Trivia Quiz

1. Which of the following was a former princely state in India that merged into West Bengal 1950?
a) Cooch Behar
b) Orissa
c) Gujarat
d) Kandy

2. Which of the following is a river in northwestern England?
a) Dee
b) Isis
c) Severn
d) Mersey

3. Who said `Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.`?
a) A J P Taylor
b) H G Wells
c) Thomas Babington Macaulay
d) George Orwell

4. In which famous play do the students Rosencrantz and Guildenstern meet their deaths?
a) The Mousetrap
b) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
c) Macbeth
d) Hamlet

5. Israel considers Jerusalem to be its capital city, but it is not recognised by the United Nations. Which city does the UN regard as Israel's capital?
a) Tel Aviv
b) Nazareth
c) Haifa
d) Eilat

6. Who said `There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.`?
a) Ronald Reagan
b) Harry S Truman
c) Winston Churchill
d) Mark Twain

7. What is the French name for the English Channel?
a) Le Shuttle
b) La Manche
c) Le Havre
d) Le Mans

10. What is the study of coins, medals and decorations called?
a) Ornithology
b) Chrestomathy
c) Numismatics
d) Philatelics

11. Which commercial company 1600-1858 was chartered by Queen Elizabeth I and given a monopoly of trade between England and the Far East?
a) East India Company (British)
b) Asian Transport Company
c) East India Tea Trade
d) West Indies Company

12. In World War I, what four major battles took place 1916-17 between Italian forces attempting to seize Trieste, and Austrian forces trying to stop them?
a) Battles of Calabria
b) Battles of the Boyne
c) Battles of Beresina
d) Battles of the Carso

13. Noah's Ark is believed to have come to rest on Mount Ararat. In which modern country is Mount Ararat to be found?
a) Jordan
b) Turkey
c) Israel
d) Syria

14. Who became king of Babylonia in 604 BC?
a) Nebuchadnezzar
b) Darius
c) Ashurbanipal
d) Cyrus

15. Who wrote the words `And even I can remember A day when the historians left blanks in their writings, I mean for things they didn't know.`?
a) Philip Larkin
b) W H Auden
c) Sylvia Plath
d) Ezra Pound

16. The Gunpowder Plot, Guy Fawkes' Night and Firework Night are three names for the same event celebrated every year, on which date?
a) December 6th
b) November 1st
c) October 31st
d) November 5th

18. Which county, England's smallest, became part of Leicestershire in the 1974 reorganisation?
a) Westmoreland
b) Middlesex
c) Rutland
d) South Riding of Yorkshire

19. Which chemical weapon, developed by the Germans in World War I, was first used 12 July 1917?
a) Mace
b) Anthrax
c) Mustard gas
d) Agent Orange

21. Which American escapologist and conjuror campaigned against fraudulent mindreaders and mediums?
a) Robert Harbin
b) Henry King
c) David Nixon
d) Harry Houdini

22. Which play by J M Synge caused riots when it was first performed at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in 1907?
a) The Hostage
b) The Playboy of the Western World
c) Riders to the Sea
d) Juno and the Paycock

23. What is the name of the strait joining the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara, and forming part of the water division between Europe and Asia?
a) Barents
b) Bosporus
c) Okhotsk
d) Bering

24. The majority of the population of which country live in an area known as the Meseta Central, a broad plateau in the centre of the country?
a) Nicaragua
b) Belize
c) Panama
d) Costa Rica

25. Which cape in Siberia marks the most northerly point on the continent of Asia?
a) Lenin Cape
b) Chelyuskin Cape
c) Archangel Cape
d) Cape Dezhnev

26. Former Dutch colony, which in 1975 became independent as Surinam?
a) Dutch Guiana
b) Dutch East Indies
c) Ceylon
d) Indonesia

27. Who wrote the words `Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, And burnčd is Apollo's laurel bough, That sometime grew within this learned man.`?
a) John Dryden
b) Christopher Marlowe
c) William Wordsworth
d) Thomas Babington Macaulay

28. Charles I raised his royal standard in which Midlands city, starting the English Civil War in 1642?
a) Lancaster
b) Leicester
c) York
d) Nottingham

29. What was the name of a Black National State in the Republic of South Africa until 1978?
a) Bantustan
b) Reserve
c) Enclave
d) Native quarter

30. What is the name of the volunteer military force formed at the outbreak of World War I, which was the major Australian contribution to the war?
a) Australian Allied Force
b) Australian Volunteers
c) Australian Imperial Force
d) Australian Contributors

31. Which US President, with the middle initial `S`, took over from Franklin D Roosevelt in 1945?
a) Harry Truman
b) Richard Nixon
c) John Kennedy
d) Lyndon Johnson

32. What was the 1948 arrangement between Australia, New Zealand, and Malaya to coordinate service planning in defending air and sea communications in the region?
a) Malayan Agreement
b) 1948 Treaty
c) Anzam Treaty
d) Adana Treaty

33. Whose operas are performed at the annual summer festival at Bayreuth in Germany?
a) Bellini
b) Verdi
c) Mozart
d) Richard Wagner

34. Who said `True wit is nature to advantage dressed, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.`?
a) John Milton
b) Alexander Pope
c) Lord Byron
d) John Gay

35. What is the capital of Croatia?
a) Dubrovnik
b) Zagreb
c) Rijeka
d) Split

37. Which sheikdom is the capital of the United Arab Emirates?
a) Qatar
b) Dubai
c) Sharjah
d) Abu Dhabi

38. Edmonton, Halifax, Toronto and Winnipeg are four of the ten provincial capitals of which country?
a) India
b) Canada
c) New Zealand
d) Kenya

39. Which mountain chain is the barrier between northern Italy and France, and Germany and Austria?
a) Atlas
b) Pyrénées
c) Appennino
d) Alps

40. In the history of the Christian church, what was the name of the 15th-century attempt to urge the supremacy of church councils over the popes?
a) Reformation movement
b) Popish Plot
c) Conciliar movement
d) The Great Schism

41. What peninsula in Gwynedd, North Wales, lies between Cardigan Bay and Caernarvon Bay?
a) Lleyn
b) Snowdon
c) Anglesey
d) Tremadog

42. Who wrote the words `If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you.`?
a) A AMilne
b) Rudyard Kipling
c) G AHenty
d) Dornford Yates

43. Which is the largest lake in the Lake district and also in England?
a) Windermere
b) Derwent Water
c) Coniston
d) Ullswater

44. Who wrote the words `A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.`?
a) Karl Marx
b) Bertrand Russell
c) Albert Camus
d) Joseph Conrad

46. Which radar-based blind bombing system of World War II was adopted by the RAF 1942?
a) Cluster system
b) Thompson system
c) Maxim system
d) Oboe system