Vivid CHRISTMAS QUIZ
How is your general knowledge? Asked to contribute 'difficult,
but not impossible questions' Vivid writers have come up with the
following test that should keep the brain ticking over during the Christmas
break. A mixed dozen bottles of Special Reserve Prahova Valley wines, made
available by Halewood, will be awarded to the most correct entry sent to andrew@vivid.ro
before 15 January, and the correct answers will be published in our February
2004 issue. Good luck!
1. Who was the first Romanian to play in English football?
2. For how long was Pope John Paul I in office?
3. Which song was the Beatles first number one hit?
4. Complete this sentence from King Lear:
''Like flies to wanton boys are we to the gods,
They kill us for their xxxxx''.
5. Who said, ''It was wonderful to find America , but it would have been more wonderful to miss it''?
6. Which Christian denomination was forcibly assimilated by the Romanian Orthodox Church in 1948, with the support of Romania 's communist government?
7. What animal product was used to make the first billiard balls?
8. What replaced it?
9. With Adrian Mutu a memory, how many Romanian footballers now ply their trade in the English leagues, and who are they?
10. The poet Mihai Eminescu died of
(a) gunshot wounds sustained in a duel
(b) syphilis contracted from a Viennese whore
(c) tuberculosis
11. If you are a size 10 shoe in the UK , what size will you be in the US , Europe , and Japan?
12. Who said ''Money is never the problem, it's always the solution''?
13. Which company launched Romania 's largest corporate bond issue during 2004?
14. Before clean-sweeping this year's World Series 4-0, the Boston Red Sox had not won baseball's supreme prize since when?
15. What is the official language of the Solomon Islands ?
16. What was the Struma ?
17. Which religious building project involving the demolition of a communist monument caused controversy in Romania this year?
18. Which muscle group does a French press target?
19. Who said, ''These are my principles, and if you don't like them Ö well, I have others''?
20. Who succeeded Umberto I, the king of Italy, when he was assassinated in 1900?
21. In what year was Greenwich Mean Time adopted?
22. Who was the youngest person ever to be made a Hero of the Socialist Party of Romania?
23. When did Joseph Pilates conceptualise the exercise program that now bears his name?
24. The Union Carbide disaster occurred in India in 1984. When did the company - now Dow Chemicals - finally settle claims for compensation?
(a) 1986 (b) 1992 (c) it hasn't, yet.
25. Which Romanian talk show host rose to prominence as the originator of the Cenaclul Flacara youth events of the 1980s?
26. The viola has four strings tuned to what pitches?
27. Which German painter, sculptor and collagist, born in 1891, is considered to have been the founder of the Dada movement?
28. Which American president claimed that trees are bad for
the environment?
(a) George W. Bush
(b) Bill Clinton
(c) Ronald Reagan
29. What was Romania 's largest privatisation deal during 2004?
30. Which company tried to patent a variety of wheat, claiming it had invented it, when Greenpeace proved it had been in use for generations in India ?
31. In winning this year's Australian election, John Howard will become the country's second longest-serving prime minister. Who is the first?
32. Which novels, originally published in English, were judged by Random House editors to be the best, second best and third best of the twentieth century?
33. Which American abstract-expressionist painter known for 'action painting' was killed in a car accident in 1956?
34. Three American golfers have each played in a record eight Ryder Cup teams. Who are they?
35. How many animal experiments, to the nearest hundred thousand, took place in the UK during 2003?
36. What is the only Southeast Asian country never to have been taken over by a European power?
37. Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf has had a number of renowned narrators. Name two of them.
38. In winning this year's US PGA, Vijay Singh passed two important milestones. What were they?
39. Which material did the French sculptor Auguste Rodin mainly use for his work?
40. Who was the first footballer to win the European Cup with two different teams?
41. What early Hemingway novel describes the running of the bulls in Pamplona ?
42. Who is the only Australian cricketer to score 1000 runs during an Ashes Tour to England but not play in a Test match?
43. The holy man Zossima is the spiritual guide of which character in which novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky?
44. Which two journalists were credited for uncovering the Watergate scandal, and for which publication did they work?
45. What was described as ́the longest suicide note in historyî?
46. What city did Nicu Ceausescu, the dictator's son, have responsibility for?
47. What notorious political activist did Ion Iliescu suggest might be pardoned soon?
48. What notorious commodities trader, once one of the United States most wanted men, received a presidential pardon from Bill Clinton in the last days of his presidency?
49. Which media mogul was recently subpoenaed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission?
50. The name of which head of state is also the Russian word for 'crow'.
51. How many keys are there on a standard modern piano?
52. What colour is associated with the type of sensationalist journalism produced at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries in the US ?
53. What is the name of the young Romanian TV talk-show host
who awards his guests a white ball for a correct answer, and a black one for
the wrong answer?
(a) Robert Turcescu
(b) Marius Tuca
(c) Mihaela Radulescu
54. Richard Strauss wrote Metamorphosen (1945) for how many solo string instruments?
55. Which Moldovan wine is known locally as the ëQueen of England' because Queen Elizabeth II regularly orders the 1990 vintage?
56. After the US election this year, President Bush gave his wife Laura a Scottish Terrier as a birthday present. What is its name?
57. The Bushes have another dog and a cat as pets in the White House. What are their names?
58. Who said, ́You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to a hundredî?
59. What is the standard length of an Olympic swimming pool?
60. What is the standard length of a cricket pitch?
61. Which ruler of which central American country was forcibly removed from office in February 2004?
62. From which Romanian city do the Cheeky Girls hail?
63. Which legendary Romanian journalist, writing between the
first and second world wars, is said to have financed each floor of a large
building in Bucharest with money he obtained through blackmail?
(a) Mircea Eliade
(b) Pamfil Seicaru
(c) Dumitru Tinu
64. What is the name of the Romanian who flew into outer space on 14th May 1981 as part of the crew of Soyuz 40?
