TRIVIA  101

1. What connects the words sitcom, smog, brunch, muppet and cyborg?
     (Hint: portmanteau )

2.  A famous leader's first name of Mohandas is commonly replaced by a first name 
      
that means 'great soul'; who was he?

3. Who was the 'The Wizard of Menlo Park' who said, "Genius is one percent  
       
inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration."? 

4. Which one of these is on the coast: Cairo, Johannesburg, Tripoli, Sarajevo,  
      
Nairobi, Khartoum?

5. Which one of these is not on the coast: Venice, San Diego, Reykjavik, 
       Marrakesh, Helsinki, Lisbon?

6. How much time elapses between any Sunday 29 February and (going forward in  
    
time) the next respective Tuesday 29 February? 
      (This is not a trick question and is reasonably straight-forward to work out if 
        
you have that sort of brain...) 

7.
Months of the year that begin on a Sunday (other than February in non-leap- 
     years) always have five Sundays. What other notable feature do they 
      (including all Februarys) contain?





 Answers:

1.They are all 'portmanteau' words, ie., combinations of two different words. (Sitcom is derived from situation and comedy; smog from smoke and fog; brunch from breakfast and lunch; muppet from marionette and puppet; cyborg from
cybernetic and organism. The term portmanteau as description of word combinations was devised by Lewis Carroll when it first appeared in Carroll's book 'Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There', dated 1872, appeared in 1871.
2. Mahatma ('Great-Souled') Gandhi
3.
Thomas Edison 
4.
Tripoli (Libya)
5.
Marrakesh (Morocco)
6. 
24 years. Given that after every normal year the days of the week advance by one day, and after leap-years by two days, then leap-year days advance by five days each time (every four years). Tuesday is 5 days back from Sunday and therefore one leap year short of a full 28 years cycle (28 years because there are seven different days in the cycle, and seven x four years = 28 years). Anyone not knowing that after every normal year the days advance by one day needs only to calculate that 365 days ÷ 7 (days per week) = 52.142857. The 0.142857 equals one-seventh of a week, ie., a day, which is effectively used from the next year's day cycle, which means that each new year starts one-day forward compared to the previous year (other than after leap-years, when effectively two days are used from the next year's day cycle).
7.  A Friday the 13th.

               




                     Answer all questions below before submitting answers.
 


1) In which ocean is Ascension Island?
Pacific
Atlantic
Indian
Artic
2) What's the oldest university in the USA?
Princeton
Yale
Dartmouth
Harvard

3) Which is the nearest planet to earth?
Venus
Jupiter
Mars
Neptune
4) Which is the largest of the Great Lakes?
Lake Superior
Lake Michigan
Lake Erie
Lake Ontario

5) If a creature is 'opodous', what does it not have?
Scales
Feet
Teeth
Ears
6) What does a hippophobic fear?
Caves
Bees
Horses
Cars

7) Introduced in New York in 1950 what was the first credit card?
Discover
Diners Club
Master Card
Visa
8) In which country was the wheelbarrow invented?
U.S.A.
England
Germany
China

9) What is the largest island in the world?
New Guinea
Great Britain
Greenland
Madagascar
10) How many years of marriage is celebrated on the Ivory anniversary?
Fourteen
Thirty
Twelve
Fifteen