Pauls Quiz 191

Posted in general knowledge

1. Who is the only man to have named nine countries ?  (Extra points for the countries)

2. An old English word for China. Six letters, fifth letter is an 'A'

3. Measured in average life expectancy, put the following in the correct order starting with the shortest life expectancy.   
    Orca killer whale, 
    Top Quark, 
    a rabbit, 
    the inhabitants of Swasiland, 
    the uranium isotope 233.

4. A recently discovered new kind of spider has been named after the 'grandfather of grunge' music. What is the name of this spider ?

5. Who or what is the famous ethereal 'Brown Lady' ?

6. What is the only country in the world that has an acroynm for a name ?

7. True or False. You could get tipsy, or possibly even drunk if you took a bath in fine single malt whisky.

8. Who won the best actress Oscar in a 1990 psycho thriller with lines like "I am your number one fan" ?

9. Which country was named by Amerigo Vespucci after he saw the native homes on stilts in the Maracaibo lake ?

10. On average, how many bacteria live on one square centimetre of your hand ?  
    a. 2  
    b. 2,000  
    c. 200,000  
    d. 2,000,000  
    e. 2 billion

ANSWERS

1. Christopher Colombus  
    Antigua and Barbuda, 
    Costa Rica, 
    Dominica, 
    Dominican Rep. (after the capital city which Colombus named. Seems he ran out of ideas)
    Honduras, 
    St. Kitts and Nevis, 
    St. Lucia, 
    St. Vincent and the Grenadines, 
    Trinidad and Tobago.

2. Cathay Cathay is the Anglicized version of "Catai" and an alternative name for China in English. "Catai" was originally the name used for northern China during Marco Polo's time (he referred to southern China as Manji). "Catai" itself derives from the word Khitan, the Chinese name of a tribe ruling predominantly in northern China during Polo's visits. Travels in the Land of Kublai Khan by Marco Polo has a story called "The Road to Cathay". In the English language, the word Cathay was sometimes used for China, although increasingly only in a poetic sense, until the 19th century when it was completely replaced by "China". However the terms "China" and "Cathay" are about as old as each other in English. The term may still be used poetically or in certain proper nouns, such as Cathay Pacific Airways or Cathay Hotel. A person from Cathay (i.e., a Chinese) was also written in English as a Cathayan or a Cataian.

3. Correct Order:
    1. Top Quark - 3.2 femto seconds  (1 f sec is to a sec what a sec is to about 32 million years)
    2. a rabbit - 9 years  
    3. the inhabitants of Swasiland - 34 years  
    4. an Orca killer whale  - 65 years  
    5. urananium isotope 233  - 160,000 year half life

4. Neil Young spider

5. A ghost: A photo taken in Sept 1936 in Raynham Hall (Norwich) for Country Life magazine by Capt. Provand and Indre Shira. In the photo one 'sees' a veiled ghost like woman descending the steps. Perhaps the ghost of Lady Dorothy Townsend. Although her death certificate states 1726, many suspect her husband sealed her in a room somewhere in the manor due to infidelity. In 1713, Lord Townshend married Walpole's prettiest sister, Dorothy. She was his second wife, and is reputed in the gossip of the time to have been previously the mistress of Lord Wharton, "whose character was so infamous, and his lady's complaisant subserviency so notorious, that no young woman could be four and twenty hours under their roof with safety to her reputation." Lady Townshend was buried in 1726. But there is a tradition that she did not die in that year and that the funeral was a mock interment. Instead, she is rumoured to have been locked up in the house by her husband. This is why the ghost of "Dolly" Townshend, the "little brown lady of Raynham," is said still to haunt the oak staircase of the house in the twilight. Currently, a famous ghost picture is said to be her, being known as the most famous picture of a ghost to date. Experts have, however, largely dismissed the photo as a fake, being merely a composite (superimposition) of the staircase and a quite ordinary Madonna statue as might be found in any Catholic church. The inverted "V" visible at the bottom of her image is absolutely typical of such statues (it is the hem line between her overgarment and her undergarment), and another, fainter, inverted "V" is simply her forearms as she prays with her hands together. The pedestal upon which she stands is also visible

6. Pakistan   
    P unjab  A fghan  K aschmir  I ndus  S indh   Tan Belutschistan

7. True

8. Cathy Bates in 'Misery'

9. Venezuela.  'little Venice'  The homes on stilts reminded him of the buildings in Venice. The explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci (March 9, 1454 - February 22, 1512) was the first person to demonstrate that the New World discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 was not the eastern appendage of Asia, but rather a previously-unknown "fourth" continent. The continents of North and South America (and, by extension, the United States of America) derive their name from the feminized Latin version of his first name.

10. d. 2,000,000