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.

               




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