Remarkably Miscellaneous 2 Trivia Quiz

Answer: China (1899-1901)

In response to the growth of Western and Japanese power in China in the late 1890s, a secret and violent opposition group arose. It was called the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists. Members practised traditional Chinese martial arts, and some believed that these ancient practices made them immune to bullets. They were called "boxers" because of their fighting style. From 1899 through 1901, they rose against foreign diplomats, foreign businessmen, and Christian missionaries. They occupied Peking. A joint military force of the UK, the US, Germany, France, Russia, Japan, Austria-Hungary, and Italy invaded and broke the siege.

In 1854, Australian goldminers at Ballarat revolted, built the Eureka Stockade, and blood was shed. In 1837 and 1838, Louis‑Joseph Papineau and the Patriotes rebelled against the government in Quebec. More blood was shed. In 1794, American distillers in Pennsylvania were opposed to the federal tax imposed on whiskey. When their opposition grew violent, federal troops were dispatched. A small amount of blood was spilt, and the farmers went back to their stills.

Answer: There's no point arguing about tastes.

The maxim "De gustibus non est disputandum" has been attributed to a variety of classical Roman sources: Virgil, Horace, Cicero, Julius Caesar, Ovid, Seneca Minor. There is no such attribution in ancient Roman texts. Rather, it appears in a legal text in 1628 as a proverb. The statement means literally, "about tastes, it is not to be disputed." The sense is, "In matters of taste, there can be no disputes."

An equivalent English maxim holds that "there is no accounting for tastes." The French equivalent is "à chacun son gout," meaning "to each their own taste." The German is, "Über Geschmack lässt sich nicht straiten" meaning "One cannot argue about taste." Perhaps the most amusing version is the Norwegian, "Smaken er som baken, den er delt," meaning that "taste (and political opinion) is like one's backside/butt; it is split/divided."

Answer: Stanford

Young Hoover was orphaned by the deaths of his father (when he was six) and his mother (when he was nine). He left West Branch, Iowa, to live with his uncle in Oregon. Hoover entered Stanford in 1891 as a member of the first incoming class and was graduated with a degree in geology in 1895, in the first graduating class. As a student, he was treasurer of the student body and manager of both the football and baseball teams. He also managed a private laundry service.

Answer: German (Hessian)

Not everyone who fought in the American Revolution was English nor born in the Colonies. On the British side, English, Scots, Irish, and Welsh regiments fought, as did American Blacks seeking to earn their freedom, Native Americans (especially Mohawk, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca) and German "auxiliaries" rented by their princes to other armies, especially the British. Troopers from Hesse‑Kassel were called Hessians; modern people from the German state of Hesse are also called Hessians.

Irving removes any doubt about the ethnicity of his headless horseman by describing him as "the ghost of a Hessian soldier whose head was shot off by a cannonball."

Answer: 16

Point values are useful in evaluating the exchange of pieces. The most common and widely used system assigns 1 point to a pawn, 3 points to a knight, 3 points to a bishop, 5 points to a rook, and 9 points to a queen. This convention allows a player to determine the worth of a piece (or pieces) sacrificed in terms of a piece (or pieces) captured. There are also other factors to consider, such as a piece's position relative to every other piece on the board.

The earliest systems are recorded from the 18th century; the most modern are crafted by computers. The rank of pawns is initially eight pieces, side by side, arrayed across all eight of their side's squares, facing their opponent's eight pawns, hence sixteen on the entire board.

Answer: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

"The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" (Danse de la Fée-Dragée) is a solo dance in Act II of "The Nutcracker." Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky composed this two-act ballet in 1892.

The composition tells the story of Clara and the Nutcracker Prince on their magical journey to the Land of Sweets. This land is ruled by the Sugar Plum Fairy, who greets them warmly and elaborately. Her dance is accompanied by an instrument called a celesta -- a piano-like instrument in appearance which sounds more like a bell being struck. Probably through the popularity of performances of "The Nutcracker" during Advent and Christmas, this sound has become associated with winter, snow, solstice, and Yule.

"Peter and the Wolf" (1936) is a clever narrated composition for orchestra by Sergei Prokofiev. In it, a specific instrument is assigned to play a theme representative of each character in the Russian folktale. "The Carnival of the Animals" (1886) was written by Camille Saint-Saëns as a bit of fun. It describes both the behavioural traits and the sounds made by fourteen different animals. "The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra" (1945) was written by Benjamin Britten, drawing on a theme by Henry Purcell (1659-1695). It is a sort of tour through the various sections of an orchestra.

Answer: a Japanese savoury egg custard

The Japanese word "chawanmushi" is a compound of two words: "chawan" meaning tea cup or rice bowl, and "mushi" meaning steam. The dish described is a savoury egg custard steamed in a tea bowl or cup. The subtle flavour arises from a broth of kelp, dried kelp, soy sauce, and mirin. Some are made perfectly smooth; others are intensified by kamaboko (fish cake), proteins, or mushrooms inside.

A Chow Chow is a sturdy dog breed from Northern China, particularly distinguishable by its black or purple tongue. "Moshi moshi" is a very humble, very informal greeting used when answering the telephone; "rusuban denwa" is Japanese for telephone answering machine. Chawan Island (originally Pulau Ayer Chawan) was an offshore island in Singapore, integrated with many others into the manmade Jurong Island.

Answer: the mome raths outgrabe.

Carroll's nonsense poetry is arguably the epitome, the archetype, the exemplar of its sort. "Jabberwocky" is arguably the best of his many efforts in this vein. Two of the words which he coined for this poem migrated into Standard English: (1) chortle, a kind of gleeful laughing, and (2) galumph, which blends gallop with triumph to mean marching clumsily with a heart filled with joy.

The poem appeared first in his book "Through the Looking-Glass" (1871-1872). The meaning of "And the mome raths outgrabe" is elusive. Fortunately, Humpty Dumpty explains it all to Alice and thereby to us. A "rath" is a small green pig with a long nose. "Mome" means that the pigs are lost. One "outgrabes" by making a noise which blends a bellow with a whistle and a sneeze.

Answer: Second John

The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the New Testament did not arrive neatly divided into chapters and verses. Over time, people needed to refer to specific parts of Scripture. Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen Langton invented the modern system of chapters around 1227, and they appear to have stuck. In 1448, Rabbi Isaac Nathan ben Kalonymus numbered the verses in the Hebrew Bible. In 1551, a French printer, Robert Estienne, numbered the verses in the New Testament and published a complete Bible using Langton's, ben Kalonymus', and his own systems in 1555.

There are several ways to judge the length of a biblical book; the number of verses is one of them. The shortest book of the entire Bible (Old and New Testaments together) is Second John (II John). This little epistle comprises 13 verses in one chapter. No other book has fewer.

Answer: her gallbladder

The gallbladder is an organ which stores, concentrates, and releases bile in the process of digesting fats. When it malfunctions, it may be removed. The surgery is called cholecystectomy. This extirpation relieves biliary colic, cholecystitis, pancreatitis, and cancer. Since 1846, the gallbladder has been referred to medically as cholecystis.

This means a sack or bag of gall. The suffix -ectomy means "removal of." Possession of a gallbladder is not necessary to living a healthy life. Without the storage and metering effect of the bile produced by the liver, digestion of fats may be uncomfortably impacted.