20 Nov 2016

Quiz 31- 10 Questions on Answer.- Answers

1.  International A.N.S.W.E.R, (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) or ANSWER Coalition, is a United States-based protest umbrella group consisting of many antiwar and civil rights organizations. ANSWER has helped to organize many of the largest anti-war demonstrations in the United States, like those against the Iraq War. The group has also organized activities around a variety of other issues, ranging from the Israel/Palestine debate to immigrant rights to Social Security. The group was formed after which infamous historic event?

Ans: Sept. 11 attacks.

2.  In January 2007, Yahoo! India launched 'Yahoo! Answers' -an online community where anyone can ask and answer questions on any topic. The forum was launched by a well known India, with the question "What should we do to free our planet from terrorism?" The question was answered by many including Leander Paes, Kiran Bedi and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. Whose questions was it?

Ans: A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

3. Suppose you want to send to a person in another country a letter, along with the cost of postage for a reply then you can use an international reply coupon (IRC). It is a coupon that can be exchanged for one or more postage stamps representing the minimum postage for an unregistered priority airmail letter. So the person receiving the IRC you sent, has to just go to a post office and exchange the coupon for postage stamp- Thus he can answer your mail without spending on postage. IRC was introduced in 1906 at a Universal Postal Union congress in Rome. IRC however was soon used to for a notorious fraud scheme that has gone down in history and even become a part of daily lexicon. What scheme ?

Ans: Ponzi Scheme. In 1920, Charles Ponzi made use of the idea that profit could be made by taking advantage of the differing postal rates in different countries to buy IRCs cheaply in one country and exchange them for stamps of a higher value in another country. This subsequently became the fraudulent Ponzi scheme.

4. An email storm is a sudden spike of Reply All messages on an email distribution list, usually caused by a controversial or misdirected message when multiple members of the distribution list reply to the entire list at the same time. On August 2016, the New York Times internal email system experienced such an email storm, so on September 2nd the NYT published an article titled "When I’m Mistakenly Put on an Email Chain, Should I Hit ‘Reply All’ Asking to Be Removed?"
All you have to write is the content of the article - verbatim.

Ans: No.


5. The 'Leonidas monument' is a modern monument at Thermopylae (Greece) built  in honor of the Spartan king, who lead the Spartans in the Battle of Thermopylae. It features a bronze statue of Leonidas and a sign under the statue says something in Greek. These words (molon labé) were the answer of Leonidas to Xerxes' demand that the Greeks give up their weapons. What do they translate in English?

Ans: "Come and take them!"

6. The following are some clues that appeared in a few crosswords and their answers
17 across, "One of the U.S." : Utah
3 down, "Red Indian on the Missouri" : Omaha
11 across, "[common]... but some bigwig like this has stolen some of it at times.": Overlord
11 across, "This bush is a centre of nursery revolutions." : Mulberry
15 down, "Britannia and he hold to the same thing." : Neptune
Unlike many other crossword clues, these however have gone down in the annals of history and perhaps in many quizzes too. Why?

Ans: The crosswords appeared in 1944 and the answers to a few of these clues were codenames related to the D-Day plans.  Leonard Dawe, Telegraph crossword compiler, created these puzzles and was arrested by MI5 at the school where he was a headmaster. He was interrogated intensively, but it was decided that he was innocent and it was all a mere coincidence. (There is a much interesting story to the coincidence, but that would make the answer just too long)

7.  It was the 'Battle of Bulge', an important battle of the 2nd World war. Anthony McAuliffe, commander of the 101st Airborne Division  was besieged by a far larger force of Germans at the crucial town of  Bastogne. on 22nd December 1944 the German commander sent a surrender demand typewritten in English (below photograph is of the long letter). What was the reply of Anthony McAuliffe, that made him one of the most memorable commanders of WWII ?

Ans: "Nuts!"

The reply was typed up, centered on a full sheet of paper. It read:

"December 22, 1944

To the German Commander,

N U T S !

The American Commander"

8.  '42 Puzzle' is a game devised by a well known author in 1994 for the United States series of his books. The puzzle is an illustration consisting of 42 multi-coloured balls, in 7 columns and 6 rows. In the puzzle the question is unknown, but the answer is already known to be 42. The puzzle was later incorporated into the covers of all of his reprinted  novels in the United States. Which Author?

Ans:  Douglas Adams for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books. The number 42 in the book is the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything", calculated by an enormous supercomputer named Deep Thought over a period of 7.5 million years. Unfortunately, no one knows what the question is. Thus, to calculate the Ultimate Question, a special computer the size of a small planet was built from organic components and named "Earth"...


9.  "Southern Man" is a song by Neil Young , whose lyrics describe the racism towards blacks in the American South. In the song, Young tells the story of a white man (symbolically the entire white South) and how he mistreated his slaves. In the song Young asks when the South will make amends for the fortunes built through slavery. As an answer to this song, this southern rock bank composed a song for their second album and the song went on to become the bands second hit single. It reached number 8 on the US chart in 1974 and far surpassed "Southern Man". The song is even played today in many FM stations across the world. Which song ?

Ans: Sweet Home Alabama by  Lynyrd Skynyrd .Click to hear the song

10. If some one asked you a 'polar question' (a linguistics terminology), what are the possible answers that you can give ?

Ans: It is a question whose expected answer is either "yes" or "no".



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