1. Which famous Russian female made around the world headlines after the 3rd of November 1957? 

2.The two oldest universities in Europe are both found in which country?  
   a. France
   b. England
   c. Italy
   d. Greece

3.Name the handicap that each of the following had to overcome..
  a. The Greek poet Homer
  b. Beethoven
  c. The Spanish writer Cervantes
  d. The late 19th, early 20th century actress Sarah Bernhardt

4. Leningrad,  Fort Sumter, Sarajevo and Massada are all examples of what? 

5. Which drink is named after those who once owned large tracks of land in the eastern part of North America?

6.Who directed each of the following war films? 
   a. Bridge on the river Kwai
   b. M.A.S.H.
   c. Das Boot
   d. Full metal jacket
   e. Stalag 17
    f. Deer Hunter
   g. Platoon 

7. What kind of burst is the most powerful radiation known to science?   

8. The sound of screaming demons leaving Regan's body in the film 'The Exorcist' is actually a recording of what?

9. All of the following have or had what in common?    
    Katherine Hepburn, Shakespeare, Woody Allen, Lenin, John Glenn, 
    Van Gogh, Rod Laver, Queen Elizebeth I and Winston Churchill.

10.  Why are 'quatorziennes' a welcome addition at the dinner table?

ANSWERS

1. Laika. The Russian cosmonaut dog. (or muttnik ) Laika (from the Russian: Лайка, a breed of dog, literally meaning, "Barker" or "Howler") was a Soviet space dog (c. 1954?November 3, 1957) who became the first living mammal to orbit the Earth and the first orbital casualty. Little was known about the impact of space flight on living things at the time Laika's mission was launched. Some scientists believed humans would be unable to survive the launch or the conditions of outer space, so space engineers viewed flights by non-human animals as a necessary precursor to human missions. The United States used chimpanzees; the Soviet program elected to use dogs.

2. c. Italy.  Parma (1065 AD) and Bologna (1119 AD)

3. Four Answers:
    a. blindness
    b. hearing impairment   (It is said his last words were "I shall hear again in heaven") 
    c. loss of an arm
    d. loss of a leg

4. Famous or infamous sieges.

5. Bourbon. (the house of Bourbon royal family).

6.  Seven Answers
    a. David Lean  
    b. Robert Altman
    c. Wolfgang Petersen
    d. Stanley Kubrick
    e. Billy Wilder
    f. Michael Cimino
    g. Oliver Stone  

7.  A gamma ray burst. (A burst recorded in December 1997 was for a few seconds brighter than all the other objects in the entire universe put together.) Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most luminous electromagnetic events occurring in the universe since the Big Bang. They are flashes of gamma rays emanating from seemingly random places in deep space at random times. The duration of a gamma-ray burst is typically a few seconds, but can range from a few milliseconds to several minutes, and the initial burst is usually followed by a longer-lived "afterglow" emitting at longer wavelengths (X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, infrared, and radio). Gamma-ray bursts are detected by orbiting satellites about two to three times per week, but the number of GRBs that could be observed from Earth is about three times this and is currently limited by the efficiency of the instruments. Most observed GRBs appear to be collimated emissions caused by the collapse of the core of a rapidly rotating, high-mass star into a black hole. A subclass of GRBs (the "short" bursts) appear to originate from a different process, the leading candidate being the collision of neutron stars orbiting in a binary system. All known GRBs originate from outside our own galaxy; though a related class of phenomena, SGR flares, are associated with Galactic magnetars. The sources of most GRBs are billions of light years away

8. A pig or pigs being led to the slaughter. The Exorcist is a horror novel written by William Peter Blatty. It is based on a 1949 exorcism Blatty heard about while he was a student in the class of 1950 at Georgetown University, a Jesuit and Catholic school. The exorcism was partially performed in both Mount Rainier, Maryland and Bel-Nor, Missouri. Several area newspapers reported on a speech a priest gave to an amateur parapsychology society, in which he claimed to have exorcised a demon from a thirteen-year-old boy named Robbie, and that the ordeal lasted a little more than six weeks, ending on April 19, 1949.

9. Red hair

10. They are the 14th guest.  Thirteen guests are or were considered to be unlucky.  Quatorziennes are those who are ready to be called upon and save the evening.