Trivia Quiz

1. The River Rhône meets the Mediterranean as a two-armed delta. What is the name for the marshy region in between - famous for its wild horses and bulls?
a) The Broads
b) The Fens
c) The Camargue
d) The Steppes

2. Which English county is sometimes abbreviated to `Hants`?
a) Northamptonshire
b) Hertfordshire
c) Hampshire
d) Herefordshire

3. What is the term for a far-fetched or unlikely event that resolves an intractable difficulty?
a) Deus ex machina
b) Nemesis
c) Final solution
d) Poetic justice

4. Muckle Flugga, the northernmost island of the British Isles, belongs to which group of islands?
a) The Faroes
b) Outer Hebrides
c) The Azores
d) The Shetlands

5. Which poor boy walked all the way to London with his cat and became the most famous Lord Mayor of London?
a) Dick Whittington
b) Robin Loxley
c) Jesse Boot
d) Robert Peel

7. Which of the five original Cinque Ports in England has a name describing a snack?
a) Bunbury
b) Sandwich
c) Hythe Roll
d) Crispwel

8. Who wrote the words `Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.`?
a) The Earl of Chesterfield
b) William Hazlitt
c) Winston Churchill
d) Benjamin Disraeli

9. What is the Russian term for a peasant who could afford to hire labour and often acted as village usurer?
a) Kulak
b) Kolkhoz
c) Sovkhoz
d) Gulag

10. In which country is the Aswan Dam?
a) Ethiopia
b) Tanzania
c) Egypt
d) Morocco

11. Which mountainous region is in northern Borneo near the border with Sabah?
a) Maya
b) Mulu
c) Matua
d) Laut

12. What title was formerly used by the Holy Roman emperors, Austrian emperors 1806-1918, and German emperors 1871-1918?
a) Herrschaft
b) Leiter
c) Kaiser
d) Führer

13. Who said `I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.`?
a) Sir Anthony Eden
b) Lord North
c) Andrew Bonar Law
d) Winston Churchill

14. What seaport is near the mouth of the River Boyne, County Louth, Republic of Ireland?
a) Drogheda
b) Galway
c) Dundalk
d) Tralee

16. Who wrote the words `That he is mad, 'tis true; 'tis true 'tis pity; And pity 'tis 'tis true.`?
a) Thomas Middleton and William Rowley
b) Thomas Middleton
c) William Shakespeare
d) William Rowley

17. What is the name of the extension of the European Alps that runs parallel to the east Adriatic coast, stretching from Slovenia into western Yugoslavia and northern Albania?
a) Pindus Mountains
b) Transylvanian Alps
c) Balkan Mountains
d) Dinaric Alps

18. Mary I of England was the eldest daughter of Henry VIII, by which wife?
a) Anne Boleyn
b) Catherine of Aragon
c) Jane Seymour
d) Anne of Cleves

19. What is the name of the theatre workshop in New York City known for the study of Stanislavsky's Method acting?
a) Bare Boards Studio
b) School of Method
c) Lee Strasberg Studio
d) Actors Studio

20. What is the name of the famous geyser in Yellowstone National Park, that blows a jet of hot water and steam into the air every 33 to 96 minutes?
a) Mr Blow-your-Top
b) Ol' Burp-and-Belch
c) Hot 'n Wetter
d) Old Faithful

21. What is the name for the intellectual circle of writers and artists based in Bloomsbury, London, which flourished in the 1920s?
a) Bloomsbury Group
b) Woolf Group
c) Strachey Group
d) Russell Group

22. Which British class of armoured warship was used during World War I for operations in shallow waters?
a) Flattop
b) Corvette
c) Sloop
d) Monitor

23. Which Portuguese colony was leased from China and will be handed back in 1999?
a) Madeira
b) Macao
c) Funchal
d) East Timor

26. Which English act of Parliament 1835 laid the foundations for modern local government?
a) Municipal Corporations Act
b) Enclosure Act
c) Reform Act
d) Corn Laws

29. Which Island of the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean is named after its Portuguese discoverer 1532?
a) Diego Garcia
b) Nicobar
c) Little Andaman
d) Great Coco

30. What is the common or vernacular variety of the modern Greek language?
a) Damaran Greek
b) Demotic Greek
c) Dardic Greek
d) Cymric Greek

31. What is the name for the Israeli parliament, consisting of a single chamber of 120 deputies elected for a period of four years?
a) Eduskunta
b) Riksdag
c) Folketing
d) Knesset

32. Which English chieftain on the Welsh border revolted against William the Conqueror 1067, around what is today Herefordshire, burning Shrewsbury?
a) Edmund Ironside
b) Edric the Forester, or Edric the Wild
c) Canute
d) Edward the Elder

33. Which metal is mined at the Canadian town of Sudbury?
a) Silver
b) Tin
c) Nickel
d) Gold

34. What was the former name of Ciudad Bolívar, a port in Venezuela?
a) Angostura
b) Caracas
c) Maracibo
d) Maturin

35. Who discovered the Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River in November of 1855?
a) Mungo Park
b) John Speke
c) Henry Stanley
d) David Livingstone

36. Cry the Beloved Country described racial inequality in South Africa. Who was the author?
a) Richard Attenborough
b) Nadine Gordimer
c) Olive Schreiner
d) Alan Paton

37. In which battle did Harold II, the last Saxon king of England, lose his life?
a) Battle of Waterloo
b) Battle of the Boyne
c) Battle of Tannenburg
d) Battle of Hastings

38. Which English poet wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan?
a) Samuel Taylor Coleridge
b) Edward Lear
c) Alfred Lord Tennyson
d) Hillaire Belloc

39. Which of the following is a lake in the Netherlands whose area is 1,217 sq km/470 sq mi?
a) Fluessen
b) Ijsselmeer
c) Waddenzee
d) Markerwaard

40. Which German city is called in French `Aix-la- Chapelle`?
a) Trier
b) Augsburg
c) Freiburg
d) Aachen

41. Sir Richard Burton and John Speke explored which great African lake in 1858?
a) Lake Victoria
b) Lake Tanganyika
c) Lake Malawi
d) Lake Chad

42. Which battle led to the defeat of the Italians by the Ethiopians at Aduwa in 1896 under Emperor Menelik II?
a) Battle of Bako
b) Battle of Baden
c) Battle of Aduwa
d) Battle of Ethiopia

43. Who joined the British navy in 1758 when he was 12, and during active service lost an arm and an eye, then at the Battle of Trafalgar, his life?
a) James Wolfe
b) Horatio Nelson
c) Robert Clive
d) Napoleon

44. Where was the treaty signed that established the European Economic Community?
a) Rome
b) Basle
c) London
d) Geneva

45. What part of Eastern Europe is the home of the vampire legends, of which the most famous is that of Count Dracula?
a) The Alps
b) The Pyrenees
c) The Black Forest
d) Transylvania