quiz

1. Finals: The online version

2. THE SWINGING BALL

3. This substance is a white, crystalline
solid in its pure state. It is often used in
mixtures with plasticizers.
Its name stands for Research
Developed _________
What is this substance?

4.  RDX (Research Developed Explosive)

5.  Caenorhabditis elegans is a free-living
transparent nematode. It was the first
multicellular organism to have its whole
genome sequenced. It is famous for its use in
scientific research.
 It is also famous because it was found alive in
petri dishes in aluminum canisters in a locker
in Texas on April 28, 2003.
 Why?

6.  These worms survived the re-entry and
subsequent crash of Space Shuttle Columbia.

7.  John Henry Anderson (1814–1874) was a professional
magician, born in The Mearns, Scotland.
 Anderson is famous for a lifetime of successful
performances of the bullet catch illusion in which a
magician appears to catch a bullet fired directly at
them.
 He is also famous for another first in the field of magic.
 What?

8.  To pull a rabbit out of a hat

9.  In 1931, when M. K. Gandhi visited London to
participate in the 2nd Round Table Conference,
this famous person wanted to meet him. But
Gandhi declined the offer as he had never
heard of him or seen his work. However, on
learning that the person originally came from a
poor family in London’s East End, Gandhi
received him. His first question to Gandhi was
about his attitude to machinery. Journalist
Louis Fischer describes it as an encounter
‘between toothless and toothsome smiling’.
Which person?

10.  Charlie Chaplin

11.  Purushottam Nagesh Oak (2 March 1917 – 4 December 2007),
commonly referred to as P. N. Oak, was an Indian writer, notable
for his Hindu-centric brand of historical revisionism. Oak's
"Institute for Rewriting Indian History" issued a quarterly
periodical called Itihas Patrika in the 1980s.
 Oak claims that Christianity was originally a Vedic religion
following Krishna and claims that Christianity was originally
known by either the names Chrisn-nity or Krishna-neeti
 In a 13 page pamphlet titled 'Was Kaaba a Hindu Temple?', Oak
derives a claim of a "Vedic past of Arabia" based on an inscription
mentioning the legendary Indian king Vikramāditya that Oak
claims was found inside a dish inside the Kaaba.
 In his book X: The True Story, Oak claims that X was
originally a Shiva temple and a Rajput palace named
_______ seized and adopted as a tomb.
 What is X?

12.  Taj Mahal

13.  These started around 1950’s for revenue
generation as a simple profit sharing
agreement between Indian Railways and some
private companies . western railways
generated 26 lakhs in 2001 and 19 lakhs in 2010
but collection plummeted to RS 1.71 lakhs in
2012. As train frequency improves there is now
little hope for their survival . What are we
talking about?

14.  Coin-operated weighing machines

15.  Excerpt of a famous editorial of “The Sun.” FITB.
 Virginia,
Your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism
of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think
that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds.
All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this
great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as
compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the
intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, Virginia, there is a _____________. He exists as certainly as love and
generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give
to our life its highest beauty and joy.
Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no _________s! It
would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no
childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this
existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The
eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

16.  Santa Claus

17.  X is a war memorial located at Hyde Park in
London.
 It says: “They had no choice”
 Who is it dedicated to (or) What is the name of
the memorial?

18.  To animals killed in war
 Beneath the main header, "Animals in War", the memorial
has two separate inscriptions; the first and larger reads:
 "This monument is dedicated to all the animals
that served and died alongside British and allied forces
in wars and campaigns throughout time"
 The second, smaller inscription simply reads:
"They had no choice"
 Upon the rear or outside of the memorial are these words:
 "Many and various animals were employed to support British and
Allied Forces in wars and campaigns over the centuries, and as a
result millions died. From the pigeon to the elephant, they all
played a vital role in every region of the world in the cause of
human freedom.
"Their contribution must never be forgotten."

19.  If this was in 2001, what is it now?

20.  The Wikipedia logo

21.  This water-stained owned by Wallace Hartley
 violin was sold for $1.7 million in an auction.
Some people claim that the violin played last
the Christian hymn “Closer to Lord, my thee”
while others say that it played a happy song.
 Significance?

23.  The Levant is an approximate historical
geographical term referring to a large area in
Southwest Asia south of the Taurus Mountains,
bounded by the Mediterranean Sea in the west,
and in the east, the north Arabian Desert and
Mesopotamia. The Levant does not include
Anatolia (although at times Cilicia may be
included), the Caucasus Mountains, or any part of
the Arabian Peninsula proper. The Sinai Peninsula
is sometimes included, though more considered an
intermediate, peripheral or marginal area forming
a land bridge between the Levant and northern
Egypt.
 How was this in news this year?

24.  Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, better
known as ISIS

25.  Shiva Keshavan (born August 25, 1981) is a five
time Olympian and the first Indian representative
to compete in luge at the Winter Olympic Games.
He set a new Asian speed record at 134.3 km/h
(83.5 mph) after beating the previous record of
131.9 km/h (82.0 mph) and won gold medal in
Asia Cup 2011 at Nagano in Japan. In 2012, he set a
new Asian track record at 49.590 seconds.
 He has been flagbearer for India at the Winter
Olympics in 1998, 2002 and 2010, but was unable
to do so in 2014.
 Why?

26.  India was suspended by the IOC and played
under Independent Olympics Athletes

27.  RNB Research is a global market research company,
headquartered in New Delhi, India. RNB Research
operates through its own offices in 15 cities across 10
countries - China, Egypt, GCC, India, Kenya,
Philippines, Russia, South Africa, Thailand & Vietnam.
 RNB Research specializes in qualitative and
quantitative custom market research. It has experience
in most major sectors, particularly consumer products,
media, retail, financial services, food and beverages,
technology, telecommunications and internet research.
 In an Indian context, why was this in news in 2014?
 (Hint: Chanakya)

28.  News 24: Today’s Chanakya was the only exit
poll that predicted 330+ seats for NDA, making
it the most accurate exit poll.

29.  (No part points)
 “The major thing that cost him very heavily
was a fracture of the cervical spines C1 and C2.
When you have fracture at C1 and C2, the
blood supply at the brain gets cut off because
the vertebral artery gets damaged
immediately,“
 Who said this? About which incident?

30.  Union Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhana
about the death of Gopinath Munde

31.  This incident happened as a result of the decision of the case Tushar
Arun _____ vs State Of Orissa & Ors on 26 November, 1996
 UP Governor Romesh Bhandari, federal ministers Chaturanan Mishra
and Janeshwar Mishra, and UP Congress chief Jitendra Prasad, together
with a host of Congress leaders and the city mayor, Rita Bahuguna Joshi,
were present at the spots while hundreds of people watched from the
banks of the well known confluence of there rivers - Ganga, Yamuna and
Saraswati.
 Much to everybody's surprise, there was a somewhat lukewarm response
from the locals, though city mayor Rita Bahuguna Joshi attributed it to
the "lack of publicity". And went on to say: "Well, if it had been declared a
holiday, perhaps there would have been much greater participation of
both schoolchildren and men and women."
 But for the presence of two United Front government ministers and a few
local Samajwadi Party leaders, it remains a largely Congress dominated
show.
 Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, who was earlier stated to be coming for
the ceremony, eventually dropped the programme. "He had not only told
me when I met him on October 2 last year that he would come, but I had
also received a written confirmation from him in this regard later. I am
not aware why he chose to call it off.
 Which incident?

32.  Immersion of Gandhiji’s ashes at the Sangam
which were earlier kept in a locker at the main
branch of SBI, Cuttack

33.  X did not want to take up a particular
responsibility. Finally, he says what changed
his mind was a meeting with the then Prime
Minister, I.K. Gujral, who had called him to his
parliamentary office. “It was hard to say no to
the Prime Minister,” he says. And, the rest, as
they say, is history.
 Like his father, X is not overtly religious but he
“prays” every morning to “no one in
particular” before he leaves for his office.
 Who is X?

35.  Introduction to themes in his shows always
had a certain pattern. Who was this person?
And FITB.
 (No part points, as a person identifying just one
of the two means that it has been googled)
 1. Aurat
 2. Lal Qila
 3. _________
 4. Dharti Ma

36.  Person: BR Chopra, Blank space: Samay
 Introduction in show Nikaah: Main aurat hoon
 In Bahadur Shah Zafar: Main Lal Qila hoon
 In Mahabharat: Main Samay Bol raha hun
 In Visnu Puran: Main Dharti Ma hoon

37.  (Long story) Source : The TOI
 Liz Calder was a close friend of Salman Rushdie. In
fact, for almost three -and-a-half years, she had stayed
as the lodger in a small house in which Rushdie lived
with his first wife, Clarissa. Calder would sleep at
night in the room in which Rushdie wrote his first
novel, Grimus, by day.
Unknown to him, she would sneak looks at the
manuscript. She was promoted from the publicity
department at the publishers Victor Gollancz and
became an editor just as he finished 'Grimus'. When it
was done, she published it and so his first novel as an
author was also her first novel as a publisher.
(continued in next slide)

38.  Then in 1986, Calder left Jonathan Cape, the publishing house where she
was working, and became one of the founders of a new publishing house,
X, just as Rushdie was giving the finishing touches to his new novel, The
Satanic Verses. As Rushdie describes it in his recently-released memoir,
'Joseph Anton' (in which he writes about himself in the third person),
"Because of their friendship, there was an assumption that he would follow
her. His British agent was the highly respected Deborah Rogers, also a
close friend of Calder's. Deborah quickly agreed with Liz that 'the new
Rushdie' would go to X for a modest fee, as the new publishing house
couldn't afford high advances. Andrew Wylie (his agent in the US) told
him that if he accepted a low figure in the UK, it would ruin the book's
prospects in the US. After much hesitation, he agreed...The sweetheart deal
was cancelled, Liz and Deborah were both deeply hurt... His love of his
chosen friends had sustained and nourished him, and the wounds his
actions had inflicted, even though they were justifiable in business terms,
felt humanly wrong.“
 Liz came to feel that she had dodged a bullet. If she had published the
'Satanic Verses', the ensuing crisis, with its bomb threats, death threats,
security expenses, building evacuations and fear would very probably
have sunk her new publishing venture right away." Instead, X flourished
and eventually went on to discover an obscure, unpublished author who
had been previously rejected by 12 publishing houses. The author's name
was Y. The rest is publishing history.
 X and Y please?

40.  Connect:

41.  2015 is the connect. Declared as year of light
and year of soil by the UN General Assembly.

42.  Quiz Kids, a popular radio and TV series of the 1940s and 1950s,
was created by Chicago public relations and advertising man
Louis G. Cowan.
 The premise of the original show involved Kelly asking questions
sent in by listeners and researched by Eliza Hickok and Rachel
Stevenson.
 One of the notable ex-Quiz Kids is the Nobel Prize-winning
biologist James D. Watson. Others include actor and dialect coach
Robert Easton, legendary Hollywood acting coach Roy London,
producer Harve Bennett, poet Marilyn Hacker, Mayo Clinic Chief
of Staff Richard Sedlack, and actress Vanessa Brown (deceased).
 The Quiz Kids not only spawned a host of quiz shows starring
both extraordinary and ordinary people, but also gave rise to the
now more-popular term “X," first applied to the 1950 Philadelphia
Phillies “X", and later to several cabinet members in the Kennedy
Administration.
 What is X?

43.  Whizkids

44.  The highest cricket match was played at the
Everest Base Camp at a height of 5,165 m. It
was played between Team X and Team Y.
 What is X and Y?

45.  Tensing and Hillary

46.  This image of Tony Immoos is a 2010 snapshot
of the location of a famous 1996 image. Which
image?

47.  Bliss. The default desktop image of Windows
xp. Called as the most viewed image of the past
decade.

48.  After the murder of the captain of a ship
Heartsease by Eskimos in 1612, a practice was
born, which is followed even today almost all
over. What practice are we talking about?

49.  Flying the flag at half mast as a mark of respect
to the deceased.

50.  X was put up for auction in 1915 by the Antrobus
family following the death in World War I of the
only surviving male heir. Cecil Chubb's interest in
the local area led to him attending the sale, with
him bidding and purchasing Lot 15 on a whim for
£6,600 (about £461 thousand / €587 thousand /
$759 thousand today) as he wished to avoid the X
being acquired by someone overseas. It is also
speculated that he bought the stones as a present
for his wife, only for her to be less than pleased
with his new purchase.
 He gave X to Great Britain on 26 October 1918.
 X?

51.  Stonehedge