Friday, October 06, 2006

The Slightly Humdrum Return of the BH101

Head is bumping. It feels like a pinball with spikes is richocheting off the soft tissue of my brain. Which means I’m in absolutely fabulous shape for tomorrow’s GP in Slough. The insidious hum inside my brain does not bode well.

I have been doing a little preparation: no writing questions, just dragging my tired eyes over hundreds of pages of questions in a futile bid to wake up the dormant sections of my memory. I don’t know if it is working. But I know that I easily get distracted. I mean, I watched the whole of Reach for the Sky this afternoon. All of it. And all the way through I was thinking: this film kinda suggests Douglas Bader was a complete tosser in real life.

To sway me from total mind-numbing attention loss I decided to type up some questions from THE FILES OF HORROR (down whence my life trickled down and yonder time drifted away in blocks named years and years). And as if by magic, this new BH quiz appeared before me. Magick, I say.

Admittedly, it isn’t very exciting. The questions are very straightforward and still exacting. They stifle an imperceptible yawn in me. But they are useful. To quizzers of a certain bent.

Oh yeah. I have to remember to finish off my President’s Cup friendly for Sunday. Oooh, my head hurts.

Salutations out; I’m off to watch Newsnight Review. I bet they hate the new Saatchi exhibition.


1 Known for his Diaries, published in 1967, which American-born British Conservative politician and diarist was nicknamed “Chips”?
2 What is Flute’s occupation in A Midsummer Night’s Dream?
3 Which European capital is located on th Moraca river?
4 Ovid was exiled to Tomis in 8AD. By what name is it now called?
5 In classical Greek drama, what is the last choral passage in a tragedy or comedy, recited or sung as the chorus left the orchestra?
6 Which Soviet premier resigned on October 23, 1980, and then died on December 19?
7 Which King founded the French Foreign Legion?
8 Which Portuguese king was assassinated along with his heir in 1908, an event that resulted in his younger son - the future Manuel II - succeeding to the throne?
9 Burson-Marsteller is a huge US company famous in which area of business?
10 Where is Tongil market?
11 What is the United Nations’ WFP?
12 Fleeing Nazi persecution in 1933, which Austrian composer moved from Berlin to Los Angeles and during which time he wrote A Survivor from Warsaw, Opus 46?
13 What are the two cheeses used in Souffle cheese?
14 What term describes the position of the Moon in its orbit when closest to the earth?
15 Arctic King, Stanstead Park and Webb’s Wonder White are all types of which vegetable?
16 Which General established the Khmer Republic in 1970?
17 In which Irish county is Tara?
18 Halq el Oued or La Goulette is the outport of which capital city?
19 Created in the 6th century, what is the oldest bishopric in Wales?
20 Which British Prime Minister wrote the autobiography Time and Chance?
21 Who wrote 1954’s People of the City, the first West African novel to be published overseas, and which told the story of Lagos crime reporter and bandleader Amusa Sango?
22 Which fashion house produces the perfumes Amarige and Ysatis?
23 Which Danish tennis player was the unseeded finalist in two Wimbledon finals in 1953 and 1955?
24 What is the catamaran class in Olympic yachting called?
25 In 1867, Garibaldi marched on Rome and was defeated by a Franco-Papal army and taken a prisoner where?
26 Which Italian composer’s classical works include Indian Diary and Indian Fantasy?
27 Benjamin Talbert Babbit invented what items in 1865 that you might find in a shop?
28 What term for a religious group comes from the German for “confederates”?
29 The Gonzagas were an Italian noble family associated with which city?
30 Which six-stringed Spanish instrument of the 17th century looked like a guitar but was tuned as a lute?
31 Who wrote the poems Insurrections and In the Poppy Fields?
32 What are two prisms cut and cemented together in such a way that waves of light passing through them vibrate in a single plane?
33 What device is used to keep a compass horizontal at sea?
34 What term in ice skating means to turn from one edge of one skate to the other edge of the other skate?
35 Which Italian artist (1475-1510) painted The Tempest (c.1507), one of the earliest Western landscapes?
36 Pierre Marivaux wrote which play in 1724 that featured Trivelin as its title character?
37 What is the parliament of a) Mongolia b) Guernsey c) Nepal
38 Which member of the cod family has the scientific name Merluccius vulgaris?
39 What book is traditionally read on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot?
40 Winners of what sporting event receive the Borg-Warner trophy?
41 The name of which Japanese martial art means “way of the bow”?
42 Who became the first British winner of what is now called the US Open mens singles tournament in 1903?
43 Who was the first monarch to attend an FA Cup final?
44 What name is given to songs that fit the greatest number of words into the shortest amount of time; the Major General’s song in Pirates of Penzance being one example?
45 What term, literally “dark colouring”, describes the sombrely atmospheric painting seen in the works of the early 17th century painters who were influenced by Caravaggio?
46 In karate, what term is used to describe competitive bouts?
47 The Messenger spacecraft is scheduled to enter which planet’s orbit in 2009?
48 What famous port has a name meaning “Brother Benedict” in Spanish?
49 Chester Greenwood of Farmington, Maine, was aged only 15-years-old when he invented what headwear?
50 What champagne bottle size is named after an Assyrian king?
51 Kirk Alyn became the first man to portray which famous fictional character on screen in a 1948 cinema serial?
52 Who was the first English king of the House of Lancaster?
53 Which architect of London’s Victoria & Albert Museum also built Dresden’s Opera House and built another when it was burnt down?
54 Which family rulers of Munich from 1385 to 1918 lived in the Residenz in Max-Joseph Platz?
55 Dominated by the vast red castle the Assai al-Hamra, which capital city was rechristened Tarabalus and converted to Islam after the Arab invasion of the 7th century?
56 Of which European city was Rebecca West writing in her book Black Lamb and Grey Falcon when she said: “Life still has something of the value it must have had in Venice when she was young”?
57 Which African capital, whose name is an elision of an expression meaning “Hill of the Antelope”, is built on seven hills just like Rome and Lisbon?
58 To what word was Alexander Pushkin referring when he wrote in Eugene Onegin: “Those syllables can start a tumult in the Russian heart”?
59 Known for its extraordinarily tall house (some are eight storeys high), which Middle Eastern capital is perched on what has been called “the rooftop of Arabia” at an altitude of 7,710 feet (2,350m)?
60 Who won an Oscar for directing the comedy The Awful Truth in 1937?
61 Which composer did Liszt describe as “the most poetic of musicians”?
62 Who was the first botanist (1627-1705) to recognise the two great divisions of the angiosperms: the dicotyledons with two seed leaves and the monocotyledons with only one?
63 What is the alternative name for ordinary diabetes?
64 What term describes the developmental disorder in which the organising and sequencing of movement is impaired?
65 What Brazilian plateau, which has an average altitude of 900m, acts as a divide between the Amazon and the Parana, and is known for its so far largely undeveloped areas of tropical rainforest?
66 EB Tichener (1867-1927) is associated with what form of psychology experimental method for analysing the contents of conscious experience into its component parts?
67 Which son of Apollo and Manto, daughter of Teiresias, beat Calchas in prophecy and caused him to die of grief?
68 Which German conductor was leader of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra from 1924 to 1954?
69 Which company was responsible for making Honduras a “banana republic”?
70 The islands of Abu Musa, Greater Tunb and Lesser Tunb belong to which country?
71 Which people from northwest Iran destroyed the Iraq-based Assyrian Empire to the west in 612BC and established their own empire which extended into central Anatolia?
72 What capital city was formerly known as Frunze?
73 Which 16th century Italian philosopher wrote the works De la Causa and Principio e Uno?
74 Shoji Hamada (1894-1978) is a famous name in which of the decorative arts?
75 In 1930, which golfer won the Grand Slam of the US and British Open and Amateur Championships in the same year and then retired aged 28?
76 Which Scottish engineer and scientist introduced the terms “actual” (kinetic) and “potential” energy and later proposed an abstract “science of energetics”, which sought to unify physics?
77 Which US aviator became the first woman to fly across the English Channel on April 12, 1912?
78 Best known for his 1613 masterpiece Aurora and the House, which Italian painter left Rome after a quarrel with Cardinal Spinola on account of an altarpiece for St Peter’s and settled in Bologna where he spent the rest of his days?
79 Which ruined city in central Myanmar on the Irrawaddy river was founded in about 849AD and then sacked in 1299 and remains a place of Burmese pilgrimage that is also known for its lacquer work?
80 Ernest Starling and William Bayliss discovered which digestive hormone, the first to be found, in 1902?
81 What is the projected independent Sikh state called?
82 Whose palace has been tentatively identified by archaeologists at Gallows Hill, Thetford in Norfolk?
83 Which British artist, born in Cornwall in 1761, painted the historical piece The Murder of Rizzio?
84 Which battle of 637AD saw a Muslim Arab force defeat a larger Zoroastrian Persian army in southern Iraq, an event that effectively ended the Sassanian Empire?
85 Which mountain range on the Alaska-Canada border has Mount Logan as its highest peak?
86 Which tribesmen of northern Mali rebelled under the banner of the Unified Movements and Fronts Azawad in the 1990s?
87 Joint winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1970, which US pharmacologist discovered the substance which inhibits neural impulses, thereby laying the basis in treating schizophrenia?
88 Alfonso Bonilla Aragon airport serves which Columbian city?
89 Meaning “rag” in French, what word describes a light frothing mixture made with beaten egg whites?
90 Born in 1934, which South African pianist fomed the Jazz Epistles group and recorded his country’s first black jazz album?
91 The first person to describe locomotor ataxia in 1858, which French physician founded electrotherapeutics?
92 Situated in the Andes at 12500 feet, what mountain pass connects Mendoza in Argentina and Santiago in Chile?
93 Pneumoconiosis is caused by the inhalation of what?
94 What device beginning with the letter R is used to convert alternating current to direct current?
95 The city of Makassar is located on which unusually shaped island located just east of Borneo?
96 Also known as carbonyl chloride, what respiratory irritant was used in gas attacks during WW1?
97 Named after a German physicist, whoe law of optics states that absorbance equals molar absorptivity times path length times concentration?
98 Who designed Rome’s Spanish Steps, also known as the Scalinata di Trinita dei Monti, between 1723 and 1725?
99 Who purchased the St Louis Evening Dispatch in 1878 at a bankruptcy sale for $2,500?
100 Jean-Marc Boivin descended 10,000 feet from which well-known mountain in only 20 minutes?
101 Which “Lucky Rabbit” featured in Walt Disney’s first real cartoon success in 1928?

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Answer to BH101
1 Henry Channon 2 Bellow’s mender 3 Podgorica 4 Constanta (Romania) 5 Exodos 6 Kosygin 7 Louis-Philippe (1837) 8 Carlos I 9 Public Relations 10 Pyongyang 11 World Food Programme 12 Schoenberg 13 Parmesan, Gruyere 14 Perigee 15 Lettuce 16 Lon Nol 17 Meath 18 Tunis 19 Llandaff 20 James Callaghan 21 Cyprian Ekwensi 22 Givenchy 23 Kurt Nielsen 24 Tornado 25 Mentana 26 Ferruccio Busoni 27 Gift vouchers 28 Huguenots 29 Mantua 30 Vihuela 31 James Stephens 32 Nicol prism 33 Gimbals 34 Choctaw 35 Giorgione 36 The False Servant 37 a) Khural b) States of Deliberation c) National Panchayat 38 Hake 39 Ruth 40 Indy 500 41 Kyudo 42 HL Doherty 43 George V (1914) 44 Patter songs 45 Tenebrism 46 Kumite 47 Mercury 48 Fray Bentos 49 Earmuffs 50 Salmanazar (12 bottles) 51 Superman 52 Henry IV 53 Gottfried Semper 54 Wittenbach 55 Tripoli 56 Dubrovnik 57 Kampala 58 Moscow 59 San’a (Yemen) 60 Leo McCarey 61 Schubert 62 John Ray 63 Diabetes mellitus 64 Dyspraxia 65 Mato Grosso 66 The Introspection theory 67 Mopsus 68 Kurt Furtwangler 69 United Fruit Company 70 Iran 71 Medes 72 Bishkek 73 Giordano Bruno 74 Pottery 75 Bobby Jones 76 William Rankine 77 Harriet Quimby 78 Guido Reni 79 Pagan 80 Secretin 81 Khalistan 82 Boadicea 83 John Opie 84 Qadisiyah 85 Saint Elias Mountains 86 Tuareg 87 Julius Axelrod 88 Cali 89 Chiffon 90 Abdullah Ibrahim aka Dollar Brand 91 Guillaume Benjamin Amand Duchenne 92 Uspallata 93 Coal dust 94 Rectifier 95 Celebes (Sulawesi) 96 Phosgene 97 Beer’s Law 98 Francesco de Sanctis 99 Joseph Pulitzer 100 Aconcagua 101 Oswald

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