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. 78
The answers are at the bottom
1. Who is considered the founder of the theory of evolution?
2. What William Shakespeare play includes the line, “Beware the ides of March”?
3. What color is displayed on the starboard side of a boat?
4. What kind of pasta is shaped like a corkscrew?
5. Which planet's moons are named mainly after characters from Shakespeare plays?
6. What is the order of events in a triathlon?
7. Which Asian capital was formerly known as Edo?
8. What planet is closest to the sun?
9. Who created the ballpoint pen in 1944?
10. How long did it take the Titanic to sink after striking an iceberg?
11. Who said, "In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes"?
12. Who has the highest recorded IQ in history?
13. How long does it take for sunlight to reach the Earth?
14. By what name was Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu better known?
15. What country's Intelligence agency is called Mossad?
16. What nut is considered the world's toughest nut to crack?
17. What does the Dewey Decimal System classify?
18. The name of which type of pasta is derived from the Italian word for "small ear"?.
19.What was the 27th letter of the English alphabet?
20. Which famous tourist attraction was renamed the "Elizabeth Tower" in 2012?
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Answers
1. Charles Darwin is best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. Darwin’s theory of evolution declared that species survived through a process called "natural selection," where those that successfully adapted, or evolved, to meet the changing requirements of their natural habitat thrived, while those that failed to evolve and reproduce died off. In 1859, he published a detailed explanation of his theory in his best-known work, On the Origin of Species. Darwin’s theory of evolution and the process of natural selection later became known simply as “Darwinism.”
2. March 15th is referred to as the "Ides of March."“Beware the Ides of March” is a famous line from the William Shakespeare playJulius Caesar. In 44 BC, it became notorious as the date of the assassination of Julius Caesar. 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 Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, when Caesar is warned by the soothsayer to "beware the Ides of March." The phrase has lasted through history and is still used today to signify a particularly ominous day.
3. Starboard is a nautical term which refers to the right side of a ship as perceived by a person on board facing the bow (front). At night, the starboard side of a vessel is indicated with a green navigation light. Conversely, port is the left-hand side of a vessel or aircraft, facing forward and indicated with a red navigation light. Since port and starboard never change, they are unambiguous references that are independent of a mariner’s orientation, and, thus, mariners use these nautical terms instead of left and right to avoid confusion.
4. Fusilli are a variety of pasta that are formed into the shape of a corkscrew. The word fusilli presumably comes from fuso ("spindle"), as traditionally it is "spun" by pressing and rolling a small rod over the thin strips of pasta to wind them around it in a corkscrew shape. Fusilli may be solid or hollow. Alternatively, capellini is a very thin variety of pasta. Like spaghetti, capellini is rod-shaped, in the form of long strands. Pappardelle are large, very broad, flat pasta noodles, similar to wide fettuccine. Farfalle are a type of pasta commonly known as bow-tie pasta.
5. While most of the satellites orbiting other planets take their names from various mythologies, Uranus' moons are unique in being named for Shakespearean characters, along with a couple of the moons being named for characters from the works of Alexander Pope. To date 27 moons have been discovered around Uranus, those named after characters from Shakespeare include Titania (A Midsummer Night's Dream), Oberon (A Midsummer Night's Dream), Ariel (TheTempest), Miranda (The Tempest) and Puck (A Midsummer Night's Dream).
6. The components of a triathlon involves swimming, cycling, and running in immediate succession over various distances. Triathletes compete for fastest overall course completion time, including timed "transitions" between the individual swim, cycle, and run components. The order of a traditional triathlon Swim-Bike-Run is based on safety issues and smooth transitions. The idea behind swimming first is that the open water poses the greatest threat to an exhausted athlete. If the swimming portion were last, then it would increase the chance of a racer collapsing with exhaustion in the water and possibly drowning.
7.The history of the city of Tokyo stretches back some 400 years. Originally named Edo, the city grew into a huge city with a population of over a million by the mid-eighteenth century. Throughout this time, the Emperor resided in Kyoto, which was the formal capital of the nation. The Edo Period lasted for nearly 260 years until the Meiji Restoration in 1868, when the Tokugawa Shogunate ended and imperial rule was restored. The Emperor moved to Edo, which was renamed Tokyo. Thus, Tokyo became the capital of Japan.
8. Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun. As such, it circles the sun faster than all the other planets, which is why Romans named it after their swift-footed messenger god. Its orbit around the Sun is very elliptical, like a stretched out circle, compared to those of the other planets. Mercury's distance from the Sun ranges from 28.6 million miles to 43.4 million miles. Ironically, the planet closest to the sun is not the hottest planet; that honor is reserved for Venus.
9. The first man to develop and launch a ball-point pen was the Hungarian László Jozsef Bíró, who invented a ball-point pen with a pressurized ink cartridge. He is considered the inventor of today's ball-point pen. Biro noticed that the ink used in newspaper printing dried quickly, leaving the paper dry and smudge-free. Since the thicker ink would not flow from a regular pen nib, he fitted his pen with a tiny ball bearing in its tip. Moving along the paper, the ball rotates picking up ink from the ink cartridge and leaving it on the paper. This principle of the ballpoint pen dates back to a never commercially exploited patent of 1888 owned by John J. Loud for a product to mark leather.
10. At approximately 11:40 PM on April 14, 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg. At 2:20 AM on April 15, roughly two hours and forty minutes later, the Titanic plunged to the bottom of the ocean. The largest passenger liner in service at the time, Titanic had an estimated 2,224 people on board when she struck an iceberg. Her sinking two hours and forty minutes later resulted in the deaths of more than 1,500 people, which made it one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history.
11. One of the most famous quotations by Benjamin Franklin is: “Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing can be certain except death and taxes.” So why is Tax Day on April 17th this year? It's due to a combination of the 15th falling on a Sunday and a holiday unique to Washington, D.C., hitting on Monday the 16th. The nation's capital celebrates Emancipation Day to mark the date that President Abraham Lincoln freed slaves there in 1862.
12. William James Sidis was quite possibly the smartest man who ever lived. Sidis had the highest IQ ever recorded with a score estimated to be 50 to 100 points higher than Albert Einstein's. Born in Boston in 1898, William James Sidis made headlines in the early 20th century as a child prodigy with an amazing intellect. He could read the New York Times before he was 2. At age 11, he already mastered over 40 languages and entered Harvard University as one of the youngest students in the school's history. He attempted a political career but died young (at age 46), from a brain hemorrhage.
13. If our sun suddenly shut down, we would not know about it for approximately eight minutes. The sun we look at is actually the sun as it was some eight minutes ago. This is because the light shining from the sun, traveling at about 186,000 miles a second, takes 500 seconds to travel across the millions of miles of space that separate us from the sun. The sunlight will sweep past Mercury in 3.22 minutes, Venus in 6.01 minutes, and reach Earth 8.32 minutes later. Neptune, the most distant planet, takes 4.16 hours for light to reach.
14. Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on August 26th, 1910. Known in the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, Mother Teresa devoted her life to caring for the sick and poor. Born in Macedonia to parents of Albanian-descent and having taught in India for 17 years, she experienced her "call within a call" in 1946. Her order established a hospice; centers for the blind, aged and disabled; and a leper colony. In 1979 she received the Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work. Considered one of the 20th Century's greatest humanitarians, she was canonized as Saint Teresa of Calcutta in 2016.
15. Mossad is the national intelligence agency of Israel. It is one of the main entities in the Israeli Intelligence Community, along with Aman (military intelligence) and Shin Bet (internal security). Mossad is responsible for intelligence collection, covert operations, and counterterrorism. Its activity is subject to secret procedures that have never been published. The Mossad, long shrouded in mystery and mythology, is legendary in international intelligence circles for being behind some of the most daring covert operations of the past century.
16. One nut you have likely never seen in the shell is the macadamia, and for good reason. Unlike opening a peanut or a pistachio, it takes some serious muscle to extract the edible nut from its shell: 300 pounds of pressure per square inch to be exact, making it the hardest nut in the world to crack! Macadamia nuts are the fruits of the macadamia tree, which is native to Australia. It was the German-Australian botanist Ferdinand von Mueller who gave the genus the name Macadamia way back in 1857. The name was in honor of John Macadam, a Scottish-Australian chemist, politician, and medical teacher.
17. The Dewey Decimal System is the most widely used method for classifying books in the library. It is named after Melvil Dewey, an American librarian who developed it in 1876. The classification's notation makes use of three-digit Arabic numerals for main classes, with fractional decimals allowing expansion for further detail. The number makes it possible to find any book and to return it to its proper place on the library shelves. The classification system is used in 200,000 libraries in at least 135 countries.
18. Pasta comes in all different shapes and sizes. Most people stick with spaghetti or penne pasta, but there are hundreds of different types of pasta to choose from. Orecchiette is a variety of pasta that directly translates to “little ears” in Italian, which has much to do with their shape. They're a round, concave pasta that originated in Puglia in southern Italy. They're thinner in the middle than they are on the edges, which gives them a unique texture. Because of its shape, orecchiette pasta is best served with chunkier sauces or dishes made with vegetables.
19. Can you name the 27th letter of the alphabet? Well, of course not, there are only 26 letters in the alphabet. But not always; once there were 27. The letter we’re talking about here is the ampersand, better known as '&', which was considered a part of the alphabet until roughly the middle of the nineteenth century. Today it’s mainly used in company names, like H&R Block, or Ben & Jerry's. Back when the ampersand was considered part of the alphabet, it resided after 'Z'. And one could not simply say 'W,X,Y,Z, and, 'And'". So instead, they said "W,X,Y,Z, and per se and". Over time, “and per se and” was slurred together into the word we use today: ampersand.
