It's a Deal! Trust Me! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Asbestos is a carcinogen

Asbestos, despite its fire resistance and tendency to be found in older buildings as insulation, is a bad product to have around because its mere presence can lead to a variety of dangerous health issues ranging from lung cancer to asbestosis, all simply from inhaling asbestos fibers which naturally wear off. The weirder thing is that, unlike modern insulation, asbestos is mined from the Earth. In many countries, asbestos is now banned and treated as hazardous (and disposed of accordingly). Many buildings containing asbestos are usually gutted or torn down.

I'm doing asbestos I can to sell this place, obviously.

And it clearly looks haunted.

Answer: Beetle

The Volkswagen Beetle started production in 1938 in Germany and has since, in many different models and iterations, spawned over twenty million individual cars. The design has changed a great deal over the decades but the general appearance has remained the same-- you can always pick a VW Beetle out of the other cars on the road because of its rounded shape, like a beetle. The Beetle is both a popular family car and an oft-modified racing car (for specialty races).

But yeah... you'll want to clean this one.

Answer: RMS Queen Mary

The RMS Titanic is the famous ocean liner that sunk on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic heading to the United States. After striking an iceberg in April 1912, over one thousand died in the frigid North Atlantic waters.

The Sultana was a Mississippi Riverboat which sunk after a massive boiler explosion in 1865, killing nearly two thousand.

The Costa Concordia sunk in the Mediterranean in 2012. An Italian cruise ship, it ran aground in Tuscany killing thirty-two. It was left in place, too large to move, until dismantling from the reef it struck.

The only survivor here was the RMS Queen Mary which, as a cruise liner, sailed across the North Atlantic before being decommissioned in 1967. It has since been permanently docked in Los Angeles, California and designated a U.S. National Historic Place.

Does it float your boat?

Answer: Barenaked Ladies

Found on their third album, "Born on a Pirate Ship", "The Old Apartment" was one of two singles from the disc preceding their international breakout hit, "One Week" (on their "Stunt" album). Becoming a popular song for the band through live performances, "The Old Apartment" ended up on their "Rock Spectacle" disc and "Disc One: All Their Greatest Hits (1991-2001)". It's literally about the singer breaking into an apartment (on the Danforth in Toronto) where he used to live to have a nostalgic moment.

"Broke into the old apartment
Forty-two steps from the street
Crooked landing, crooked landlord
Narrow laneway filled with crooks
This is where we used to live"

This place is a steal.

Answer: Xbox 360

The Xbox 360, released in late 2005, was the natural step for Microsoft after the growing success of their original Xbox console (the "Halo" machine) and with significant developers behind the cause (and the Nintendo Wii and Sony PS3 coming late in the following year) they had a lot going for them. Unfortunately, what wasn't going right was the hardware. Players faced significant issues with broken hardware in subsequent years, all punctuated by instances of the notorious Red Ring of Death, which would appear around the console's power button. Different quarters of the circle being filled in denoted different things from general hardware malfunction to overheating. In most cases, people either needed to send their console away to get fixed and retain their hard drive (several weeks of waiting). Later consoles removed the removable hard drive, forcing consumers to buy a whole new console.
In 2013, Microsoft announce the successor console, Xbox One, which they claimed would not feature red lights on the hardware.

Game over.

Answer: Iron

Rust occurs on metal when iron reacts with chloride; iron oxide is formed over time through simple degradation, wear and tear, and water damage. If something iron or made of an iron alloy is left in the rain, for instance, it will eventually erode away, shaving off layers of rust until it disintegrates. Rust can be very damaging for antiques and a lot of collectors and sellers will fight to prevent it through expensive preventative means. The colour, rust, is a mix of red, orange, and brown.

Don't just stand there-- take a closer look at these. You can trust me!

Answer: Tequila

A double-distilled tequila made from agave plants in Mexico, Mezcal is known for containing scorpions (or worms) in the bottle. This tends to sell well with tourists as the novelty of drinking strong alcohol occupied by a once-living thing it kind of a big deal. The scorpion is only there for decoration though-- you drink the tequila as normal. Many enjoy it for its complex flavour profile. Elsewhere in the world you can also find scorpion rice wine. Why stop with tequila, eh?

Perhaps some things shouldn't come included.

Answer: No

Perhaps a sign of a changing world, Encyclopedia Britannica closed its publishing doors in 2010, ending its final run in that year because of ultra-low sales. Although one could probably say that most don't renew their expensive encyclopedia collections every year (it's not a "TV Guide" subscription), the writers blamed it on the rise of internet-based research sites like Wikipedia. Encyclopedia Britannica still exists, though only in a web capacity.

So what do you say? I'll knock ten bucks off the original price.

Answer: A cordwainer

While a cobbler does, indeed, repair and mend shoes into working order, a cordwainer is a person who repairs and creates leather shoes. The job has since fallen out of favor since the Industrial Revolution considering advancements in footwear and synthetic materials, but it does still exist (and it has for hundreds of years)!
A harquebusier is an obsolete British cavalryman while a chasseur is an obsolete French infantryman. A wainscotter doesn't exist; wainscoting, however, is a name used for oak wood paneling.

Come on. These things are a shoe-in.

Answer: Stop Online Piracy Act

In early 2012, the Internet faced a fair bit of worry because of U.S. House of Representatives Bill 3211, better known as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). This bill sought to punish internet users for disseminating specific information and files by monitoring and enacting major fines on offending users. Many major websites including Reddit, Wikipedia, and Google opted to black out their sites for periods of time in retaliation. Millions upon millions of internet users signed petitions to halt the bill though many have arisen since, all around the world, in an attempt to prevent piracy.

SOPA, PIPA, and bills like it are serious business but with increased awareness of how we approach the internet and what world governments and companies want to do with it, we can stand for a freer future.