2018: Year In Review Trivia Quiz

Answer: Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking, the 17th Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge, was a pioneer in singularities and black hole research. He suffered from ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) which paralyzed him and rendered him incapable of speaking without the aid of an electronic device.

He was expected to die in the 1960s but ended up outliving his prognosis by over 50 years. His life was made into a film, the Theory of Everything, in 2014, and his portrayer Eddie Redmayne won the Oscar for Best Actor.

Answer: Swaziland

On the 50th anniversary of its independence, King Mswati III of Swaziland chose to change the nation's name to its original name, eSwatini ("Land of the Swazis"). Some say that he made the change because it was easily confused with Switzerland.
Swaziland is one of the last countries in the world to have an absolute monarchy as its form of government.

Answer: Meghan Markle

All of the answers dated the UK's most eligible bachelor at one point, but only Markle decided to tie the knot with him. Markle, who became the Duchess of Sussex after the wedding, was an actress with her most notable role in the TV drama "Suits".

Answer: France

The French national team won their second World Cup in 2018, 20 years after their first. Les Bleus won their group and then beat Argentina, Uruguay, Belgium, and Croatia in the knockout stage to hoist the trophy.

Answer: Thailand

The boys and their coach had gone exploring in the cave but their path to the surface was cutoff by the monsoon rains. After more than a week without hearing from them, rescuers found them deep within the cave, alive. An international operation featuring over 10,000 people worked day and night to pump out water, bring in supplies, and ultimately rescue all the trapped people.

Unfortunately, one of the rescue divers, Saman Kunan of Thailand, died of asphyxiation while transporting supplies to the boys.

Answer: Apple Inc.

Apple, founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in 1976, became the world's biggest company (by market capitalization) due to its highly desired iPhones, iPads, and Macintosh computers. The other three answers were ranked 2nd-4th in market cap in 2018.

Answer: Indonesia

In a similar fashion to the Great Boxing Day earthquake and tsunami of 2004, the earthquake and tsunami of 2018 hit Indonesia, killing over 2,000 and leaving over 200,000 homeless. Sulawesi is the world's eleventh-largest island and is at the junction of three major plates, which leads to a lot of seismic activity.

Answer: Jamal Khashoggi

All of the answers were journalists who faced persecution / murder for speaking out. They were all honored by Time Magazine as "The Guardians", the 2018 Person of the Year. Khashoggi was the most prominent, as his murder led to the deterioration of the relationship between Saudi Arabia and many Western nations.

A known critic of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman, Khashoggi fled Saudi Arabia in 2017 but entered the embassy seeking documents for a planned marriage. He never left alive and Turkish intelligence purportedly captured much of his assassination on tape.

Answer: Created the first human genetically edited babies

He used a technique called CRISPR editing to disable the CCR5 gene in several human embryos. The gene creates a protein that facilitates the entry of HIV into a cell. Several of the embryos were then brought to term. The medical community immediately condemned He and his work as unethical, because the side effects of such genetic manipulation is unknown.

Answer: North Korea and South Korea

The separation of the Korean peninsula into the communist North and the democratic South after World War II created many tensions between two countries with the same language and culture, ultimately culminating in the Korean War. Although the Korean War ended in 1953, the two countries never signed an official armistice and relations have never been good.

However, in 2018, the two nations achieved detente by unifying the Korean Olympic teams for the Winter Olympics and signing the Panmunjom Declaration indicating their mutual desire for peace and propserity.