And Finally, At Last He Returns with a Gigantumungus Comeback BH quiz #50

Greetings, readers. Perhaps I have gone a bit strange, what with the lack of social contact and the screams of "when will I be free again" in the night and wistful looking at the outside world. So think of these few words as my wan and primary attempt to ease myself into the shallow end of the pool labelled "normalcy". Don't worry about Howard Hughes stuff; I have been bathing regularly. It's my precious mind I'm worried about.

As you can see, with this quiz I have scampered a run on the leg side to bring up a half century of quizzes. Now I am not entirely sure if these huge quizzes will do the blog any good (all those bloody hard questions, so little actual writing and blogging), so I will ponder the matter further and may set up a subsidiary blog that will take the weight. However, just for now, here is the first one...

(BTW, the latter half is exceedingly French, so beware)

1 What herb ultimately derives its name from the word "yellow" that being the name of the spice in Arabic?
2 Which bright red carotenoid pigment, which derives its name from the tomato's species classification, is the most common carotenoid in the human body?
3 Caretnoids are divided into carotenes and which other class that where some of the double bonds have been oxidized like lutein and zeaxanthin?
4 Which saints and brothers, born in Thessaloniki in the Byzantine Empire in the 9th century, became missionaries of Christianity in Khazaria and Great Moravia and are believed to have devised and spread the Glagolitic alphabet used for Slavonic manuscripts before the development of the alphabet still used in a number of Slavic languages, and prepared the first Slavonic translations of the Bible?
5 The Year of the Six Emperors covers which two years?
6 Therefore in the Year of the Six Emperors who came before and after Pertinax, Flavius Sulpicianus (Didius Julianus, Pescennius Niger (in Syria) and Clodius Albinus (Britain)?
7 Which set of 30 keyboard variations were named for a 14-year-old virtuoso harpsichordist and composer who had the first names Johann Gottlieb?
8 Which British city's Inner Ring Road was only half complete when it was abandoned in 1980, leaving several incomplete junctions, one of which ends abruptly in mid-air?
9 In 1854, Commodore Matthew Perry signed which treaty that forced the opening of Japanese ports to US trade?
10 Which European country celebrates Freedom Day on March 31?
11 Which French engineer improved the telephone in 1878 and established the first telephone network in Paris in 1880, before inventing the theatre-phone in 1881 and constructed his first flying machine, the bat-like designed Eole, in 1886?
12 What language is called Galego by its native speakers?
13 Feleti Sevele has been confirmed (March 31) as which country's first non-noble Prime Minister?
14 Part of the Expedition 13 mission to the International Space Station, Marcos Pontes is the first man from which country to go into space?
15 Charles Bennett, the chairman of which New York-based financial services company founded in 1969 as Ray E Friedman and Co., has had an warrant put out for his arrest on fraud charges by Austria's chief prosecutor?
16 What rocket launchers, known officially as the 82mm BM-8 and 132mm BM-13 (BM for Boyaya Mashina - Combat Vehicle), take their popular name from the title of a popular Russian wartime song about a girl longing for her beloved who is away serving in the military?
17 Which US ambassador has Ken Livingstone called "a chiselling little crook"?
18 Why are there protests against HR 4437, also known as the Sensenbrunner Bill, in the US?
19 Given the scientific name Phoca groenlandica, 325,000 of what species of seal are currently being clubbed to death in Canada?
20 Which French bookseller's clerk then writer and politician, first found prominence with the novel Les Amours du chevalier de Faublais (1787-89), whose heroine Lodoiska, was modelled on the wife of a jeweller in the Palais with whom he had an affair but whom he married in 1793, and published a portion of his memoirs, with the name Quelques notices pour l'histoire et le recit de mes perils depuis le 31 mai 1793, in 1795?
21 What numerical name was given to the lower house of the legislature of France during the period commonly known as the Directory from August 22, 1795, til November 9, 1799?
22 And what was the name of the upper house?
23 Meaning "way", "path" or "method" in Arabic, what term in the Sufi tradition of Islam is conceptually related to aqiqah (Truth), the ideal that is the pursuit of the tradition?
24 Generally referred to as Baba Erenler (Wise fathers showing respect) in appropriate anecdotes, what Sufi religious order and folk figure is the butt of common jokes in some Islamic societies, especially in Turkey, such stories portraying them as a free thinker who lives beyond the rules of institutional Islam and challenges the values of society and popular perception of the religion?
25 Which Asian port city was built on the banks of the Karnaphuli River, which ends in the Bay of Bengal, and is also known for Catholic Christians named the Firingi, who are descendants of Portuguese settlers?
26 Known for influencing Neo-Marxists, Structuralists and semioticians and undergoing such hardships as a leg amputation and six-years of internal exile in Kazakhstan, which Orel-born Russian philosopher and literary scholar (1895-1975) wrote Toward a Philosophy of the Act (an unfinished portion of a philosophical essay; Problems of Dostoevsky's Art (to which he added a chapter on the concept of carnival and published as Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics; and The Dialogic Imagination, which was comprised of four essays on the concepts of dialogism, heteroglossia and chronotype?
27 A Franciscan friar at Fontenay-le-Comte, which French writer published Tiers Livre in 1546 and Quart Livre in 1552?
28 Established in 1895, which English university's Main Building is reputedly the largest freestanding brick building in Europe?
29 Which portmanteau word denotes a device of program capable of performing encoding or decoding on a data stream of signal?
30 In electronics what is a DAC?
31 What city, in the late 19th century, laid claim to being the "Second Port of the Empire", handling more goods than any city outside London?
32 In geology, what is a section of the Earth's crust that is demarcated by faults or flexures, and has examples that has the names Armorican, Kugitangtau, Laurentian, Logan and Vitosha appended to them?
33 Raymon Tabano, or Crazy Raymond was replaced as which band's guitarist in 1971 by Brad Whitford, tho he designed the original band logo?
34 In which American city is the historic Gaslamp Quarter?
35 In which country did the VLS-3 rocket explode at the Alcantara air base, killing 21 people?
36 Major Mathieu Kerekous seized power in which African country in 1972 and declared it a Marxist-Leninist state?
37 Joao Bernardo Vieira is the President and Aristides Gomes the prime minister of which country?
38 Grown in Africa, southern Asia and northern Australasia, by what name do we better known the flowering shrub Lawsonia inermis?
39 Best known for its now closed greyhound track, Powderhall is an area in which British city?
40 Who was the 15th and last Shogun?
41 Used by the US army from WW2 to the 80s and nicknamed the John Wayne, what item was the P-38?
42 Which European country uses the ccTLD .mk?
43 In which country are provinces divided into six zones, among them Mesopotamia and Cuyo?
44 First founded on February 26, 1560 by Nuflo de Chavez, what is the largest city in Bolivia?
45 The Spanish conquistadors Cortes, Francisco Pizarro and Pedro de Valdivia were all born in which "autonomous community" whose administrative capital is Merida?
46 Which horror author wrote the trilogy of novels known as The Lives of the Mayfair Witches, which includes The Witching Hour, Lasher and Taltos?
47 What name was given to the "Controversy" in 1550 that was organised by Charles V to give an answer to the question whether the Native Americans were capable of self-governance?
48 Named so because both piston and pump rod were required to move verically, what two-words describes the mechanical linkage invented by James Watt in 1784 for his double-acting steam engine?
49 What name was given to Hero of Alexander's famous invention that was the first documented steam engine?
50 Perhaps the first head of the Museum of Alexandria, who (working 285-222BC) is seen as second only to Archimedes as an inventor and mathematician, whose work on the elasticity of air On pneumatics is lost like most of his work and which has earned him the title "father of pneumatics"?
51 Which mathematician and physicist discovered Saturn's moon Titan in 1655 and in 1656 observed the Orion Nebula?
52 Which influential US biochemist won a share of the Medicine Nobel in 1970 with Bernard Katz and Ulf von Euler was honoured for his work on the release and reuptake of catecholamine neurotransmitters, a class of chemicals in the brain that include epinephrine and as was later discovered, dopamine?
53 Also controlling body temperature, hunger and thirst and circadian cycles, which region of the brain links the nervous system to the endocrine system by synthesising and secreting neurohormones which control the secretion of hormones from the anterior pituitary gland?
54 Known for their distinctive big heads and short tails, which family of small passerine birds take their habit of wedging food in trees and hacking at them with their powerful bills and have varieties like the Eurasian, Red-breasted, Kashmir, Chestnut-vented, Beautful and Kruper's?
55 What kitchen tool has a name that is a diminutive of the Latin term for a broad sword or flat piece of wood?
56 Who published his second book, the novella To a God Unknown in 1933, after his unsuccessful debut Cup of Gold?
57 Who was "first pick" at the 1979 NBA draft?
58 The Crispa-Toyota Rivalry is a long-standing match-up in which country's basketball league?
59 What kind of near-Earth asteroid is a PHA, of which the NASA listed 753 last December?
60 An asteroid is considered an MOID if it is less than 0.05 AU from Earth. What does the MOI in such a Distance stand for?
61 What is Tommy's surname in the titular rock opera by The Who?
62 And who played Frank Hobbs, his stepfather, and his mother Nora Walker Hobbs?
63 What word links a Skoda car model as well as a fruit dove, a fairy-wren, a starling, a parrot and nine Royal Navy ships?
64 Frank Edwin Wright III, more familiarly known as Tre Cool, is the drummer who replaced John Kiffmeyer (aka Al Sobrante) in which rock band?
65 What marketing term describes the reduction in the sales volume, revenue or market share of one product as the result of the introduction of a new product by the same producer, and in equipment maintenance refers to the practice of obtaining spare parts necessary to repair one device by removing them from another similar device?
66 Which England footballer, who won 76 caps and scored 30 goals, rejected an offer from Palermo in 1952 that included a £10,000 signing fee and while serving in the Eighth Army in Egypt played against local opposition that included the actor Omar Sharif?
67 Bill Shankly was appointed manager of which club in 1949, before moving to Grimsby two years later?
68 Bill Shankly's brother Bob was also a successful manager who guided which club to the Scottish championship title in 1962?
69 Called The Originator, which influential US rock and rock musician was born Otha Ella Bates in McComb, Mississippi on December 30, 1928?
70 As heard by me from the TV a minute ago from Moe and confirmed by the character in question, what is Marge Simpson's favourite food?
71 Named for the German whose first important scientific achievement was an 1847 physics treatise on the conservation of energy, who gives his name in mathematics in the theorem also known as the fundamental theorem of vector calculus?
72 Killed with his wife and son in a railway accident near Meudon in 1842, which French explorer has, in honour of his many valuable chartings, had a sea off Antarctica, an island in the Joinville group, a cape on Irian Jaya, an island in New Zealand and a Paris street all named after him?
73 Created from three farms in 1824 which Paris cemetery was originally known as Le Cimetiere du Sud and has interred sculptor Frederic Bartholdi, Charles Baudelaire, world chess champion Alexandre Alekhine, Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, Constantin Brancusi, singer Serge Gainsbourg, playwright Eugene Ionescu, Man Ray, Guy de Maupassant, Jean-Paul Sartre, Camille Saint-Saens and Susan Sontag?
74 Which French opera star (d.1970) married Pierre-Emile Engel in 1908 and gave the first performances of many works by contemporary French composers, especially of Les Six, such as Louis Durey's Printemps au fond de la mer on January 31, 1920?
75 The first verse of which song, translated from the German, begins: "And the shark, he has teeth/ And he wears them in his face"?
76 The explorer Louis Gustave Binger claimed which country for France and was appointed its governor in 1893?
77 Born Gyula Halasz in 1899, which photographer wrote the 1948 novel Histoire de Marie and won Most Original Film at Cannes in 1956?
78 Which French entrepreneur of Dutch descent was responsible for mass production of armaments during WW1 and founded an eponymous automobile company in 1919?
79 Born in 1830, who served as Mexican President for the longest time?
80 Which organist composer's 25-minute Grande Piece Symphonique paved the way for the organ symphonies of Widor and Dupre, and whose other works include the motet Panis Angelicus, the Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra (1885) and his Symphony in D minor (1886-88)? He died due to the effects of a serious traffic accident in 1890.
81 Which French couturier and fashion designer was the first to export his creations to the US?
82 Born Tatjana Bernt in Austria but raised in France, which model went on to star in such films as 1958's Tabarin and died of leukaemia while working on the set of Voulez-vous danser avec moi with Brigitte Bardot in 1959?
83 Which French film director and actor won the Palme d'Or in 1987 for Sous le soleil de Satan (Under the Sun of Satan) and was known for such other films as 1980's Loulou?
84 Which stovemaker turned to sculpture and in 1833 received the Legion of Honour for his statue Neapolitan Fisher Boy playing with a Tortoise (now in the Louvre), which procured for him the commission for al the ornament and one group on the Arc de Triomphe, this group La Marsellaise, aka, Depart des volontaires de 1792 (Departure of the Volunteers of...) immortalising his name?
85 Which French flautist, seen by many as the greatest of the 20th century, was known for his performances of Baroque era work and collaborated with pianist Claude Bolling on the latter's Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano Trio, and published his autobiography Music, My Love in 1989?
86 Born Sami Rosenstock in Romania in 1896, which poet and essayist wrote Dada's manifesto Sept manifestes Dada in 1924?
87 Considered one of the great poetic innovators of the 20th century, which Peruvian poet is known for such works as Los heraldos negros (1918) and Trilce (1922), as well as the play Lock-Out (1930) and 1931 novel Tungsteno?
88 Which American actress's second husband, the novelist, film director and WW2 pilot Romain Gary, with whom she had a son Alexandre Diego Gary, committed suicide like her after her death in 1979?
89 Which filmmaker, who died of cancer in 2000, won the Silver Lion and Cesar for Best Director Un coeur en hiver and won the Cesar again three years later for Nelly et Monsieur Arnaud?
90 Hector Berlioz said of which fellow composer's Symphony No. 1 in E-flat, when first performed in 1853, "Il sait tout, mais il manque d'inexperience" (He knows everything, but lacks inexperience)?
91 Second only in lifetime popularity to Maurice Chevalier, which French singer was the first cabaret singer to use a microphone in his stage act and in 1937 won the Grand Prix du Disque for the song Vous qui passez sans me voir before working with Cole Porter and George Gershwin on Broadway that same year?
92 Whose first proto-Dada object, an assemblage named Self-Portrait, was exhibited in 1915 shortly after his first one-man show of paintings and drawings?
93 In his research on the "three-body problem", who became the first person to discover a chaotic deterministic system which laid the foundations of Chaos theory and also discovered the remaining relativistic velocity transformations and recorded them in a 1905 letter to Lorentz and so obtained perfect invariance of all of Maxwell's equations, the final step in the discovery of the theory of special relativity?
94 Dubbed The Queen of Technicolor, which actress made her film debut in 1940 marking a career that saw her play many beautiful damsels in distress in such films as Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944) and Arabian Nights (1942) and while working in Hollywood married actor Jean-Pierre Aumont who had to leave a few days after their wedding to sevre in the Free French Forces?
95 Which socialist leader of Ukraine's unsuccessful fight for independence following 1917's Russian Revolution was assassinated in Paris in May 1926?
96 Born with the surname Hartuch, which Jewish-French singer and Resistance member opened the Petit Conservatoire de la chanson (Little Conservatory of Song) in 1955, an institution that trained many successful singers?
97 Who published his first volume of short stories under the title La Maison Tellier in 1881 and in 1883 finished his first novel Une Vie (A Woman's Life)?
98 In 1880 Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran discovered that the cause of what is a protozoan, the first time that protozoa were shown to be a cause of disease?
99 Described by Gertrude Stein as "the one person that Picasso would have willingly wiped off the map", which artist's Portrait of Picasso can be seen in Chicago's Art Institute and his work The Sunblind in the Tate Modern, and who is said to have delivered his definitive lecture Des possibilities de la peinture at the Sorbonne in 1924?
100 Henri Langlois is known for his pioneering work in which field of the cinema?
101 Found dead of a drugs overdose aged just 29 in 1982, which French singer was famed for a publicity stunt in the resort town of Courchevel where she paracuted out of an airplane at 10,000ft before performing and released her only album (... "tout court") in 1980, though she had sang on six albums with her group It etait une fois between 1972-1975?
102 Which singer was born Jean-Philippe Smet in 1943?
103 Which playwright married Rodica Burileanu in 1936 and had one daughter for whom he wrote a number of unconventional children's stories, and wrote such plays as Les Chaises (1952) and Macbett (1972)?
104 Sharing its name with the French language publishers founded by Alphonse Cherel in 1929 that begain with the publishing of his first book Anglais Sans Peine, what method of learning languages involves the listening of tapes and the reading of a book with the text you are listening to and is focused on learning whole sentences for an organic learning of grammar?
105 An exhibit during Oscar Wilde's infamous 1895 trial where it was described as a "sodomitical" book, whose novel A rebours (Against the Grain or Against Nature) was published in 1884 and featured the single character, the aesthete des Esseintes, and became the ultimate example of "decadent" literature?
106 Which French sculptor was noted for his busts and statues of the great thinkers and doers of his time, including Denis Diderot (1771), Benjamin Franklin (1789), Thomas Jefferson (1789), Voltaire (1781), and George Washington (1788), the last being the result of a specific invitation by Franklin to visit Mount Vernon so Washington could model for him, the marble statue now adorning the capitol at Richmond?
107 Clara Haskil famous played which instrument?
108 Which Marquess of Londonderry committed suicide in 1822?
109 For how many days did George Canning serve as Prime Minister in 1827?
110 Frederick John Robinson, 1st Earl of Ripon, was known as which Viscount who took office in 1827 and served as Prime Minister until 1833?
111 What were the full names of Starsky and Hutch?
112 Which notably non-believing man was appointed Bishop of Autun in 1789, a bishopric that could have been considered as a posssession of his influential family?
113 Jacques-Louis David's 1800 portrait of which woman, an influential woman in literary and political circles who had the maiden name Bernard, is said to have sparked European fashion for Greek attire?
114 Formed in around 1900, which group of French musicians, writers and artists included among their number composer Maurice Ravel, conductor Desire-Emile Inghelbrecht and poet Leon-Paul Fargue?
115 The cover art of New Order's album Power, Corruption & Lies features a still-life from which French painter and lithographer who created his own unique realistic style at the time of the Impressionists?
116 Born in Saigon in 1914, which writer and film director changed her name in 1943 for that of the village in the Lot-et-Garonne departement where her father's house was located and wrote the autobiographical bestseller L'Amant (1984, The Lover) and wrote the screenplay for the 1959 film Hiroshima mon amour?
117 Which French surrealist poet composed in 1926 The Night of Loveless Nights, a lyric poem about solitude written in quatrains and in 1936 tried writing a poem a day for a year; a French Resistance member he was arrested in 1944 and sent to Auschwitz and then to Theresienstadt where he died of typhoid?
118 Which 1967 Jacques Demy musical, starring Catherine Deneuve, had a score composed by Michel Legrand that included the song You Just Believe in Spring (Chanson de Maxence)?
119 Known for the bronze version, entitled Maternity, his piece A French Peasant Women that was erected outside the Royal Exchange, which French sculptor (1838-1902) executed his most elaborate and finest achievement for the city of Paris, the vast monument, The Triumph of the Republic, which was erected after 20 years work in the Place de la Nation?
120 Which French philosopher and mathematician is best known in the field of economics for his work in the field of oligopoly theory, a "competition" or economics model used to describe industry structure and which he observed in a spring water duopoly?
121 Born in Brussels in 1914 to Argentine parents, which author was sometimes called Grandisimo Cronopio due to a genus of fantastic creatures he created and wrote the collections Bestiano (1951) and Final de Juego (1956), one of his most famous stories being El Perseguidor (The Pursuer) which was loosely based on jazz musician Charlie Parker? He also wrote the 1966 novel Hopscotch (Rayuela) and was called "the Simon Bolivar of the novel" by Carlos Fuentes.
122 Which actor is best known internationally for his role as a French colonist in the 1976 film La Victoire en Chantant (Black and White in Colour) and a 1992 Cesar-winning supporting role in Merci la vie?
123 Who placed his sculptural ensemble in Targu Jiu with The Table of Silence, The Gate of the Kiss and The Endless Column?
124 Who wrote the autobiography Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter?
125 What did Hubert Beuve-Mery found at the request of Charles de Gaulle after the German army was driven from Paris during WW2?
126 Which poet had his longest romantic association with Jeanne Duval, a mulatto actress to whom he dedicated Une charogne?
127 Which member of Les Six had hit songs like The Theme from Moulin Rouge and scored such films as Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast (1946), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) and Roman Holiday (1953)?
128 From whom did Alexander Alekhine win the title of world chess champion in 1927, to the surprise of much of the chess world?
129 A hair salon franchise with over 2000 locations across the US, which company was founded in 1975 by Geoffrey M Rappaport and Frank E Emmett?
130 How was the name of the fictional suburb of Erinsborough in Neighbours created?

Answers to BH#49
1 Five Books of Moses or the Torah 2 Majel Barrett 3 Have Gun, Will Travel 4 Diophantus (Diophantine equations) 5 Guilielmus Xylander 6 Dio Cassius 7 Esperanto 8 Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster 9 Lyubov Orlova 10 Leonid Utyosov 11 Church of the Gesu 12 Farnese (Dukes of Parma etc) 13 Maitreya 14 Pope John Paul II Stadium 15 Lombard League 16 Ophicleide 17 Bernoulli's principle 18 Leonhard Euler 19 Peyo 20 Cite Elge (accents on end e's) 21 Alice Guy-Blache (accent on last e)