Good Grief Yet Another BH quiz #54, But At Least The Questions Are Now in Two Figures

Hey, I got up a bit earlier today. At exactly 3.09pm. It's progress isn't it? Since I am in London this leaves me precious little time to write anything else, and soon I will be back in LA for the Easter weekend and much sitting in front of the computer and writing hundreds of questions and perhaps, if you send forth pleasant thoughts, I will write something with links and original pondering.

As for Monday, we did do the George quiz. But this time it was with a different crew, an LA one. We came second in the first beer quiz and first in the second and second in the tie-break, which was the most heartbreaking happening of them all. Why did we fail at the last guessing the birthyear of Christiaan "pendulum" Huygens to be 1658 when it was 1629. Alas one team put down 1640. That was £80. I could have got a taxi home with that. Instead of standing on the streets of Dalston assuming every swarthy pedestrian was going to knife me until I banshee screamed and then whispered "For I am done".

I decided to forgo beer for my beer voucher winnings. Instead I bought honey roast peanuts, sour cream and horseradish crisps, pork scratchings and chilli crackers. I wondered what it would be like to do a Super Size Me on bar snacks for a month. I did this while I recoiled in horror at Rachel eating the bogies of Burmese children from a misty pot. She called them cockles. I wasn't convinced.

Moments we will remember
On a previous tie-breaker I had put down 27ft 9in for the longest ever Anaconda snake recorded. Chris, convinced by documentary evidence that he had seen in a documentary, claimed it was much more, writing down 42ft and something inches. The answer was 27ft 9in. How I will mock him for years and years because of this until he is cold and stiff in the ground. I am rubbing my hands in gleeful anticipation. How can his history classes ever trust a word he says ever again? I ask you in all hilarity.

1 The two main branches of which monastc order are "The Canons Regular" and "The Order of the Hermit Friars", two of whose offshoots are known as Barefoot and Recollects?

2 Founded in 15BC as a garrison called Augusta Vindelicorum, which capital of the Swabia administrative region of Bavaria is located at the confluence of the Wertach and Lech rivers?

3 Named by Republicans after a creature that strikes without warning, what faction of Democrats in the north were opposed to the US Civil War and wanted an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates, the most famous being Ohio's Clement L Vallandigham?

4 Roger Palmer, 1st Earl of Castlemaine, was the husband of which of Charles II's mistresses?

5 Roger Palmer, the Manchester City footballer, is which Football League One team's all-time leading goal-scorer?

6 Played with bottle-caps, what street game is said to be the poor man's golf?

7 Originating in Depression era New York City, what street game that involves two teams and combines elements of tag and hide-and-seek features the cry of "babysitting" and ends when one side catches all members of the opposition at which point the captured team reverse roles and count while their opponents hide?

8 Co-developed and financed by Warren Franscioni in 1948, who invented the "Flying Saucer" the ancestor of the modern day frisbee?

9 Invented in 1994 and first played on Assateaugue Island in the US, what competitive, non-contact sport uses two flying discs and is similar to Ultimate Frisbee?

10 Perhaps the best European player of all time, which all-purpose forward and Dallas Maverick player was discovered by Mavericks coach Don Nelson while playing street basketball during a trip to Germany?

11 Who sculpted the impressive equestrian statue of George Washington in Union Square that was unveiled in 1856?

12 Mahatma Gandhi's "Salt March" began on March 12 at the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad and finished and ended on April 6 in which small village in Gujarat?

13 A national holiday celebrated each year as Gandhi Jayanti, what is Gandhi's birthday?

14 The metaphorical expression "dark horse", alluding to an unknown winning a race, was so used in whose 1831 novel The Young Duke?

15 "Dark horse" was soon applied to political candidates, among them which man, the winner of the 1844 Democratic presidential nomination over Martin Van Buren on the eighth ballot and the eventual election?

16 Which English Nonconformist leader wrote the 1745 work The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul and such hymns as O God of Bethel, by whose hand?

17 Which Isaac Watts poem, in his Divine Songs for Children, features the lines: "How doth the little busy bee/ Improve each shining hour"?

18 The second and third lines of which Isaac Watts hymn are: "Let earth receive her King;/ Let every heart prepare Him room"?

19 Named after a Biblical figure, what two-word term is given by researchers to the woman who is the most recent common matrilineal ancestor of all living humans?

20 Correlating elapsed time with observed genetic drift, what technique in genetics is used by researchers to date when two species diverged and was first attributed to Emile Zuckerkandl and Linus Pauling in 1962?

21 La Strada Program is an international network working to prevent the trafficking of what in central and eastern Europe?

22 Most active in the 20s and 30s, Harry Arminius Miller has been described by sport historian Griffith Bogeson as the "greatest creative figure in the history of the American" what?

23 Who won the first Indy 500 on May 30, 1911 driving a Marmon "Wasp" that was outfitted with his invention, the rear-view mirror?

24 Which British driver missed the Monaco Grand Prix to win the Indy 500 in 1965 and did so driving the first mid-engined car to win at the Brickyard?

25 Which Argentinian driver drove the first Ferrari to win the British Grand Prix in 1951?

26 Which venue last held the British Grand Prix in 1962?

27 Which former Formula One team derived its name by combining the name of the team owner with that of his patented bearings produced at his "Products" factory in Acton?

28 Which motorcycle company, formed in Wolverhampton in 1898, was famous for its "Featherbed" frame?

29 Named after a German engineer who first conceived it in 1924, what type of internal combustion engineer uses a rotor instead of reciprocating piston and are criticised for poor fuel efficiency and exhaust emissions?

30 The Comotor car company was created by NSU and Citroen in which country in April 1967?

31 Which NSU moped was the most sold of its time, shifting over a million vehicles between 1953 and 1963?

32 Who is the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants and Gary the Snail?

33 What alliteratively named fictional restaurant in the city of Bikini Bottom in SpongeBob SquarePants is a parody of McDonalds?

34 Which leader of the Barbizon school painted Une Matinee (1850), Macbeth (1859), L'Abre brise (1865) and Souvenir de Mortefontaine (1864)?

35 The filo pastry-chesse dish Gibanica comes from which European country?

36 Produced by such famous sites as the mountain of Zlatibor, what creamy dairy product traditionally comes from southeast Europe, especially Turkey, Serbia and Montenegro, Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and is made by skimming cooked milk which is then midly fermented in small wooden vats and salted?

37 Famed for training Frankie Martinez and Seaon Brystol, Eddie Torres is currently one of the most famous instructors in the world in what?

38 In ancient Rome, which organisation detained an exclusive power of judgement on facts, being the only experts (periti) in the jus of traditional law (mos maiorum, a body of oral laws and customs verbally transmitted by "father to son"), its members indirectly creating a body of laws by their pronunciations (sententiae) on single concrete judicial cases?

39 One of the oldest buildings in the Roman Forum and said to have been built by King Numa Pompilius, what was originally the residence or main HQ of the kings of Rome and later the office of the Pontifex Maximus, the high priest, and occupied a triangular patch between the Temple of Vesta, the Temple of Divus Julius and Temple of Antoninus and Faustina?

40 Used by the Romans to build such structures as the Servian Wall in the 4th century due to its relative softness, what unusual geological formation is a rough, thick, rock-like calcium carbonate deposit formed by precipitation from bodies of water with a high dissolved calcium content?

41 In geography, what term for a basin describes a watershed from which there is no outflow of water, the largest such system being the Lake Eyre Basin in Australia?

42 What ancient and enormous lake that existed during the Ice Age, covered much of NW Nevada, extending into NE California and southern Oregon and at its pieak c.12,700 years ago during a period known as the Sehoo Highstand, had a surface area of about 8,000 square miles?

43 Mount Whitney is in which US mountain range?

44 What term describes the energy required to disassemble a whole into separate parts?

45 Which Jewish-American composer won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Music with Stringmusic, and on Broadway also composed 1945's Interplay, a ballet to the choreography of Jerome Robbins and the musical Billion Dollar Baby, the same year?

46 Which car company produced the original Multipla from 1956-1965 and the modern Multipla in 1998?

47 Meaning "splendor" or "radiance" in Hebrew, what group of books is widely considered to be the most important work of Kabbalah?

48 What body of ideas which holds that all religions are attempts by man to ascertain "the Divine" and as such each has a portion of the truth, has three objects, the first of which is "To form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste, or colour"?

49 In ancient philosophy, what word was used by Heraclitus to describe human knowledge and the inherent order in The Absolute universe, a background to the essential change which characterises day-to-day life?

50 Otake Hideo is a Japanese professional player of what game?

51 Which Italian cellist and composer (1743-1805) is mostly known for one particular minuet from his String Quintet in E, Op. 11, No. 5 and the cello concerto in B flat major (G 482)?

52 Deriving its name from a corruption of a Sinhalese word meaning "stone attracting ash", what mineral group and complex silicate of aluminium and boron's most common variety is schorl?

53 First prepared in coherent form in 1831 by AAB Bussy, what element is named from the Greek word for a district in Thessaly?

54 Talc is composed of which four chemical elements?

55 Headquartered in the small town of Gurun, Modenas is a motorcycle company in which country?

56 Known for its racing colour of green, which motorcycle company has produced such models as the Vulcan 2000, Eliminator 125, Ninja 250R and Bayou 300?

57 What word for a spear-like instrument originates with the Basques in the 10th century and their word meaning "to fasten or hold"?

58 Literally meaning "guide of the souls" in Greek, what word describes a particular spirit, deity, demon or angel whose responsibility is to escort newly-deceased souls to the afterlife?

59 Called Malaikat Maut in the Qu'ran, which angel of death has a name which literally means "whom God helps"?

60 The Toy Manchester is a small breed of what dog?

61 Josephine Bonaparte's Fortune, Algy from Rupert the Bear and William of Orange's legendary life-saving Pompey are all what type of toy dog?

62 Bred at first for use in dog fights, what dog breed originated in c.1870 when Robert C Hooper purchased a dog known as Hooper's Judge, a cross between an English bulldog and an English White Terrier that was bred won in size with a smaller female and whose offspring was interbred with French Bulldogs?

63 The Havanese is a member of what family of dogs developed from a now extinct Mediterranean breed once introduced to the Canary Islands by the Spanish, which also includes the "Frise" and "Bolognese", as well as Maltese and Coton De Tulear?

64 Believed to have been created by breeding the Pekingnese with a Tibetan dog breed, the Lhasa, what breed of dog has the alternative name of the Chrysanthemum dog?

65 Which dog is commonly called the Teckel in Germany, and has the common nickname of Doxie in the US?

66 The 10th century Castle of Guimaraes is known as the "Cradle" and national symbol of which country?

67 Who is the current president of The Cricket Society, the organisation founded in 1945 to bring all cricket together?

68 Which soul singer covered the likes of Willie Nelson and Hank Williams on his landmark 1973 album Call Me?

69 The smallest of the five armed services, what military branch of the US has the motto Semper Paratus, meaning "Always Ready"?

70 What title was first formally conferred by Tsar Nicholas II in 1914 upon five finalists of a tournament in St Petersburg he had partially funded?

71 Born in Truro in 1971, which chess International Grandmaster is ranked number 17 in the world on the January 2006 FIDE rating list with an Elo rating of 2707, making him the English number one?

72 For which country does the Latvian-born chess grandmaster Alexei Shirov compete?

73 Located in Alberta to the north of Banff National Park, what is the largest national park in the Canadian Rockies, spanning 10,878km2?

74 Bighorn, Dall and Stone's are types of which mountain animal?

75 Established by Gaston Hochar in 1930, the winery Chateau Musar is in which country?

76 What classical term is used to describe the six grapes used to create the greatest wines?

77 Which Slavic given name means "ruling with fame" or "regal", though folk etymology interprets it as "sovereign of the people" or "the one who rules with peace"?

78 Taking its name from a fictional abbey in Rabelais's Gargantua where all worldly pleasures were freely indulged, what temple was founded by Aleister Crowley in a rented villa at Cefalu, Sicily in 1920?

79 In which county are the ruins of Medmenham Abbey and the village from which it took its name?

80 What one-word term describes an undesirable situation in which traffic veering right and traffic veering left must cross paths within a limited distance to merge with traffic on the through lane?

81 What Canadian TV awards are the equivalent of US's Emmys?

82 Which Engish poet wrote the 1917 military history book The Old Front Line, perhaps the first battlefield guide of WW1?

83 The 2005 novel High Rhulain is the latest in which series of fantasy books?

84 Proposed by Knut Wicksell and tested against the statistical evidence of the two men who gave it its name in 1928, what in economics is the functional form of production functions widely used to represent the relationship of an output to inputs?

85 Who produced the AS10 Oxford twin-engined aircraft used for training British Commonwealth aircrews in navigation, radio operation, bombing and gunnery during WW2?

86 Blue-eyed Marys and the Chinese Houses belong to which genus of about 25 species of annual flowering plants?

87 Which US actor's most famous TV role was playing Admiral Albert Calavicci?

88 With three carbon atoms, dihydroxyacetone is the simplest of what kind of sugars and the only one having no optical activity?

89 Synthesised by the body where it forms part of glycolipids and glycoproteins in several tissues, what important blood sugar is also called brain sugar?

90 What structure, from the time of the Jewish Second Temple, is known as The Kotel?

Answers to BH#53
1 Tobias Matthay 2 Malaysia 3 Timbaland 4 Ginuwine 5 Webby Awards 6 Small arms "John Browning of Japan" known for his Type A and Type 14 pistols 7 Wading bird 8 Malayan 9 Jhumpa Lahiri 10 Dominique Wilkins 11 Toltecs 12 Rosario 13 John McLaughlin 14 Drupe 15 Almond 16 Mordor 17 William Hogarth (Hogarth's House) 18 Pont des Arts 19 English, Welsh and Scottish Railway 20 NASA 21 Thoth 22 Fabulinus 23 The Unseen University 24 Small brown owl also called the Southern Boobook 25 Lord Howe Island 26 How much is that small dog in the window 27 The Big Wahoonie 28 Hippotamus 29 Thermaic Gulf 30 Pomerania 31 Poland 32 Ear 33 Balfour 34 Marble 35 Prisoner: Cell Block H (played by Elspeth Ballantyne) 36 Shizuoka 37 Buffalo 38 Alexander Phimister Proctor 39 Eileen Ryan 40 Sir Neville Marriner 41 Application programming interface 42 Range rover 43 Large Marine Ecosystem 44 Cayambe 45 Engram 46 Charlie Clements 47 Boabdil 48 Alhambra decree 49 Piero della Francesca 50 Jami or Nur ad-Din Abd ar-Rahman Jami 51 Australia 52 Diana Gabaldon 53 Leysin 54 Dougal Haston 55 Eiger 56 Russia 57 Lome 58 Karl Jenkins 59 Albertopolis 60 Royal College of Art 61 Sir Christopher Frayling 62 Science Museum 63 The Clock of the Long Now 64 The Jafari 65 Ali 66 Sisters of St Felix or Felician Sisters 67 Friedrich Trendelenburg 68 Leg and thigh 69 Fascia 70 Paul Valery 71 Politics 72 Copal 73 Vernis Martin 74 Interior designer (as Syrie Maugham) 75 Herter Brothers 76 Flatt and Scruggs 77 Grand Ole Opry 78 Poland 79 Diabetes 80 Spamdexing 81 Simple Mail Transfer Protocol 82 British Informatics Olympiad 83 Graubunden 84 Montreal 85 Joe Mercer 86 High fantasy 87 Hentai 88 Armand Augustin Joseph Marie Ferrard, Comte de Pontmartin 89 Ergatocracy 90 Derek Walcott 91 Charles Joseph Carter 92 Drywall 93 264BC to 241BC 94 Battle of Agrigentum 95 The Ambassadors 96 Cost Management 97 Interrupt 98 The Kids Are Alright 99 Cannes Film Festival 100 Micheline Bertrand