Questions from the Aug 19th Quiz

1. Fill in the blank:

Ashwatthama Balir Vyasa

Hanumaancha Vibheeshana

Kripa Parasuraamascha

Saptaike _______________

A: These are the 7 CHIRANJEEVIs

2. In 1711, when St. Paul's Cathedral in London had been completed and was shown to King George I, the king told Christopher Wren, the architect, that the cathedral was awful and artificial. Why

A. In eighteenth century England, "awful" and "artificial" were compliments, because "awful" (also spelled "aweful") meant "filling with awe," and "artificial" meant "full of art."

3. The last remaining supply of its raw material is a bronze cascabel tended by 15 Regiment, Royal Logistic Corps at Donnington. 1356 have been given to 1353 people (3 people had 2) between 1854 and 2006, 24 were given for a single day on 16 November 1857. What?

A. The VICTORIA CROSS

4. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the growing sea port of Liverpool became fabulously wealthy and most of that wealth was earned by city businessmen and sea captains who took cheap trade goods to the west coast of Africa and exchanged them for men, women and children whom they then shipped off as slaves to the West Indies. Several streets were named after these merchants. In 2006, a proposal was put up to rename these streets and dissociate them from the ignoble slave trade. Only one was considered for exemption. Which one?

A. PENNY LANE

5. Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the radio astronomer who first discovered the pulsar in 1967, was moved by the precision of its 1.33-second periodicity to name it, tongue in cheek, the LGM signal. Expand LGM.

A. LITTLE GREEN MEN. Initially, it seemed astounding that any signal not created by a sentient life form could be so accurately periodic.

6. Fiction: What, very specifically, connects

A 'joyless economist' in San Francisco

A shop that sells sweetmeats in Brahmpur

A solicitor in London

A. All from VIKRAM SETH's works and are ANAGRAMS of his name:

KIM TARVESH

SHIV MARKET

KEITH VARMS

7. The director and cinematographer were in conversation on the set, when they happened to see a beam of light reflected from a light boy's mirror. The effect of the beam indoors made the cinematographer wonder how nice it would be if it were possible to capture it on screen. The director immediately urged him to find a way of putting the beam in the scene. The problem of getting a beam of sunlight indoors was solved by reflecting sunlight from one lighting mirror on the roof onto a second mirror which could be adjusted to cast the beam in the desired direction. To make the beam more visible, sambrani smoke was used. What resulted?

A. The WAQT NE KIYA KYA HASEEN SITAM song from Kaagaz Ke Phool

8. The plaintiff has filed suit in the US District Court in New York alleging that the defendant is entitled to use this trademark only in connection with nonprofit relief services. The suit contends that the plaintiff has exclusive rights to use the trademark on commercial products and has been doing so since 1887. The defendant claims that profits from many of the products it sells go to boost nonprofit activities.What is this trademark that has recently been in the news?

A: The RED CROSS. The plaintiff is Johnson & Johnson and the defendant is the American Red Cross.

9. Identify the person caricatured here.

A: LUTYENS, the architect of New Delhi. Check out his hat, it is the familiar dome of Rashtrapati Bhavan.

10. What is this series of numbers called? Ta(2) is the most famous one and has been blanked out.

A.TAXI/TAXICAB numbers, from the incident where Ramanujan tells Hardy that Hardy's taxi number 1729 (Ta(2)) is the smallest number that can be expressed as the sum of two cubes.