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** Word based **
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1. Although the word ''mandarin'' refers to a Chinese official, the word is not Chinese in origin. ''Mandarin'' is derived from what language?
The correct answer is Sanskrit.
The Sanskrit ''mantrin,'' which eventually descended into ''mandarin,'' meant ''counsellor.'' The same root is also responsible for the word ''mantra.''
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** Astronomy ****
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1. The name of the largest known asteroid in the Asteroid Belt shares its name with what Greek goddess?
Ceres.
The asteroid Ceres was first discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi in 1801. It is about 440 miles in diameter.
2. The term ''eclipse'' is used to describe when the moon passes between the Earth and sun. What term is used when the moon obscures the view of other stars?
The correct answer is Occultation.
When the apparent size of the eclipsed body is much smaller than that of the eclipsing body, the phenomenon is known as an occultation. A transit occurs when a small body, like one of the planets, passes across the disk of a larger body, like the sun, eclipsing a small part of the larger body.
3. Which planet has a moon named after the mythical boatman on the river Styx?
The correct answer is Pluto.
Pluto's sole satellite is named Charon. Pluto was the god of the Underworld which was accessible only by crossing the river Styx with the help of the ferryman, Charon.
4. What planet was originally called Georgium Sidus, after King George III?
The correct answer is Uranus.
Uranus's discoverer, William Herschell, wished to name the planet after his patron, George III. The French preferred to name it Herschell. Eventually, the convention of naming planets after Greek and Roman gods was continued with Uranus.
5. The bright stars Deneb and Albireo are located in what constellation?
The correct answer is Cygnus.
Cygnus, the Swan, is often known as the Northern Cross because of its shape. Deneb is from the Arabic for ''tail'' which gives its location in Cygnus.
6. What astronomer drew up three fundamental laws used to explain planetary motion?
The correct answer is Johannes Kepler.
Kepler's Laws are 1) planets move around the sun in elliptical orbits; 2) the radius vector joining a planet to the sun sweeps out equal areas in space in equal time; and 3) the square of the time taken to complete an orbit depends on the cube of the planet's distance from the sun.
7. What meteor shower that usually occurs in August was once known as the Tears of Saint Lawrence?
The correct answer is Perseids.
In parts of England and Germany, the Perseids were said to be the fiery tears of St. Lawrence since they usually appeared in the sky around August 10th, the anniversary of the saint's martyrdom in 258.
8. Rigel's very name gives away its location in the constellation Orion. Where is Rigel located?
The correct answer is Orion's foot.
Rigel is Arabic for ''foot.'' Rigel is a blue_white supergiant, about 30 times as wide as the sun and 50,000 times as luminous.
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*** General ********
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1. Since Hindus don't eat beef, does the new McDonald's in New Delhi make its burgers with: (a) elephant; (b) chicken; or (c) mutton?
A: Mutton.
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*** Music **********
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1. What did the Gibb brothers call themselves before coming with the name Bee Gees?
Before they were the Bee Gees, the Gibb brothers called themselves the Blue Cats.
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*** mishmash *******
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Political Leaders
Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Monroe all died on July 4th. Jefferson and Adams died at practically the same minute of the same day.
The first coin minted in the United States was a silver dollar. It was issued on October 15, 1794.
There is absolutely no documented proof that Betsy Ross designed the American Flag.
Atila the Hun was a dwarf. Pepin the Short, Aesop, Gregory the Tours, Charles 3 of Naples, and the Pasha Hussain were all less than 3.5 feet tall.
President Grover Cleveland was a draft dodger. He hired someone to enter the service in his place, for which he was ridiculed by his political opponent, James G. Blaine. It was soon discovered, however, that Blaine had done the same thing himself.
President John Tyler had fifteen children.
George Washington was not the first president of the United States. The first president was John Hanson, Maryland's representative at the Continental Congress. On November 5,1781, Hanson was elected by the Constitutional Congress to the office of "President of the United States in Congress Assembled." He served for one year.
George Washington left no direct descendants. Though his wife Martha had four children by a previous marriage, Washington never sired a child to continue his line.
James Buchanan was the only United States president never to marry. During his term in office, his niece Harriet Lane played the role of First Lady.
President Ulysses S. Grant was once arrested during his term of office. He was convicted of exceeding the Washington speed limit on his horse and was fined $20. President Franklin Pierce was Arrested while in office for running over an old woman with his horse, but the case was dropped for insufficient evidence in 1853.
Andrew Jackson was the first President to be the object of an assassination attempt. Jackson had attended a funeral, and a man named Richard Lawrence came up to him and fired a pistol at point_blank range. The pistol misfired, and before anyone could react, Lawrence pulled another pistol and it too misfired! Instead of running or taking cover, President Jackson preceded to beat the man over the head with his cane. The odds were astronomical that two pistols would misfire.
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Drugs
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In 1865 opium was grown in the state of Virginia and a product was distilled from it that yielded 4 percent morphine. In 1867 it was grown in Tennessee: six years later it was cultivated in Kentucky. During these years opium, marijuana and cocaine could be purchased legally over the counter from any druggist.
Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew Cannabis sativa (marijuana) on their plantations.
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First
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Benjamin Franklin was the first head of the United States Post Office.
The first telephone book ever issued contained only fifty names. It was published in New Haven, Connecticut, by the New Haven District Telephone Company in February, 1878.
Wyoming was the first state to allow women to vote.
Catherine de Medici was the first woman in Europe to use tobacco. She took it in a mixture of snuff.
The A & P was the first chain_store business to be established. It began in 1842.
The Grand Canyon was not seen by a white man until after the Civil War. It was first entered on May 29,1869, by the geologist John Wesley Powell.
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Weather Related
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Dirty Snow melts faster than clean.
All snow crystals are hexagonal.
During the heating months of winter, the relative humidity of the average American home is 13% nearly twice as dry as the Sahara Desert.
A bolt of lighting can strike the earth with a force as great as 100 million volts.
The town of Tidikelt in the Sahara Desert once went ten years without a rainfall.
It snows more in the Grand Canyon than it does in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
We are in the middle of an ice age. Ice ages include both cold and warm periods; at the moment we are experiencing a relatively warm span of time known as an "interglacial period." Geologists believe that the warmest part of this period occurred from 1890 through 1945 and that since 1945 things have slowly begun freezing up again. So much for the greenhouse effect.
Clouds fly higher during the day than the night.
A rainbow can occur only when the sun is 40 degrees or less above the horizon.
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Animals
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A skunk will not bite and throw its scent at the same time.
The woolly mammoth, extinct since the Ice Age, had tusks almost 16 feet long.
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Religion
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On the stone temples of Madura in southern India, there are more than 30 million carved images of gods and goddesses.
Christianity has over a billion followers. Islam is next in representation with half this number
In a century's time Islam had converted one_third of the world.
In ancient Egyptian Priests plucked every hair from their bodies, including their eyebrows and eyelashes. Boy, thank god nobody does anything like that anymore!
As of 1976, their was about 60,000 active practitioners of Buddhism.
Every minute 47 bibles are sold or distributed throughout the world.
Contrary to popular belief, there are almost no Buddhists in India, nor have there been for about a thousand years.
Though Buddhism was founded in India around 470 B.C. and developed there at an early date, it was uprooted from India between the seventh and twelfth centuries A.D. and today exists almost exclusively outside the country, primarily in Sri Lanka, Japan, and Indochina.
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Old Stuff
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Flamingo tongues were a common delicacy at Roman feasts.
The Roman emperor Commodos collected all the dwarfs, cripples, and freaks he could find in the city of Rome and had them brought to the Colosseum, where they were ordered to fight each other to the death with meat cleavers.
High_wire acts have been enjoyed since the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Antique medals have been excavated from Greek islands depicting men ascending inclined cords and walking across ropes stretched between cliffs. The Greeks called these high_wire performers neurobates or oribates. In the Roman city of Herculaneum there is a fresco representing an aerialist high on a rope, dancing and playing a flute. Sometimes Roman tightrope walkers stretched cables between the tops of two neighboring hills and performed comic dances and pantomimes while crossing.
According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Egyptian men never became bald. The reason for this, Herodotus claimed, was that as children Egyptian males had their heads shaved, and their scalps were continually exposed to the health_giving rays of the sun.
