Trivia Quiz

1. Which historic English city shares its name with the state capital of Nebraska?
a) Exeter
b) Winchester
c) Lincoln
d) Bath

2. Who said `Persecution is a bad and indirect way to plant religion.`?
a) Pope Leo XII
b) Martin Luther
c) John Knox
d) Thomas Browne

3. What is the unit of currency in use in Libya, Tunisia and Kuwait?
a) Rupee
b) Dinar
c) Mark
d) Dollar

4. Which English king had two of his six wives beheaded?
a) James I
b) Richard III
c) Henry VIII
d) Henry V

5. Which 18th-century English cattle thief, smuggler, robber, and highwayman was hanged at York in 1739?
a) Jonathan Wild
b) John Nevison
c) Creole Dick Turpin
d) `Wild Bill` Hickok

6. What French inspector-general of infantry under Louis XIV brought the army to a high degree of efficiency?
a) Jean Martinet
b) Roger Martin du Gard
c) Jacques Marquette
d) Martin Margiela

7. What concord was reached in 1985 between the UK premier Margaret Thatcher and Irish premier Garret FitzGerald?
a) FitzGerald Thatcher Alliance
b) Thatcher Agreement
c) 1985 Treaty
d) Anglo-Irish Agreement

8. Which expanse of sea near the Orkney Islands was used as a base by the Royal Navy until 1957?
a) Cape Wrath
b) Scapa Flow
c) Pentland Firth
d) White Sea

9. What was the surname shared by two US presidents who took office as the result of assassination?
a) Nixon
b) Roosevelt
c) Johnson
d) Kennedy

10. Which port, handling about 50% of the country's imports and exports, is the largest city in China?
a) Shanghai
b) Xian
c) Nanking
d) Beijing

11. What is the term for the part of a sentence that contains a subject and a verb, and is joined to the rest of the sentence by a conjunction?
a) Phrasal verb
b) Clause
c) Article
d) Adverb

12. Who said, as he ascended the scaffold, `I pray you, master Lieutenant, see me safe up, and my coming down let me shift for my self.`?
a) Thomas More
b) Mary, Queen of Scots
c) Charles I
d) Sir Walter Raleigh

13. What was the US name for the British Mark VIII tank, adopted by the Anglo-American Tank Committee for production in both the UK and USA in World War I?
a) Fraternity tank
b) Sorority tank
c) Liberty tank
d) Equality tank

14. What country comprises two enclaves on the Northwest coast of the island of Borneo, bounded to the landward side by Sarawak and to the Northwest by the South China Sea?
a) Brunei
b) Bali
c) Bornu
d) Billiton

15. What member of the Romance branch of the Indo-European language family is an Iberian language closely related to Provençal in France?
a) Euskara
b) Guadalajara
c) Catalan
d) Basque

16. Which US president was born and brought up in the state of Arkansas, and eventually became its governor?
a) Bill Clinton
b) John Kennedy
c) George Bush
d) Ronald Reagan

17. Who wrote the words `Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them.`?
a) Shirley Conran
b) John Maynard Keynes
c) Benjamin Franklin
d) Margaret Mitchell

18. Which one of the six New England states was the first state to declare its independence from Britain on July 4th 1776?
a) New York
b) New Hampshire
c) New Jersey
d) New Mexico

19. Of which region on the frontier between Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina is the chief town Knin?
a) Osijek
b) Krusevac
c) Krajina
d) Bratislava

20. What is the name of the anniversary of the armistice signed 11 Nov 1918 which ended World War I?
a) VJ-Day
b) D-Day
c) Armistice Day
d) VE-Day

21. Who wrote the words `So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.`?
a) John Bunyan
b) Alfred, Lord Tennyson
c) Queen Victoria
d) William Booth

22. Who wrote the words `It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.`?
a) Emily Brontë
b) Charles Dickens
c) Rupert Brooke
d) John Buchan

23. Which ball game is held between two teams of five players on an indoor enclosed court?
a) Football
b) Rugby
c) Baseball
d) Basketball

24. Which one of the following countries is not one of the seven that comprise Central America?
a) Panama
b) Venezuela
c) Costa Rica
d) Nicaragua

25. In which Indian city do Hindus hold the festival of the Jar of Nectar of Immortality (Khumbh Mela), every 12 years?
a) New Delhi
b) Madras
c) Bombay
d) Allahabad

26. Which of the following is a river in Guyana that rises in the centre of the country and enters the Atlantic Ocean at Georgetown?
a) Maront
b) Mana
c) Demerara
d) Orinoco

27. What is the name of a series of river valleys in northern England, running east from the Pennines in West Yorkshire?
a) The Moors
b) The Fens
c) Black mountains
d) The Dales

28. Which river in southeastern Australia is a tributary of the River Murray, joining it at Wentworth?
a) Gregory
b) Darling
c) Flinders
d) Mitchell

29. What was the name of the Spanish volunteers who fought with the German army against the USSR during World War II?
a) Red Army Faction
b) Blue Cross
c) Red Guards
d) Blue Division

30. Who wrote the words `And now good morrow to our waking souls, Which watch not one another out of fear.`?
a) John Donne
b) Andrew Marvell
c) John Milton
d) William Shakespeare

31. In which British city's docklands is Canary Wharf, the world's largest office development project?
a) London
b) Glasgow
c) Edinburgh
d) Liverpool

32. Who wrote the words `Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie, O what a panic's in thy breastie!`?
a) Billy Connolly
b) Spike Milligan
c) Robert Burns
d) William MacGonagall

33. What is the popular name of the 1942 report `Social Insurance and Allied Services`, which formed the basis for the social-reform legislation of the Labour government of 1945-50?
a) Bevin Report
b) Brundtland Report
c) Beeching Report
d) Beveridge Report

34. What was the name of the US high explosive named after Major Dunn, its developer; also called 'Explosive D'?
a) Dunnite
b) TNT
c) Dynamite
d) Dunite

35. Who became the youngest ever World Snooker Champion when he won the title in the 1989-90 season aged 21 years 106 days?
a) Steve Davis
b) Stephen Hendry
c) Jimmy White
d) Ronnie O'Sullivan

36. Who wrote the words `Castles in the air - they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build, too.`?
a) George Bernard Shaw
b) Margaret Thatcher
c) Henrik Ibsen
d) Leo Tolstoy

37. What lowland stretch of the Italian peninsula includes and surrounds the city of Rome?
a) Campagna Romana
b) Isole Ponziane
c) Golfo di Taranto
d) Emilia-Romagna

38. In the Indian Mutiny, what was the name of the temporary capture of Delhi by the mutineers during May 1857?
a) The Indian Siege
b) Siege of Delhi
c) Siege of 1857
d) The Delhi Mutiny

39. What secret revolutionary society advocated constitutional government in Southern Italy in the first half of the 19th century?
a) Camorra
b) Capybara
c) Caracal
d) Carbonari

40. Who wrote the words `O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth.`?
a) Dylan Thomas
b) Ovid
c) John Keats
d) G K Chesterton

41. Which of George Orwell's books, published in 1949, was written 35 years before the date of its title?
a) 1975
b) 1979
c) 1984
d) 1981

42. Who said `My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.`?
a) Lord Longford
b) Adlai Stevenson
c) Enoch Powell
d) Michael Foot

43. What is the southernmost point on the UK mainland?
a) Selsey Bill
b) Beachy Head
c) Lizard Point
d) Portland Bill

44. Who said of a painting by James Whistler `Never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.`?
a) J M W Turner
b) King Edward VII
c) John Ruskin
d) Walter Pater