BH162: The Lost BH quiz

Howdy

Hello Autumn. Hiya new Quiz Season - new chances for glory and despair.

So I am readying a quiz book. It's just not the quiz book I've written thousands of words about and filled with hundreds more thousands of words. (Sorry)

It will be a compilation e-quiz book self-published thingummyjing: collating all my BIG email quizzes, editing them, sprucing them up, replacing a few howlers and, finally, to make it all worthwhile for people who have purchased/done them already, I am going to shove a 1000 more quiz questions on the end.

'Twas a renewed attempt at doing another big email quiz - entitled The Unbiased 499 (a quiz with no English/American questions; I mean, just imagine) - that swelled into a novella comprising 1000+ questions. And these aren't like the other email quiz questions; these are big "unnecessarily" fact-packed muthas that I realised were too unwieldy to work as proper quiz Qs to be done within a sane time limit. Peaky blighters that were hitting 150 words in a few dozen extreme cases - I mean, frickin' short story territory. Seriously.

So believe me when I say that I saved you all from an exhausting ordeal that would make you cry and hate me. And we wouldn't want that.

In fact, starting with The Monster and ending with The U499 will beautifully illustrate the evolution of a question writer's style. From chippy, simple trivia to ACF baroque insanity. And yes, I get off on referring to myself in the third person.

And the turnaround should be relatively swift. The questions are written. They just need moulding, poking, erasing and re-imagined. But not in an appalling, tear heart from the soul Robocop/Total Recall kind of way.

Thus, while looking for old files, I found this quiz that I wrote and apparently didn't go on this blog. Or maybe it has and I am incapable of using the search function. I dunno; it just seems like I forgot to fulfil its destiny.

Ergo, I haven't changed a word. It was written in 2006 - German World Cup time. Therefore, it will appear unsophisticated and repeat-y. I haven't even fully read it through because I want to preserve a kind of unthinking purity for you and me. That may make no sense but I'm just automatic stream of consciousness typing. WORD *two-fingered gang sign*

BH162: What was once lost ... has been found as an email attachment

1 What date is Waterloo Day?

2 What order of animals takes its name from the Greek for "tail-less"?

3 What SI unit is defined as Avogadro's number of particles of any kind of substance, e.g. atoms, ions etc?

4 From which country do the dance music duo Junior Senior come?

5 Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1922, which Spanish dramatist wrote 172 works, including Senora ama (1908), La malguerida (1913) and his most famous play, the Commedia dell Arte-inspired 1907 comedy Los intereses creados / The Bonds of Interest?

6 Given such traditional designations as "inaka bushi" (country song) and "hina uta" (ritual song), what term that comes from a translation of the German word for folk song, "Volkslied", has come to describe a genre of traditional Japanese music during the 20th century?

7 Literally meaning "three taste strings", what name is given to the three-stringed Japanese musical instrument that is played with a plectrum called a bachi?

8 Which Asian capital city is home to the 310m-tall skyscraper known as the Menara Telekom?

9 The Greek and Latin word for any hat, what style of hat can often be seen on the head of many representations of the god Mercury?

10 Grandfather of Sir Peter Ustinov, which Russian architect built the Roman Catholic cathedral of Notre-Dame in St Petersburg, the mausoleum of the Grand Dukes of Russia in the Peter and Paul Fortress and the Alexander Nevksy Cathedral in Warsaw?

11 What name did Niccolo Paganini give to his signature violin to reflect the loud and mighty sound it produced, and whose stringing may have allowed him to play on three or even four strings at once?

12 Belonging to the last great king of ancient Assyria (669-627BC), who was the owner of the "first systematically collected library" at Nineveh, which was rediscovered in the 19th century and although completely destroyed, has left many fragments of the ancient cuneiform tables which have been reconstructed?

13 Buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD, what library in Herculaneum is the only one known to have survived from classical antiquity having been rediscovered in 1752 along with around 1800 carbonised scrolls in the villa's top storey?

14 Sited on the Mediterranean coast of northern Syria a few kilometres north of Latakia, the modern site of which ancient cosmopolitan port city has been given the name Ras Shamra meaning "cape/head/top" of the wild fennel"?

15 Which French cyclist won three of France's five gold medals at the first Olympics in 1896, winning in the 333m, 2km and 10km?

16 Where in Aberdeenshire was the lowest ever UK temperature of -27.2 degrees C recorded on January 10, 1982?

17 What massacre took place on February 2, 1982, when the Syrian government attacked the eponymous town and killed an estimated 10,000 to 25,000 people?

18 Originally the prince Rastko Nemanjic, the son of the founder of the Serbian medieval state Stefan Nemanja and brother of the first Serbian king Stefan Prvovencani, who was the first Serb archbishop from 1219 to 1233 and is the most important saint in the Serbian Orthodox Church?

19 Bought by her husband in 1938, Greenway was the Devon home of which writer?

20 Purchased for £10 in 1896, what 14th century Wealden hall house was the first property acquired by the National Trust?

21 Situated near the Cambridgeshire village of the same name, what was the first nature reserve acquired by the National Trust in 1899?

22 In game theory, what manly sounding pastime is also the two-word term for a type of game that describes a conflict between safety and social cooperation, and is formally, one with two pure strategy Nash equilibria - one that is risk dominant, another that is payoff dominant?

23 PKP is the railway operator of which European country?

24 What was the maiden name of politician Barbara Castle?

25 In cryptanalysis, what three-word term describes a method of defeating a cryptographic scheme by trying a large number of possibilities, e.g. exhaustively working through all possible keys in order to decrypt a message?

26 Each of the Great Britain teams that took the gold, silver and bronze at the 1908 Olympics' Tug of War event were made up of people of what occupation?

27 Attributed to Shi Naian and Luo Guanzhong, which of the Four Classical Novels of Chinese literature is vaguely based upon the historical bandit Song Jiang and his 36 companions and details the adventures of 108 outlaws during the early 12th century?

28 Known for his work on the relationship between electrical current and magnetism in the early 1800s, which French physicist and mathematician was the first person to discover the unique optical properties of mica in 1816 and therefore had a dark mica-based phyllosilicate mineral named after him?

29 Which co-discoverer of boron, who made a hot-air balloon ascent with Jean-Baptiste Biot in 1804 to a height of 6.4km to make an early investigation of the atmosphere, had two years before first formulated the law, also known as Charles's Law, that a gas expands linearly with a fixed pressure and rising temperature?

30 Capital of the modern Harari ethno-political division, the fortified historic town of Harar Jugol is in which country?

31 On which island is the World Heritage site known as The Royal Hill of Ambohimanga?

32 The Tomb of Askia, in Gao, Mali, is believed to been built at the end of the 15th century to be the burial place of Askia Mohammad I, who was the first Emperor of which empire that dominated the western Sahel in the 15th and 16th centuries?

33 In which European city is the "Museum-City" of Gjirokastra?

34 Designed by Carl Ritter von Ghega, what Austrian railway starts at Gloggnitz and leads over the eponymous mountain pass to Murzzuschlag and is commonly referred to as the world's first mountain railway?

35 The old wooden city-centre of which town on the west coast of Finland was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1991?

36 Known for its two contrasting spires (one a 105m plain pyramid dating from the 1140s, the other a 113m early 16th century Flamboyant spire on top of an older tower), which French cathedral has housed a tunic that belonged the the Blessed Virgin Mary, named the Sancta Camisia, since 876 when it was supposedly donated by Charlemagne who had picked it up during a crusade in Jerusalem, though it was in fact a gift from Charles the Bald?

37 Excavated in c.2500BC and said to be the only prehistoric underground temple in the world, the Hypogeum of Hal-Saflieni is located on which island?

38 In 1879, what did Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola discovered what when he was led to them by his daughter?

39 What World Heritage site in Leon province in Spain used to be the most important gold mines of the Roman Empire?

40 Engelsberg in Sweden and Volklingen in Germany are both famed for what kind of industrial facilities?

41 Built in in 1893 to a design by Alberto Palacio, the world's oldest transporter bridge the Puente Colgante or, as it is known by its official title, the Bizkaiko Zubia - Puente de Vizcaya (meaning Bridge of Biscay) links the towns of Portugalete and Getxo in the Biscay province of Spain by crossing the mouth of which river?

42 Meaning "The Wharf" and also called "The German Wharf", what are either of the names given to the series of Hanseatic commercial buildings lining the eastern side of the fjord coming into Bergen, Norway?

43 Though destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, which country is currently reconstructing the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan?

44 Whose remains were first discovered at Zhoukoudian in China in 1923 to 1927

45 The Hall of Annual Prayer is the largest structure in which complex of Taoist buildings situated in Xuanwu District in southeastern urban Beijing, the construction of which began in 1420?

46 In which country are both Komodo National Park and Lorentz National Park?

47 Located about 70km northeast of the modern Iranian city of Shiraz and called Takht-e Jamshid in New-Persian, what was once an ancient ceremonial capital of the second Iranian dynasty, the Achaemenid Empire, and had the Apadana, an audience hall with 36 columns, for its largest and most complex building?

48 Located in the city in Hyogo Prefecture that it shares its name with, what is Japan's most visited castle and is occasionally called Hakurojo or Shirasagijo, meaning "White Heron Castle" due to its brilliant white exterior?

49 Which country made itself a unicameral legislature in 1953 when it abolished the Landsting because it had powers equal to the other  government assembly and was regarded as a house of deeply conservative overwhelmingly male lords?

50 Literally meaning "servant", what term describes a road bicycle racer who works solely for the benefit of his or her team and leader?

D
O
W
N

D
O
W
N

D
E
E
P
E
R

A
N
D

D
O
W
N

Answers to the BH162

1 June 18 2 Anura 3 Mole 4 Denmark 5 Jacinto Benavente 6 Minyo 7 Shamisen (also called sangen "three strings") 8 Kuala Lumpur 9 Petasos 10 Leon Benois 11 Cannone Guarnerius 12 King Ashurbanipal 13 The Villa of the Papyri 14 Ugarit 15 Paul Masson 16 Braemar 17 Hama massacre 18 St Sava 19 Agatha Christie 20 Alfriston Clergy House 21 Wicken Fen 22 Stag Hunt 23 Poland 24 Betts 25 Brute force attack 26 Police 27 Water Margin or Outlaws of the Marsh (pinyin: Shuihu Zhuan) 28 Jean-Baptiste Biot as in biotite 29 Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac 30 Ethiopia 31 Madagascar 32 Songhai 33 Albania 34 Semmering Railway 35 Rauma 36 Cathedral of Chartres 37 Malta 38 Altamira cave paintings 39 Las Medulas 40 Ironworks 41 Nervion river 42 Bryggen or Tyskebryggen 43 Japan 44 Peking Man or Beijing Man (Homo erectus pekinensis) 45 Temple of Heaven or Altar of Heaven 46 Indonesia 47 Persepolis 48 Himeji Castle 49 Denmark 50 Domestique