Pauls Quiz 125

Posted in general knowledge

1. John L Sullivan was the last man to win which kind of heavyweight boxing title?

2. In the cartoon, what kind of bird is the roadrunner ? (a roadrunner is not acceptable)

3. In 330 AD, which city was known as the new Rome?

4. Which means of transport does one associate with the following names:
    a: Calypso 
    b: The General 
    c: Dakota 
    d: Little Nellie 
    e: Carpathia 
    f: Wet Nellie?

5. In some parts of Bombay there is a record population density of nearly 
    a: 500,000 
    b: 1,000,000 or 
    c: 2,000,000 people per sq. mile.

6. What is the opposite of nadir? Six letters, second letter is an "E".

7. Which three countries have fifty or more nuclear reactors?

8. How were false starters in the ancient olympic games punished?

9. Which American was the best paid sportsman in the world in 1920?

10. Which Beatles (fusion) song was going to be used as Timothy Leary's electoral campaign song in the race for Governor of California agianst the incumbent Ronald Reagan? (the song title would have also been the campaign slogan)

ANSWERS

1. Bare knuckle John Lawrence Sullivan (October 15, 1858 – February 2, 1918) was recognized as a Heavyweight Champion of Boxing from February 7, 1882 to 1892. He was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts (now a part of Boston) to Irish emigrant parents, Michael Sullivan from Abbeydorney, County Kerry and the former Catherine Kelly from Athlone, County Westmeath. Sullivan was nicknamed The Boston Strongboy. As a youth he was arrested several times for participating in bouts where the sport was outlawed, and he went on exhibition tours offering people money to fight him. In 1879, he challenged anyone in America to fight him for $500. In 1883 - 1884 Sullivan went on a coast-to-coast tour by train with five other boxers. It was scheduled to comprise 195 performances in 136 different cities and towns over 238 days. To help promote the tour, Sullivan announced that he would box anyone at any time during the tour under the Queensberry Rules for $250. He knocked out eleven men during the tour. Sullivan is considered the last bare-knuckle champion because no champion after him fought bare-knuckled. However, Sullivan had fought with gloves under the Marquess of Queensberry rules as early as 1880 and he only fought bare knuckle three times in his entire career (Ryan 1882, Mitchell 1888, and Kilrain 1889). His bare-knuckle image was created because both his infrequent fights from 1888 up to the Corbett fight in 1892 had been bare-knuckle.

2. Cuckoo The roadrunners are two species of bird in the genus Geococcyx of the cuckoo family, Cuculidae, native to North and Central America. These two species are the ground foraging cuckoos. 
    1: Greater Roadrunner, Geococcyx californianus (southwestern United States) 
        Conkling's Roadrunner, Geococcyx californianus conklingi - prehistoric 
    2: Lesser Roadrunner, Geococcyx velox (Mexico and Central America)

3. Constantinople Constantinople (Greek: Konstantinoúpolis, or Polis) was the capital of the Roman Empire (330-395), the Byzantine/East Roman Empire (395-1204 and 1261-1453), the Latin Empire (1204-1261), and the Ottoman Empire (1453-1922). It was officially renamed to its modern Turkish name Istanbul in 1930 as part of Atatürk's Turkish national reforms. This name was already in common use among the city's Turkish inhabitants for nearly five centuries. Strategically located between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara at the point where Europe meets Asia, Byzantine Constantinople had been the capital of a Christian empire, successor to ancient Greece and Rome. Throughout the Middle Ages Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city, known as the Queen of Cities (Vasileuousa Polis). Depending on the background of its rulers, it often had several different names at any given time; among the most common were Byzantium (Greek: Byzantion), New Rome (Latin: Nova Roma), although this was an ecclesiastical rather than an official name, Constantinople and Stamboul

4. Six Answers:
    a: ship (J Cousteau`s research ship)
    b: locomotive (in a Buster Keaton film)
    c: airplane (used in Berlin air bridge) 
    d: one man helicopter or gyrocopter (in "You only live twice") 
    e: ship (rescued the Titanic survivors) 
    f: under water car (in "The spy who loved me")

5. b: 1,000,000

6. Zenith In broad terms, the zenith is the direction pointing directly above a particular location (perpendicular, orthogonal). Since the concept of being above is itself somewhat vague, scientists define the zenith in more rigorous terms. Specifically, in astronomy, geophysics and related sciences (e.g., meteorology), the zenith at a given point is the local vertical direction pointing away from direction of the force of gravity at that location. For reference, the vertical direction at the given location and pointing in the same sense as the gravitational force is called the nadir.

7. USA, Japan and France

8. They were whipped / flogged Athletes rubbed themselves up with olive oil as a protection against dirt and the summer sun, but wrestlers were supposed to dust themselves with a powder. Some cheated, sneakily rubbing an oily hand over some part of the body to make it too slippery for an opponent to grab. Cheaters could be punished by whipping or fines (even a false start in a footrace could earn you a flogging). Pausanias, writing in the second century B.C., reported that the athletes' path to the stadium was lined with statues of Zeus financed with fines paid by cheating athletes. Each statue's inscription told the cautionary tale of the offense. One boxer who bribed three others was socked with a fine so heavy it paid for six statues.

9. Babe Ruth George Herman Ruth, Jr. (February 6, 1895 – August 16, 1948), also popularly known as "Babe", "The Bambino", and "The Sultan of Swat", was an American Major League baseball player from 1914-1935. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest baseball players in history. Many polls place him as the number one player of all time. The popularity of the game exploded in the 1920s, largely due to him. Ruth ushered in the "live-ball era" as his big swing led to gargantuan home run totals that not only excited fans, but helped baseball evolve from a low-scoring, speed-dominated game to a high-scoring power game. Off the field he was famous for his charity, but also was noted for his often reckless lifestyle that epitomized the hedonistic 1920s. Ruth became an American icon, and even though he died nearly 60 years ago his name is still one of the most famous in all of American sports. His participation in an all-star tour of Japan in 1934 sparked that country's rabid interest in professional baseball; a decade later, Japanese soldiers seeking the ultimate insult for American troops would sometimes shout, "To hell with Babe Ruth!".

10. Come Together "Come Together" is a song by the rock band The Beatles written primarily by John Lennon[1] and credited to Lennon/McCartney. The song is the lead-off track on The Beatles' September 1969 album Abbey Road. One month later it also appeared as one of the sides of the group's twenty-first single (it was a double A-side, the other side being George Harrison's "Something") in the United Kingdom, their twenty-sixth in the United States. "Come Together" was the subject of a lawsuit brought against Lennon by Chuck Berry's music publisher, Morris Levy, because one line in "Come Together" closely resembled a line of Berry's You Can't Catch Me: (i.e. The Beatles' "Here come ol' flattop, he come groovin' up slowly" vs. Berry's "Here come up flattop, he was groovin' up with me"). After settling out of court, Lennon promised to record other songs owned by Levy, all of which were released on Lennon's 1975 album Rock 'n' Roll