Would that apply to innocence in a court of law?

Yes, innocent until proven guilty. Irish until proven British, lol.

I must say, my question about whether he was truly Irish or not was not intended to start a war about his nationality. :P

Because Belfast is in Northern Ireland, which is a part of the UK and separate from the country Ireland. However, I have since learned that Irish citizenship is automatically given to those born in N. Ireland if one parent is Irish, and if neither parent is Irish, the N. Ireland resident is still entitled to Irish citizenship, so I think calling C.S. Lewis Irish is fine.

However, one must consider legality when denoting nationalities. An immigrant for example can consider themselves Australian (e.g.) if they have lived in Australia for a long time or something, but if they are still a US citizen and not an Australian one, then they are an American. It's not as simple as "whatever the person considers themselves to be", though I think on FunTrivia, we don't necessarily need to be so technical! Especially because of the iffiness (for lack of a better word) with N. Ireland and Ireland, anyway.

That makes sense. I guess part of the issue depends on how you read the term Irish, as a nationality or as an ethnicity. This involves the idea that people from both Northern Ireland and from the Republic of Ireland (and many other countries) can claim to be Irish without having citizenship.

Very true. I suppose it opens up a whole new can of worms!

I found this discussion very informative though, so thanks to all who contributed.

And then came this:::

British-born nobility; later Irish; WWII pilot; author; journalist; farmer
Alberto Santos-Dumont
Placido Domingo
John Godley, 3rd Baron Kilbracken
Franz Schubert
Cliff Thorburn
Tito Gobbi
Answer: John Godley, 3rd Baron Kilbracken

One can later become Irish?

Apparently so, if granted an Irish title!

He became an Irish citizen after renouncing his British citizenship.

Swiss-born French physcian; bacteriologist; codiscovered the bubonic plague bacillus
Your answer: Alexandre Yersin

physcian should be physician

Scottish poetess; playwright; writer; current Poet Laureate of Britain
Blaise Pascal
Carol Ann Duffy
Fou Ts'ong
Baron Forte
Gary Player
Samuel Cunard

Is she still?
In any case, this needs to be rid of the 'current' adjective,
I see nothing wrong with just saying Poet Laureate of Britain which covers present and past,


Edit note: I didn't think I needed to post the answer. There is only one female listed as a possible poetess. Usually the gender of incorrect answers is quite agreeable with the actual answer.

Naomi Mitchison
Your answer: Scotish novelist; poetess; feminist; good friend of J. R. R. Tolkien

typo - spelling - Scottish

James Herriot
Your answer: Scottish veterinarian; author; 'All Creatures Great & Small'

The answer is correct except that I'm pretty sure (as is Wikipedia!) that he's not Scottish but English.

James Herriot - born in England, moved to Scotland at aged of 3 weeks...could reasonable be described as either English or Scottish.

8. American chemist; invented the pH meter; philanthroist; funded the first silicon transistor co.
Your answer: Arnold Orville Beckman


I believe there are two 'p's in philanthropist.

I don't believe anything anymore lol

Another one ripe for the Harvest!

Well you aren't in Kansas anymore, believe it. Try moving to Missouri, the "Show Me" state where seeing is believing. I've used many Beckman meters and never knew the man. Thank you FT.

15. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
American architect; 'Less is more' & 'The Devil is in the Details'

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (March 27, 1886 – August 17, 1969) was a German architect...he left his homeland reluctantly in 1937. - wiki

German-American architect would be more accurate.

I just had
Angela Merkel = German female politician; current Chancellor

This isn't a problem right now, but made me wonder whether the rules about time-dependency that apply to quiz questions apply to this game as well. Should this be "Chancellor in early 21st century"? Or is "current" OK because JMElston is constantly reviewing the names?

Merkel's chancelorship will be stale one day. So the question needs to be altered (for example: "Chancellor from 2005" or "Eighth Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany").

I believe that this thread would be the place to note the need for a change when it does happen. These descriptions are full of date dependent and time-stamped details, which do get changed as appropriate. Unlike quizzes, which we expect to stay unchanged forever, the description of people who are mid-career will change on a regular basis, and I have seen amendments made. I do not know, however, what the time lag may be between the change in real life and the update of information. It would certainly be a mammoth task to change all entries to remove details that will change with time, as there are a lot of them.

13. Hungarian-born American common law wife of Doc Holliday

Big Nose Kate = (Hungarian-born American common law wife of Doc Holliday)

I think it would be an improvement to include her full name and then add, known as Big Nose Kate. Her name was Mary Katherine Horony Cummings.

Sue

14. American film & TV actor; 'Seabiscuit' & 'Spiderman'
Your answer: Tobey Macguire

two typos - Spider-Man and Maguire
see imdb.com

A minor typo - Izaak Waltons book was "The Compleat Angler. " as oppossed to Complete
I found a picture of the cover on this site: here

The Munro society also uses the spelling for those who climb all the Munroes - 'Compleaters' (and I have reached the top of the grand total of 1)

Australian politician; civil engineer; lead Eureka Stockade rebellion

Your answer: Peter Lalor

Please let's get our grammar right - he led the rebellion!

Anybody who has played all the games on this site has occasionally run across single questions that make no sense because (I'm guessing, now) they have been plucked willy-nilly from quizzes. These questions always demand a guess, pure and simple. They hold up in a quiz because the quiz provides a unifying format, but as single questions they are useless. Why are these questions showing up? Is it because of a computer program that ramdomly selects questions from quizzes and then spits them out? And, can anything be done about it, such as determining which questions from a selected number of quizzes can stand on their own?

How is that relevant to Who Am I?

But yes, all questions go into a database and are chosen at random. I highly doubt anyone is going to wade through over 110,000 quizzes just because a couple of questions don't make sense.

If you find a question that doesn't stand alone, play the quiz the question is from. If the incorrect question from the quiz has been changed so it makes sense on its own, then the question is correct but the database hasn't caught up yet. If the question hasn't been changed, send a correction note.

When you get a question that truly cannot be answered on its own, send a correction note, as AdamM7 described. If an editor agrees that the question is not suitable for the timed games, it can be withdrawn from the selection pool. But we don't have time to go through the hundreds of thousands of questions on the site and judge every question one at a time. (And, to the best of my knowledge, the only way I can remove a question from the pool is in response to a correction note on that specific question.)

Who Am I, however, does not come from quizzes, but from a separate database. That is why there is a thread for posting problems with those questions.

OOOPS!
Sorry for posting in the wrong area. I'm a little new to the forums.