The End! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Full Stop

Growing up in England my teachers always taught commas and full stops. When moving to college in the United States I still used commas but the beautiful full stop was now called a period. Very confusing for a first-year foreign English language student.

Interestingly, the full stop is derived from the punctuation system invented by Aristophanes of Byzantium in the 3rd century BC. He actually had a series of dots that corresponded with different purposes. A high dot marked the end of a completed thought.

A middle dot acted somewhat like today's semicolon and a low dot acted similarly to today's comma. By the time the printing press arrived in Europe in the middle ages, the low terminal full stop had become the accepted way to end sentences.

Answer: Amen

Revelation is the last book of the Christian "Bible". In chapter 22 verse 18 of the King James Translation it reads: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." The word amen comes from the Greek and means literally "truly" or "so be it." In the Christian church it has been used commonly as a final word of declaration at the end of prayers and hymns.

In Arabic, the word is "Amin," and is used in similar way for ending prayers within the Islam faith.

Answer: Rainbow

In Irish folklore there is a creature called the leprechaun who is a mischievous degenerate fairy who has a treasure trove hidden at the end of rainbows. Legend says that if you can capture a leprechaun you earn three wishes that are exchanged to secure their freedom. Rainbows are an optical phenomenon caused by the refraction, reflection and dispersion of light through water droplets that cause a visible spectrum of colors manifested in an arch or circle in the sky.

Answer: Maine

The Appalachian Trail is 3500Km or 2200 miles long and extends along the eastern states from Maine in the North to Georgia in the South. Along the way it passes through Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia. The Northern terminus of the trail is Mount Katahdin in Maine. The trail is administered by the U.S. National Park Service and the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. There now also exists a Northern extension of the trail which takes hikers on into Canada.

Answer: World War I

Ironically, World War I was called the war to end all wars. The conflict raged in Europe from 1914 until 1918. Officially the conflict was ended with the Treaty of Versailles that was signed on the 28th of June 1919. This was the same day that the League of Nations was founded. World War I was mostly fought in Europe and Northern Africa and cost the lives of over 9 million combatants and over 7 million civilians.

The term "war to end all wars" is associated with American President Woodrow Wilson.

However, he used the term only once. Author H.G. Wells actually published a document in 1914 entitled "The War that Will End War".

Answer: Brandenburg Gate

The Brandenburg Gate is one of the highlights of any visit to Berlin. Located just one block south from the Reichstag, the Brandenburger Tor is a beautiful example of neoclassical architecture. It was originally commissioned by King Frederick William II of Prussia and built by Carl Gotthard Langhans in 1788.

The structure took three years to complete and was commissioned as a monument to peace. Fittingly, every Fall, athletes converge on the Brandenburg Gate from every continent on the globe to compete in the Berlin Marathon. Having completed the race myself, I can personally attest to the fact that it is one of the all-time coolest finish lines.

Answer: Baltimore Orioles

Cal Ripken, Jr. is an all-star baseball player that played a remarkable 21 seasons for the Baltimore Orioles. During this career he was a 19-time all-star and multiple golden glove winner. Ripken had a career batting average of .276 that included 3,184 hits, 431 home runs and 1,696 RBIs. Arguably his most amazing achievement was breaking Lou Gehrig's record for consecutive games played. Cal Ripken, Jr. was inducted to the MLB Hall of Fame in 2007 with 98.5% of first ballot votes.

Answer: Land's End

Land's End is found at the very south-western tip of Great Britain in the county of Cornwall on the Penwith peninsula. The distance from Land's End England to John O'Groats Scotland is 838 miles or 1,349 km. In May 2012, Land's End was the site of the Olympic Torch Relay for the London Olympic Games.

Answer: All's Well That Ends Well

"All's Well That Ends Well" is thought to have been written by William Shakespeare in 1604 or 1605. Originally it was classified as one of his comedies but historians consider it now to be a problem play because it does not neatly fall into the category of tragedy or comedy.

The story centers on Helena, a lowly Spanish countess, who falls in love with Bertram, a man of much higher birthright. Although rejected at first, Helena follows Bertram to Paris, Italy, and then back to Spain before finally winning his love and affection.

Answer: Death

The term "Grim Reaper" as a personification of death first appears in 1847. However, the characterization of death as a skeleton carrying a scythe was a popular characterization even as far back as 15th-century England. In Poland, Scandinavia, and the Baltic countries, death has been historically been personified by a female form.

In Greek culture, a favorite characterization of death was an old man or a young boy. In Christian doctrine, death is represented as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse as described in the "Book of Revelation".