Name the year #1

Generally I'm reasonably decent at remembering dates and years... it's the detail and important stuff that I struggle with. Anyway, here are ten questions - each has five events and you need to name the year that all those events in the question occurred in. There'll be a couple of harder ones and then a couple of easier ones to stop it from being too obscure. Answers, as usual, at the end of the post.

1 

- Adolf Hitler is born at Braunau am Inn, Austria

- Pennsylvania's South Fork Dam collapses, killing more than 2,200 people

- London's Savoy Hotel opens

- North Dakota and South Dakota are admitted to the US as the 39th and 40th states

- Spain's oldest football club - Recreativo de Huelva - is formed

2 

- The First Balkan War concludes

- Ambrose Bierce disappears without trace on Boxing Day

- Woodrow Wilson becomes US president

- The Woolworth Building opens in New York City

- The Second Balkan War begins

3 

- Cyprus and Malta adopt the euro

- Spanair Flight 5022 crashes immediately after take-off 

- Hurricane Ike makes landfall on the southern United States, killing at least 27

- Mountaineer Edmund Hillary dies at the age of 88

- Queen Elizabeth II makes her final voyage, from Southampton to Dubai

4 

- The Power of Sympathy, the first American novel, is published

- The Mutiny on the Bounty occurs

- German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth discovers uranium

- US writer James Fenimore Cooper is born

- The Dutch anatomist Petrus Camper dies

5 

- Revolt leader Jack Cade is slain

- Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch is born

- The Battle of Formigny takes place, with a decisive French victory over the English

- Caen surrenders to the French 

- The University of Barcelona is founded

6

- Samuel Colt sells his first revolver pistol to the US government

- The Treaty of Cahuenga ends the Mexican-American War

- Yerba Buena is renamed San Francisco

- Jane Eyre is published

- German composer Felix Mendelssohn dies

7

- The Battle of Saraighat takes place in modern-day India

- The Ottoman Empire declares war on Poland

- Philippe de Champaigne's Still Life with a Skull is completed

- Frederick IV of Denmark is born

- Thomas Fairfax dies

8

- The band Queen release "Don't Stop Me Now"

- Whiddy Island Disaster occurs

- Brenda Spencer opens fire at a San Diego school, inspiring the song "I Don't Like Mondays"

- Sid Vicious is found dead of a heroin overdose

- Rubstic wins the Grand National

9

- Konrad Adenauer survives an assassination attempt

- Sun Records begins operation in Memphis, Tennessee

- Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap opens in London

- CS Lewis publishes his theological work, Mere Christianity

- The barcode is patented in the US

10

- Ignacy Moscicki becomes Polish president

- Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim the English Channel

- Dali's The Basket of Bread is completed

- Ernest Hemingway publishes The Sun Also Rises

- The Hercilio Luz Bridge opens in southern Brazil

Hope they're not too difficult; some of the events may be quite obscure.

Answers:

1 1889

2 1913

3 2008

4 1789

5 1450

6 1847

7 1671

8 1979

9 1952

10 1926

Music clip quiz

A new feature for the blog - not that revolutionary to be able to play music on the internet, I know, but all the same...

The following ten files are around thirty seconds long - the last is around fifteen seconds longer (not for any particular reason, but just because the bloody thing wouldn't save properly) and are clips from popular music songs (the definition of popular may have been stretched a little in some instances). Naming most of the artists should be fairly straightforward, but I'd be surprised if anyone got all ten of the song titles as well. The answers are below the final clip.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Answers:
1 Black - Wonderful Life
2 Blondie - A Shark in Jets Clothing
3 Bob Dylan  - Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)
4 Chuck Berry - Deep Feeling
5 Massive Attack - Angel
6 Sixto Rodriguez - Hate Street Dialogue
7 XTC - Senses Working Overtime
8 Talking Heads - And She Was

QM Quiz #11

1 Which Greek island is home to the Ionian University?
2 The Gokstad ship, a Viking ship found in a burial mound, is on display in which capital city?
3 Who was the first presenter of the British television talent show, New Faces?
4 An image of it appears on the country's flag, the resplendent quetzal is the national bird of which nation?
5 In 2012, LonelyPlanet.com listed which north-eastern Italian city as the world's most underrated travel destination?
6 He died in 1453; who was the last reigning Byzantine emperor?
7 In which country is the most northerly point of South America?
8 Which former US Secretary of State gives his name to the airport of Washington, D.C.?
9 Who is the youngest male to win a Best Actor Oscar?
10 Who did John Howard replace as Prime Minister of Australia in 1996?
11 Who did Yigal Amir assassinate in 1995?
12 Intended to provide a human-like interface to the internet, which company created the intelligent personal assistant known as Mya?
13 A ferry sunk this week in which major, dissecting river of Bangladesh?
14 By what infamous name is Japan's Aokigahara forest known? It lies at the north-western base of Mount Fuji.
15 Which musical instrument connects a song by Perry Como, the nickname of a Vivaldi concerto, and a novel by Louis de Bernieres?
16 Which Argentine composer scored the films Brokeback Mountain and Babel?
17 Which Cistercian monastery stands in the gardens of Studley Royal Park in Yorkshire?
18 What is the largest island of the Philippines?
19 Which eldest daughter of Henry VII of England was also the mother of James V?
20 Which vicious creature of Greek mythology - killed by Heracles - lived at Nemea?




Answers:
1 Corfu
2 Oslo
3 Derek Hobson
4 Guatemala
5 Trieste
6 Constantine XI Palaiologos
7 Colombia
8 John Foster Dulles
9 Adrien Brody
10 Paul Keating
11 Yitzhak Rabin
12 Motorola
13 Padma River
14 Suicide forest
15 Mandolin
16 Gustavo Santaolalla
17 Fountains Abbey
18 Luzon
19 Margaret Tudor
20 Lion

Stockport GP

I attended the Quizzing Grand Prix in Stockport on Saturday, my third IQA event. Given that I'd attend two events prior to this, I knew what to expect in terms of the day and the standard of the questions, though I found those on Saturday to be a tad harder than those I've done before. Despite that, I managed to increase my score slightly from Stafford in May.

The venue itself was very good, right outside/inside Stockport FC's ground, Edgeley Park, and the turnout was the biggest ever seen at a domestic GP as far as I know. Certainly the biggest I've ever seen at a quiz. Perhaps some of that number was due to the Fifteen to One auditions taking place in the afternoon, which I took part in. I might not get on the show, but thought I might as well try if I was there to begin with. I was eliminated fairly early in the mini-game thing we did thanks to not knowing who played Scarlett O'Hara's father in the film Gone with the Wind - apparently it was Thomas Mitchell (I'm still none the wiser).

The individual quiz itself marked a slight improvement for me, though I thought it was harder than the WQC and the Stafford GP in May, particularly the Art & Culture and Physical World sections. I would think that, being as young as I am, some of the more obscure events of the past, such as current affairs from past decades and the like, are harder to brush up on than stuff like English monarchs and famous battles.

Overall, though, it was a great day, featuring a decent mix of quizzes, and it was good to meet some new people in the team quiz. I'd recommend the Grand Prix events to anyone - they may not be cheap, particularly when you've factored in travel, but they're certainly well-organised days with quizzes that are almost always excellent (there are a few exceptions in terms of individual questions, but on the whole they're not bad).

QM Quiz #10

1 Which northern French city gives its name to an 1802 treaty that temporarily ended hostilities between the French First Republic and the United Kingdom during the French Revolutionary Wars?
2 The Soviet Venera 3 probe is believed to have crash-landed on which planet in 1966?
3 Who is the current leader of the Green Party of England and Wales?
4 Ludwig Guttmann - a German-born neurologist - established what in England?
5 In which US state was the ice cream company, Ben & Jerry's, founded in 1978?
6 The metical, subdivided into 100 centavos, is the currency of which African nation?
7 Owing to the area's reputation as a china and earthenware centre, what name is often applied to the area of Staffordshire comprising the towns Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke, Fenton and Longton?
8 Nicknamed "the Shark of Messina", which Italian won the 2014 Tour de France?
9 Named after the Austrian paediatrician, the Schick test is a measure of someone's susceptibility to which disease?
10 The fifth-largest lake in Europe, Lake Peipus, is bordered by Russia and which other country?
11 Which Australian is the only swimmer to take the same individual title at three consecutive Olympic Games, winning the 100m freestyle in 1956, 1960, and 1964?
12 Who directed the 1967 film, Bonnie and Clyde?
13 What number was Roger Bannister wearing on his shirt when he ran the first four-minute mile in 1954?
14 Eleanor of Aquitaine was the spouse of which English monarch?
15 Which Belgian professional football club won the 1987-88 European Cup Winners' Cup, in a shock victory against AFC Ajax?
16 Kinnie is a soft drink from which European country?
17 What is the southernmost state of New England?
18 Who was US Secretary of Defence from 1961-1968, the longest-serving ever in the role?
19 Who played the title role in the 1950 film, All About Eve?
20 Which chemical element has the symbol Sb?




Answers:
1 Amiens
2 Venus
3 Natalie Bennett
4 Paralympic Games
5 Vermont
6 Mozambique
7 The Potteries
8 Vincenzo Nibali
9 Diphtheria
10 Estonia
11 Dawn Fraser
12 Arthur Penn
13 41
14 Henry II
15 KV Mechelen
16 Malta
17 Connecticut
18 Robert McNamara
19 Anne Baxter
20 Antimony