Quiz #26
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Q 1 Why is Good Friday called 'Good'?
A Good used to mean Holy
The OED holds this view, and it has been supported by linguistic research.
Q 2 Which US sitcom recently referred to New Zealand's flag referendum?
A The Big Bang Theory
Dr Sheldon Cooper has a video series called fun with flags, and he recently gave a shout out to 'you crazy kiwis'.
Q 3 When was the Mona Lisa painted?
A 1505
Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa between 1503 and 1506, although some sources suggest that he worked on it as late as 1517. Since 1797 it has been on permanent display at the Louvre in Paris.
Q 4 Who wrote the Wedding March, also known as Here Comes The Bride?
A Felix Mendelssohn
The piece was written in 1842 and became popular in 1858 after it was used at the wedding of Victoria the Princess Royal to Prince Frederick William of Prussia.
It is from Mendelssohn's suite of incidental music written for Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Q 5 The Piston Cup is an award in which animated film?
A Cars
The main character of the film, Lightning McQueen, gives up winning the cup in order to help another car complete the race.
Q 6 In anti-matter, there are anti-neutrons, anti-protons and ...?
A Positrons
Positrons have the same mass as electrons but the opposite charge. They also have a spin of ½. And that is all the quantum mechanics we are going to give you on a public holiday.
Q 7 In Greek mythology, who was the goddess of love?
A Aphrodite
She is known as the goddess of beauty, love, desire, and pleasure.
Artemis is the virgin goddess of the hunt, wilderness, animals, young girls, childbirth, and plague.
Athena gets intelligence, skill, peace, warfare, battle strategy, handicrafts, and wisdom, while Ananke covers off inevitability, compulsion, and necessity.
Wikipedia has a big list if you feel the need to brush up on Greek mythology.
Q 8 Which sea has no coast line?
A Sargasso Sea
The Sargasso Sea is in the middle of the North Atlantic and was named after the Sargassum seaweed which grows abundantly on the surface.
Q 9 What piece of music was used as the theme to the movie The Exorcist.
A Tubular Bells
Recorded by multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield, it was also the first album to be released by the newly formed Virgin Records in 1973.
Q 10 What US City was originally known as Nieuw Nederland?
A New York
Originally settled by the Dutch, it was surrendered to the the English during the second Anglo-Dutch War in 1664. They changed the name to New York in honour of the Duke of York.
