for Wives, Tartuffe, The Miser, The Imaginary Invalid, and The Bourgeois Gentleman.
Molière
20. Kiev is the capital and largest city of Ukraine. It is located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population in 2013 was 2,847,200. Kiev is an important industrial, scientific, educational, and cultural centre of Eastern Europe. The city's name is said to derive from the name of Kyi, one of its four founders. During its history, Kiev, one of the oldest cities in Eastern Europe, passed through several stages of great prominence and relative obscurity.