Eclectic Medley II Trivia Quiz

Answer: Ne Win

Born Shu Maung, he adopted the name of Ne Win ("Radiant Sun") during his military training. He was known to follow advice on matters of life and state based on favorable numerology or simply superstition. For example, he once demonetized the national currency overnight, announcing that the 50 and 100 kyat denominations were immediately to be considered as illegal tender to make way for the new 45 and 90 kyat banknote values. These latter values were divisible by 9, one of his favorite numbers.

There's also quite a bit of rumors about eerie rituals he undertook, one of the more persistently reported being that he bathed with dolphin's blood to prolong his longevity.

Answer: Ophelia

Ophelia is Hamlet's potential love interest, and the daughter of Polonius, tragically ending her life by drowning following a period of madness.

Ophelia is widely represented across many forms of media. Since her debut in "Hamlet", the character of a young woman meandering about or floating in bodies of water while wearing a ghostly white dress struck a chord with people.

She has been the subject of many paintings, including works from Paul Delaroche, Constantin Meunier, John Everett Millais and Victor Müller. English artist John William Waterhouse even did three separate paintings of Ophelia, each time portraying her closer to her tragic death.

Later works have attempted to change the classical symbolism of feminine fragility that encompasses Ophelia's existence, making her a heroine instead. Such examples are "Ophelia" by Lisa Klein, a young adult novel that was adapted into a 2018 film with Daisy Ridley in the title role, and the point-and-click adventure video game "Elsinore" from Golden Glitch studios.

Answer: Water

Despite her getting married to the knight, the novella ends in tragedy. In it, Undine disappears after years of people mistrusting her for her witch-like powers, eventually including her own husband. Before she vanished, she warned the knight never to marry again, but he didn't listen. She re-emerged from a fountain at his second wedding, poetically drowning her former lover in her many tears.

This novella served as an inspiration to many other works, including "The Little Mermaid" by Hans Christian Andersen.

Answer: 1985

The song is about a woman named Debbie living a pretty average life with two kids in high school and an accountant for a husband. Debbie is reminiscing about her youth and how she was envisioning a different path for her life back then, perhaps getting involved with a rockstar or being an actress or star on her own.

This nostalgia trip of a song mentions many popular music artists like U2, Blondie, Madonna, and Motley Crue. It also takes a dig at MTV no longer being about music and Ozzy Osbourne doing reality TV.

The music video goes even further referencing the 1980s with the band undergoing frequent wardrobe changes every time their garage door closes and rises like a curtain. Among the music videos being parodied are George Michael's "Faith" and Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love".

A minute into the music video, Mitch Allan, lead singer of SR-71, has a cameo as a walking bystander staring at the garage band with a disapproving look.

Answer: Cristiano Ronaldo

CR7 is a combination of Cristiano Ronaldo's initials and his most commonly worn uniform number.

When he played for the Portuguese football club of Sporting Lisbon, he wore the number 28 on his uniform. He requested the same number upon arriving at Manchester United in 2003, but he was honored instead with the number 7, the same that David Beckham had worn. He was only 18-years old when he first came out from Manchester United's bench as a substitute in a game versus Bolton Wanderers.

Cristiano Ronaldo has capitalized on his CR7 moniker, being attached to a fashion store line, a fragrance, a hotel and even a museum in his birthplace of Funchal, in Madeira, Portugal.

In 2022, he became the first male player to score a goal in five different World Cups, an impressive record that joins the many more he has accumulated throughout his dazzling sports career.

Answer: Ali Baba

"Quarante" means forty and "voleurs" means thieves in French.

Ali Baba is a woodcutter and a merchant's son that by luck discovers the secret hideout of the 40 thieves, and the means to access it. However, beyond his fortuitous realization, he doesn't have much to do in the story that bears his own name. Morgiana, the slave girl in his household, is the character that surprisingly has the most significant contributions. Over and over again, through her own cleverness and guile, she's able to keep the thieves from finding and killing Ali Baba. She is even ruthless enough to at one point, kill most of the thieves hiding in oil jars by pouring hot oil over them. Saving Ali Baba's life one more time against the surviving leader of the thieves, Morgiana is finally rewarded for her actions. She doesn't get her name on the title of the story but she gets to marry Ali Baba's son.

Answer: Orkney Islands

Perhaps due to their particular geographic location to the north of Scotland; or their Norwegian Viking ancestry; or the vast archeological sites older than Stonehenge such as Skara Brae, the Orcadians are well-known for their unique sense of identity.

They even have their own dialect, which still survives to the day, despite recent history social suppression and external cultural influence.

Answer: Christopher Lambert

As protector of the Earthrealm, Lord Raiden gathers and mentors a trio of martial artists to fight in an otherworldly tournament against ninjas and monsters, which outcome would decide the fate of their world.

Christopher Lambert gave Lord Raiden a unique sarcastic spin which made him quite memorable and a fan favorite among the many actors later recast in the same role. Curiously, Sean Connery had initially been sought for this role as well, but declined it, favoring more golf time instead before his next project.

Answer: On Stranger Tides

The fourth installment in the series is loosely based on the 1987 book "On Stranger Tides" by Tim Powers. It features a race to find the legendary Fountain of Youth and Jack Sparrow is once again in the middle of it all. He has to somehow survive the nefarious Blackbeard, his returning nemesis Barbossa and the relentless Spaniards. Oh and there's a mermaid too!

Answer: African clawed frog

The African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis) soon became the main lab animals used for finding out if women were indeed pregnant after the British scientist Lancelot Hogben worked with these amphibians in the 1930s. He accidentally discovered their testing potential while tinkering with ox's pituitary gland extracts and the readily available frog near his South African workplace. There's some controversy as some of his colleagues disputed his claim for discovery; however, his name was the one often used to refer to the test.

The broadly despised cane toads were used in a similar way in Australia in the 1950s, but the testing involved the male toads and had an alternate way of processing the urine first before the application.

Since the frogs could be reused for further pregnancy tests, they made the whole process cheaper and quicker than utilizing mice and rabbits, which had to be killed and checked internally for tell-tale changes. Once the Hogben test was made obsolete by the 1960s immunological test kits, many female African clawed frogs were released to the local fauna, becoming a problematic, invasive species.