BBC Radio 4 Brain of Britain Ultimate Quiz Book. Russell Davies

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      The next 35 quizzes are closer to what you’d expect in a broadcast edition of Brain of Britain: a real mixture of difficulty level. See how you get on.

Quiz 11

      1. Which month, known as the windy month, was the sixth month of the French Revolutionary calendar, and lasted from around 20th February to 21st March?

      2. Alberto Juantorena, Quincy Watts and Michael Johnson are among those who have won Olympic gold in which athletics event?

      3. Which children’s story by Roald Dahl was first adapted for the London stage in 2011 with songs by the musician and comedian Tim Minchin?

      4. One of the four kings in a standard English pack of cards is depicted without a moustache – supposedly, originally, it was missed off because of poor copying. Which king is it?

      5. Which artist became the first President of the Royal Academy in 1768?

      6. Of which British Prime Minister is the Labour politician Douglas Jay quoted as saying that ‘he never used one syllable where none would do’?

      7. In a chemistry laboratory, what is the purpose of a Kipp’s apparatus?

      8. Which two provinces in the North East of France, annexed by Bismarck in 1871, were returned to France by the Treaty of Versailles after the First World War?

      9. Which is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World whose exact location remains unconfirmed by archaeology?

      10. The adjective pelagic, often used to describe certain types of bird, comes from a Greek word meaning what?

      11. Which powerful Italian organised crime ring, whose name is possibly derived from a local word for ‘thief’, is based in Calabria but has links and operatives all over the world?

      12. In the children’s television drama series Grange Hill, what was the name of the long-serving head teacher played by Gwyneth Powell?

      13. Although it’s used in casual speech to mean the dim and distant past, in law the phrase ‘time immemorial’ relates very precisely to a particular calendar year. Which one?

      14. Which Dutch sprinter, who won the 100 metres and 200 metres at the 1948 London Olympics, was nicknamed ‘The Flying Housewife’?

      15. The medal of the Order of the British Empire for Gallantry was superseded in September 1940 by the introduction of which other honour?

      16. In Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, what’s Gulliver’s first name?

      17. What name, also meaning a particular time of day, is sometimes given to the hot and dry southern states of Italy, including the islands of Sicily and Sardinia?

      18. Which North American city is served by George Bush International Airport?

      19. Which novelty swing dance, derived from the Charleston, was named following Charles Lindbergh’s crossing of the Atlantic in 1927?

      20. Which part of the British Isles has a parliament called the Court of Chief Pleas?

      21. Which type of theatre derives its name from a Latin word meaning ‘a player of many parts’?

      22. Apatosaurus is the name by which scientists now refer to the dinosaur formerly known as the Brontosaurus. The name Brontosaurus means ‘thunder lizard’ – but what does the name Apatosaurus mean?

      23. Windermere is the largest of the lakes in the English Lake District, and the largest natural lake in England. Which is the second largest?

      24. In Morse code, the most commonly occurring vowel and the most commonly occurring consonant are represented respectively by a single dot, and a single dash. Which letters are these?

      25. Which athlete and politician became the first person to be named BBC Sports Personality of the Year, in 1954?

      26. The comic playwright born Jean Baptiste Poquelin in 1622 is better known by what pen-name?

      27. Which pioneering jazz pianist, who came to prominence as part of the ‘be-bop’ movement in the 1940s, had the unusual middle name ‘Sphere’?

      28. In the care label symbols found on clothes, what is indicated by a square with a circle inside it, crossed out?

      29. A painting of 1599 by Caravaggio depicts a scene from the Old Testament, in which the Hebrew widow Judith beheads an Assyrian commander, after having calculatedly seduced him and made him drunk. What’s his name?

      30. The heavy black-brown mineral cassiterite is the principal ore of which metallic element?

      31. The toxic quinolizidine alkaloid, that became the suspected agent of poisoning in the Daphne du Maurier novel My Cousin Rachel, is present in the seeds of which tree, grown for its hanging clusters of golden flowers?

      32. Which Scottish monarch was killed at the Battle of Flodden Field in 1513?

      33. In an early printed book, where would you find the ‘explicit’?

      34. Which artist did the writer Gore Vidal call ‘a genius with the IQ of a moron’?

      35. Which Latin phrase meaning ‘come with me’ is often used to describe a personal handbook, carried for use when needed?

      36. The cran, equal to 37¹/2 gallons, is used commercially to measure the volume of which commodity?

      37. The comedian Frankie Howerd’s role as Pseudolus, in the London production of Stephen Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, led to a TV comedy series which was written for him, and directly inspired by that show. What was its title?

      38. The four American Presidents whose faces are carved into Mount Rushmore in South Dakota are Lincoln, Washington, Theodore Roosevelt and which other?

      39. The Canadian physician Frederick Banting won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1923, for his work with his colleague Charles Best, that made СКАЧАТЬ