Saturday, October 31, 2015

Trivia Bits 31 October

 

Eric Bogle a

Scottish-born Australian folk singer-songwriter Eric Bogle (pictured) whose songs include two homages to departed pets, Little Gomez, a Chihuahua, and Nobody's Moggy Now and an acknowledgment of his folk music fans with Do You Sing Any Dylan?.

Born Eleanora Fagan born in Philadelphia on April 7, 1915 was jazz vocalist Billie Holliday whose song God Bless the Child became her most popular and covered record that reached number 25 on the charts in 1941 and was third in Billboard's songs of the year, selling over a million records and in 1976, the song was added to the Grammy Hall of Fame.

The Dark Hedges is the one of the most photographed locations in Northern Ireland and are a beautiful avenue of beech trees was planted by the Stuart family in the eighteenth century.

South African rebel tours was the name given to a series of cricket tours to South Africa during its isolation from international cricket in the 1980s due to apartheid.

Meaning to take a look at and also referring to a adult male goose is the word gander.

The 18 August 1966 Battle of Long Tan took place in a rubber plantation near Long Tan, in Phuoc Tuy Province, South Vietnam during the Vietnam War fought between Australian forces and Viet Cong and North Vietnamese units.

Founded in 1994 in Sweden by Christian von Koenigsegg, the Swedish company Koenigsegg, based in Ängelholm, is a manufacturer of high-performance sports cars, also known as hypercars.

At South Australian town Streaky Bay on the western side of the Eyre Peninsula, a monument has been erected to Dutch explorer Pieter Nuyts who was the first European to sight the area in 1627 in the Golden Zeepaard.

The title of the Irish novelist, screenwriter and former journalist Colin Bateman 1995 novel Cycle of Violence refers to a bicycle that the protagonist, a journalist named Miller, must ride whilst reporting on murders and court cases alike.

Jon Heder played the title role in the 2004 comedy film Napoleon Dynamite with Heder paid just $1,000 to play Napoleon Dynamite, and only after the film's success re-negotiated and received a cut of its profits.

Quotables 31 October

 

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Friday, October 30, 2015

Trivia Bits 30 October

 

Giant poster 

Starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean was the 1956 American Warner Color drama film Giant (poster pictured) which in 2005 was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.

The most basic of all motion, rectilinear motion is motion along a straight line and can be described mathematically using only one spatial dimension.

The Circuit of Americas is located in Austin, Texas and is a motor racing circuit in Austin, Texas which hosted the Formula One United States Grand Prix in 2012 and 2013.

The weapons testing range in South Australia that covers approximately 127,000km2 that is restricted to the public is the RAAF Woomera Test Range operated by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Aerospace Operational Support Group.

The novella on which Audrey Hepburn’s 1961 iconic movie Breakfast at Tiffany's was based was written in 1958 by American author, screenwriter, playwright and actor Truman Capote.

Colour television was introduced in Australia when all stations moved to colour on 1 March 1975, using the European PAL standard and the slogan used to sell colour television to the Australian public was March first into colour.

The national flag of the United Kingdom, the Union Jack is made up of the Cross of St George, the saltire of St Andrew and the Cross of St Patrick and was adopted in 1801.

The characters Oaken, the owner of Wandering Oaken's Trading Post and Sauna, Olaf, a comic-relief snowman who dreams of experiencing summe, and Bulda, a troll, feature in the 2013 American 3D computer-animated musical fantasy-comedy film Frozen.

Australian bantamweight boxer, the first Indigenous Australian to win a world title Lionel Rose grew up in a settlement called Jackson’s Track which was 5 kilometres from Drouin in West Gippsland, Victoria.

Starring as Temperance “Bones” Brennan in the crime procedural comedy-drama TV series Bones is American actress and producer Emily Deschanel who first played the role in 2005.

Quotables 30 October

 

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Thursday, October 29, 2015

Trivia Bits 29 October

 

King James IV of Scotland

King James IV of Scotland (pictured) once used Mingarry Castle, situated a mile south-east of the small village of Kilchoan in Lochaber, Scotland, as a stronghold for fighting off clan Donald in the late 15th century.

In music, an intermezzo is a composition which fits between other musical or dramatic entities, such as acts of a play or movements of a larger musical work.

Edson Arantes do Nascimento is better known as Pelé who in 1999 was voted World Player of the Century by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics.

Jamaican-born English antiquary, satirical poet and Member of Parliament George Ellis accompanied England's Earl of Malmesbury to France in 1796 as a member of the peace negotiations.

Formerly used for surveillance and now often used for advertising, the Blimp is an airship without an internal structural framework or a keel and relies on the pressure of the lifting gas, usually helium, inside the envelope and the strength of the envelope itself to maintain its shape.

General Gnassingbé Eyadéma was president of Togo, a country in West Africa, for 37 years from 1967 until his death in 2005.

The abbreviation for the word folio is FOL and refers to a book or pamphlet made up of one or more full sheets of paper, on each sheet of which four pages of text are printed, two on each side; each sheet is then folded one time to produce two leaves.

The Black Forest mountain range is in the southwest of Germany and in ancient times was known as Abnoba mons, after the Celtic deity, Abnoba, in Roman times it was given the name Marciana Silva - Marcynian Forest, from the Germanic word marka = border.

Country-comedian and Hee Haw star Archie Campbell's childhood home has been preserved as a "tourism complex and museum" in Bulls Gap, Tennessee.

A piano composition in the style of an improvisation is called a toccata, from the Italian toccare meaning to touch, featuring fast-moving, lightly fingered or otherwise virtuosic passages or sections.

Quotables 29 October

 

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Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Trivia Bits 28 October

 

Umeboshi

Umeboshi (pictured) is a Japanese foodstuff of pickled plum usually served as side dishes for rice or eaten on rice balls for breakfast and lunch and are occasionally served boiled or seasoned for dinner

In British Universities, a head, fellow or tutor of a college is known as Don especially traditional collegiate universities such as Oxford and Cambridge in England.

Ufa, the capital of the Republic of Bashkortostan, was founded in 1574 when the Russians built a fortress and settlement built on the orders of Ivan the Terrible, and originally bore the name of the hill it stood on, Tura-Tau.

In the sport of Ice Hockey, a training machine called a skatemill is used and resembles standard runners' treadmills with specially designed surfaces that allow players to practice skating techniques on a surface that resembles ice and have variable speeds, usually topping out at between 20 and 30 miles per hour.

Michael Cera starred with Ellen Page in the 2007 Canadian-American comedy-drama movie Juno and tells the story of an independent-minded teenager confronting an unplanned pregnancy and the subsequent events that put pressures of adult life onto her.

Beriberi, a condition caused by the lack of Vitamin B1 (thiamine), has symptoms that may include weight loss, emotional disturbances, impaired sensory perception, weakness and pain in the limbs, and periods of irregular heart rate.

Belle Swan is Kristen Stewart’s character in the Twilight series of five romance fantasy films from Summit Entertainment based on the four novels by the American author Stephenie Meyer with the first instalment, Twilight, released on November 21, 2008.

American fantasy, science fiction, horror and mystery fiction author, Ray Bradbury, wrote the 1959 collection of short stories A Medicine for the Melancholy.

Nephology is the branch of meteorology that deals with clouds.

The pronghorn is native to the continent of North America and is often called an antelope because it closely resembles the true antelopes of the Old World.

Quotables 28 October

 

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Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Trivia Bits 27 October

 

Berghoff restaurant chicago

The Berghoff restaurant in Chicago (pictured) closed on 28 February 2006 after 107 years of operation by three generations of the Berghoff family and re-opened as its former three-part restaurant/cafe/bar in 2007.

Marzipan is a confection consisting primarily of sugar or honey and almond meal which is often made into sweets; common uses are marzipan-filled chocolate and small marzipan imitations of fruits and vegetables.

Wild Oats XI won line honours in the 2013 Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race which is an annual event hosted by the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, starting in Sydney on Boxing Day, 26 December, and finishing in Hobart, Tasmania with a race distance of approximately 630 nautical miles (1,170 km).

In Chinese Culture, Jueju, a matched pair of couplets with each line consisting of five or seven syllables, and Lüshim, eight-line regulated verse form with lines made up of five, six, or seven characters are forms of poetry.

The Green Waterhole Cave is a popular cave diving site in the Limestone Coast region of south-eastern South Australia and is a paleontological site as well as a cave diving site.

French chef, restaurateur, and the author of cookery books Marcel Boulestin, who appeared on the BBC's experimental television broadcasts in 1937 to 1939 was the first television chef.

According to legend, Peeping Tom peeped at Lady Godiva during Lady Godiva's naked ride through Coventry, and probably did not originate in literature, but came about through popular lore in the locality of Coventry.

According to Breton folklore, a cultural region in the north-west of France, not completing the 600 km long Tro Breizh in one's lifetime would condemn their soul to repeating a tour of equivalent length every seven years from within their coffin.

The main four ingredients of angel cake are sugar, flour, cream of tartar and egg whites and originated in the United Kingdom.

Australian former professional golfer Jack Newton walked into the spinning propeller of a Cessna aeroplane in 1983 losing his right arm and eye and sustaining severe abdominal injuries and after recovery taught himself to play golf one-handed, swinging the club with his left hand in a right-handed stance.

Quotables 27 October

 

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Monday, October 26, 2015

Trivia Bits 26 October

 

Khigh Dhiegh

Portrayed by actor Khigh Dhiegh (pictured), Wo Fat is a fictional villain in the original 1968 American police procedural drama TV series Hawaii Five-O.

The Sumida River runs through Tokyo for 27 kilometres, passes under 26 bridges spaced at about one bridge per kilometre including The Senju Bridge, dating from 1921, replaced an earlier bridge initially constructed in 1594, which was for a long time the only bridge across the river.

Opened on 18 December 1884, and listed in the 2014 top-20 list of the most beautiful libraries in the world compiled by the U.S. magazine Travel + Leisure, Adelaide's State Library’s Mortlock Wing features masonry columns, two galleries, a glass-domed lantern roof, painted gold features, original furniture and a large Dent and Sons clock over the main hall.

The original manuscript of Les Miserables by Victor Hugo was published n 1862 with hundreds of pages penned by Hugo while he was in exile on Guernsey.

Florida Lottery's Lotto game was the first single-state lottery in the United States to have a jackpot over US$100 million, on the September 14, 1990 drawing.

In July 2014, the Guinness Book of Records record for the largest gathering of people dressed as cows was set at the Cowrarump’s Deja-Moo Country Fair in South Western Western Australia when 1,352 dressed in cow onsies.

In July 2013m 6,000 dancers across the three cities of Sydney, London and Glasgow were joined by video link and simultaneously performed a commissioned Big Dance routine created by Australia Rafael Bonachela, the artistic director of the Sydney Dance Company.

The third oldest university in Australia, Adelaide University was founded in 1874 and is associated with five Nobel laureates, 104 Rhodes scholars and is a member of the Group of Eight, a coalition of research intensive Australian universities.

To nictitate is to wink or blink and comes from Medieval Latin nictitāre to wink repeatedly and from Latin nictāre to wink.

The Royal Military College, Duntroon, is the Australian Army's officer training establishment in the Australian Capital Territory, founded in 1911 modelled on aspects from the Royal Military College of Canada and the military colleges of Britain, and the United States of America.

Quotables 26 October

 

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Sunday, October 25, 2015

Trivia Bits 25 October

 

Usain Bolt

The first man to hold both the 100 metres and 200 metres world records since fully automatic time measurements became mandatory in 1977, Jamaican sprinter athlete Usain Bolt released the 2014 autobiography Faster than Lightning.

School bus yellow is a specific shade of yellow, Hex triplet #FFD800, formally adopted as the standard color for school buses in the United States in 1939, following a conference funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.

A historical reference to an early name for what is now Boonah, Queensland, The Blumbergville Clock is a unique piece of installation art created by renowned artist Christopher Trotter and clockmaker David Bland honouring the spirit of resilience of the community following the natural disasters of 2011 and 2013.

On New Year’s Day, 1914, Abe Pheil squeezed into the open cockpit of a Benoist Type XIV boat-plane in St Petersburg, Florida, and became the world’s first airline passenger flying 20 miles in 23 minutes for a specially auctioned fare of $400.

Iraq has the smallest coastline, approximately 60 kms, on the Persian Gulf with other countries with a coastline on the Persian Gulf are Iran, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar on a peninsula off the Saudi coast, Bahrain on an island, Kuwait, and Iraq in the northwest.

Samuel Andrews (1836–1904) was an English-born chemist and inventor whose request for investment capital to build an oil refinery in 1862 led to a partnership with John D. Rockefeller and the formation of the Standard Oil companies.

One of the oldest cities of ancient Egypt, the sacred city of Abydos was the site of many ancient temples, including Umm el-Qa'ab, a royal necropolis where early pharaohs were entombed.

From 1836 to 1855, Chinese painter Lam Qua painted pre-operative portraits of American physician Peter Parker's patients, particularly those with large tumors or other major deformities and are now held by the Peter Parker Collection at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

The automobile manufacturer Proton has its headquarters in Malaysia in Shah Alam, Selangor and operates an additional manufacturing plant in Tanjung Malim, Perak.

To genuflect, or genuflexion, is to bend at least one knee to the ground and was from early times a gesture of deep respect for a superior as in 328 BC, Alexander the Great introduced into his court-etiquette some form of genuflection already in use in Persia.

Quotables 25 October

 

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