Pauls Quiz 126

Posted in general knowledge

1. Thursday, December 6th, 1917. One of the biggest pre atomic age explosions occured when two ships collided in the harbour in Halifax Nova Scotia. The munitions ship Mont Blanc, with half a million pounds of TNT and 2,300 tons of picric acid blew up (and down and out). Its large anchor was found later in a roof how far away:
    a: ~1 quarter mile, 
    b: ~1 half mile, 
    c: ~1 mile or
    d: ~3 miles?

2. Complete the names of the following Hollywood silent film stars. 
    a: Douglas 
    b: Lillian 
    c: Buster 
    d: Harold 
    e: Mary 
    f: Gloria

3. Which art movement's name is a French child's expression for a rocking horse?

4. The Hooghly river runs through which mega city?

5. In which city did each of the following films take place? 
    a: Rocky 
    b: Die Hard (one)
    c: French Connection II 
    d: Blade Runner

6. Plus or minus 20,000, how many soldiers were killed in World War I due to gas?

7. Cranberry sauce, 28IF and O.P.D. (actually it was O.P.P.) all led to which theory? (Extra points for where they are found.)

8. Which name for the man who rules in hell means.... 
    a: Light bringer 
    b: accuser 
    c: opponent 
    d: Lord of the flies

9. Plus or minus one, how many months does the average american spend in a lifetime waiting at a red light?

10. What are drumlins?

ANSWERS

1. d: 3 miles away!! Try to imagine a large ships anchor taking a 3 mile arch through the air. "Anchors away!" At 9:04:35, the cargo of Mont-Blanc exploded with more force than any man-made explosion before it, equivalent to roughly 3 kilotons of TNT. (Compare to atomic bomb Little Boy dropped in Hiroshima, which had a power of 13 kiloton TNT.) The ship was instantly destroyed in the giant fireball that rose over 1.6 kilometres (1 mi) into the air, forming a large mushroom cloud. Shards of hot metal rained down across Halifax and Dartmouth. The force of the blast triggered a tsunami, which rose up as high as 18 meters above the harbour's high-water mark on the Halifax side, caused by the rapid displacement of harbour water in the vicinity of the blast, followed by water rushing back in towards the shore. The effects were likely compounded by the narrow section of the harbour. Fragments of Mont-Blanc rained down all over the city. A portion of Mont-Blanc's anchor shaft, weighing 517 kilograms (1140 lb) was thrown 3.78 kilometres (2.35 mi) west of the blast on the far side of the Northwest Arm, while a gun barrel landed in Dartmouth, over 5.5 kilometers (3.5 mi) east, near Albro Lake. A piece of wreckage was driven into the wall of St. Paul's Church, where it remains today.

2. Six Answers:
    a: Fairbanks  Douglas Fairbanks (May 23, 1883 – December 12, 1939) was an American actor, screenwriter, director and producer, who became noted for his swashbuckling roles in silent movies such as The Mark of Zorro (1920), The Three Musketeers (1921), Robin Hood (1922), The Thief of Bagdad (1924) and The Black Pirate (1926).     b: Gish  Lillian Diana Gish (October 14, 1893 – February 27, 1993), was an Oscar-nominated American actress, performing from the early days of the silent movie era until the late 1980s. The American Film Institute (AFI) named Gish 17th among the greatest female stars of all time. She was awarded an Honorary Academy Award in 1971, and in 1984 she received an AFI Life Achievement Award.     c: Keaton  Buster Keaton (born Joseph Frank Keaton, October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American silent film comic actor and filmmaker. His trademark was physical comedy with a stoic, deadpan expression on his face, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face" (referencing the Nathaniel Hawthorne story about the "Old Man of the Mountain").     d: Lloyd  Harold Clayton Lloyd (April 20, 1893 – March 8, 1971) was an American film actor and producer, most famous for his silent comedies. Harold Lloyd ranks alongside Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton as one of the most popular and influential film comedians of the silent film era. Lloyd made nearly 200 comedy films, both silent and "talkies", between 1914 and 1947. He is best known for his "Glasses Character", a resourceful, success-seeking go-getter who was perfectly in tune with 1920s era America.     e: Pickford  Mary Pickford (April 8, 1892 – May 29, 1979) was an Oscar-winning Canadian motion picture star and co-founder of United Artists in 1919. She was known as "America's Sweetheart," "Little Mary" and "the girl with the curls." She was one of the first Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood and one of film's greatest pioneers. Her influence in the development of film acting was enormous. Because her international fame was triggered by moving images, she is a watershed figure in the history of modern celebrity. And as one of silent film's most important performers and producers, her contract demands were central to shaping the Hollywood industry.     f: Swanson Gloria Swanson (March 27, 1899 - April 4, 1983) was an Academy Award-nominated, Golden Globe-winning American Hollywood actress. She was prolific during the silent film era, but her career declined with the advent of "talkies". She is now best known for her comeback role in the film Sunset Boulevard (1950), in which—mirroring her own life—she portrayed a former silent movie star largely forgotten by audiences of the day.

3. Dada Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in neutral Zürich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1920. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature (poetry, art manifestoes, art theory), theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti war politic through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art cultural works. Dada activities included public gatherings, demonstrations, and publication of art/literary journals. Passionate coverage of art, politics, and culture filled their publications. The movement influenced later styles, movements, and groups including Surrealism, Pop Art, and Fluxus. Dada in French is a child's word for hobby-horse. In French the colloquialism, c'est mon dada, means it's my hobby.

4. Calcutta The Hooghly River (Bengali: Huglī; Anglicized alternatively spelled Hoogli or Hugli) or the Bhāgirathi-Hooghly, is an approximately 260 km long distributary of the Ganges River in West Bengal, India. It splits from the Ganges as a canal in Murshidabad District at the Farakka Barrage. Just as it enters the twin cities of Calcutta and Howrah, it turns to the southwest. At Nurpur it enters an old channel of the Ganges and turns south to empty into the Bay of Bengal. Two of its well known tributaries are Damodar and Rupnarayan.

5. Four Answers:
    a: Philadelpia 
    b: Los Angeles 
    c: Marseille 
    d: Los Angeles

6. About 100,000

7. Paul is dead. Cranberry sauce is mumbled by John at the end of the song Strawberry Fields and sounds like "Paul is dead". 28IF is the license plate on the white VW Beetle(Beatle) on the cover of Abbey Road. Paul would have been 28 years old if...  . O.P.D. (O.P.P.) is the badge worn by Paul on Sgt. Pepper. Many thought it stood for "Officially Pronounced Dead". It is actually the badge worn by the Ontario Provincial Police.

8. Four Answers:
    a: Lucifer  Lucifer is a Latin word meaning "light-bearer" (from lux, lucis, "light", and ferre, "to bear, bring"), a Roman astrological term for the "Morning Star" the planet Venus.     b: devil  The name "Devil" derives from the Greek word diabolos, which means "slanderer" or "accuser". The Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) does not assign this level of personification to a devil; there, the Adversary is a servant of God whose job it is to test humankind.     c: satan  Satan (from the Hebrew word for "adversary"), is a term that originates from the Abrahamic faiths, being traditionally applied to an angel. While Hebrew Ha-Satan is "the accuser" — the one who challenged the religious faith of humans in the books of Job and Zechariah — Abrahamic religious belief systems other than Judaism relate this term to a demon, a rebellious fallen angel, devil, minor god and idolatry, or as an allegory for evil. The word 'Satan', and the Arabic "shaitan," may derive from a Northwest Semitic root śṭn, meaning "to be hostile," "to accuse" and "to oppose".     d: Beelzebub Ba‘al Zebûb might mean 'Lord of Zebûb', referring to an unknown place called Zebûb, or 'Lord of things that fly' (zebûb being a Hebrew collective noun for 'fly', thus the common lay translation 'Lord of the Flies'). Thomas Kelly Cheyne suggested that it might be a corruption of Ba'al Zebul, 'Lord of the High Place'. The SeptuagintA renders the name as Baalzeboub, Septuagint as Baal myîan 'Baal of flies', but Symmachus the Ebionite may have reflected a tradition of its offensive ancient name when he rendered it as Beelzeboul

9. six months

10. glacial debris A drumlin (Irish droimnín, a little hill ridge) is an elongated whale-shaped hill formed by glacial action. Its long axis is parallel with the movement of the ice, with the blunter end facing into the glacial movement. Drumlins may be more than 45 m (147 ft 7+1⁄2 in) high and more than 0.8 km (½ mile) long, and are often in drumlin fields of similarly shaped, sized and oriented hills. Drumlins usually have layers indicating that the material was repeatedly added to a core, which may be of rock or glacial till. There are many theories as to the exact mode of origin and plenty of controversy among geologists interested in geomorphology. Some consider them a direct formation of the ice, while a theory proposed since the 1980s by John Shaw and others postulates creation by a catastrophic flooding release of highly pressurized water flowing underneath the glacial ice. Either way, they are thought to be a waveform (similar to ripples of sand at the bottom of a stream). It is also poorly understood why drumlins form in some glaciated areas and not in others. They are often associated with ribbed moraines. Drumlins are common in New York, the lower Connecticut River valley, eastern Massachusetts, the Monadnock Region of New Hampshire, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Southern Ontario, Poland, Estonia, around Lake Constance north of the Alps, Ireland, Finland and Patagonia. Those in North America are regarded as a creation of the last Wisconsin ice age.

 

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