Happy Chanukamas! Yuletide Quiz

Here's a holiday
Quiz to keep your kop busy as the turkey and latkes go down,
get a conversation going (or keep the kids quiet)

What's odd about this mystery address in London W2?
(see question in last round)






The year that was:

1) Approximately how many people were killed in the tsnunami that swept Indian ocean countries on December 26, 2004?

2) Who gained the Bethnal Green and Bow seat from Labour in the British general election of May 5, 2005?

3) How many people were killed by the bombings on public transport in London on July 7?

4) What company sparked a stoppage halting British Airways flights from Heathrow in August by sacking 800 workers?

5) In what country did the conservative Law and Justice party win elections on September 25 (its anti-gay founder going on to become president on October 24)?

6) The Kashmir earthquake on October 8 left 87,350 people dead, according to Pakistan government estimates. But approximately how many people were made homelesss as winter approached?

7) What country's government adopted Exceptional Laws in November, after youth riots had led to 1,500 arrests?

8) Of which political party did Moroccan-born Amir Peretz become leader on November 9?

9)Who decided to form a new political party called "Kadima"?

10) In which country was Evo Morales of the Movement Toward Socialism(MAS) elected president on December 18?

And now to some general (?) knowledge:

Quote.....Unquote

Who said:-
1) "All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl".
2) "Old age isn't so bad when you consider the alternative".
3) "You cannot step twice in the same river".
4) "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to this year's fashions".
5) "It just seems clear to me that as long as we are all here, it's pretty clear that the struggle is to share the planet, rather than divide it".

What's in a Name?

1) Which famous Irish trade union leader was popularly known as "Big Jim"?
2) Which famous Scottish comedian is nicknamed the "Big Yin"?
3) How might the names of the first two give you the name of an Edinburgh-born socialist and hero of the Irish freedom struggle?
4) Which former Scottish miner, sharing his first name with 3, was elected socialist MP for West Ham South in 1892, and became a founder of the Independent Labour Party.
5) How might a pilgrimage to a canonised character in Othello lead you to a hospital with the Blues?

Noms de plume, noms de guerre

1) By what name did Joseph Broz become better known?
2) Under what name did Mary Ann Evans write her novels?
3) Under what pen name did Sholem Ya'akov Rabinowitz become better known, and write about a milkman (who never did become a rich man).
4) Asher Ginzberg did much to revive Hebrew culture, but under what pseudonym?
5) Nicanor McPartland was born in Cuba in 1903 and killed in Mexico in 1929 By what name was he better known?


The Place in Question

1) Of which city did comic WC Fields say he had been there once, "but it was closed"?
2) What did crime writer Raymond Chandler describe as "a big hard-boiled city with no more personality than a paper cup".
3) What country, according to cricketer Ian Botham, interviewed in 1984, was "The sort of place everyone should send his mother- in- law for a month, all expenses paid."
4) Of living in what city did judge Sir Melford Stevenson say it was "a totally incomprehensible choice for any free human being to make".
5) What country allegedly passed "from barbarism to decadence without civilisation in between"

Watch your language!

1) Besides German, French and Italian, what other laguage is spoken in Switzerland?
2) Catalan is spoken in Catalonia and the Balearics, but what country has it as an official language?
3) What language is often referred to by its speakers as "Mame Loshen" (lit."mother tongue"?
4) What Semitic language uses a Latin alphabet?
5) About how many people speak Zulu as their native language?

Thanks for the Memory

Whose memoirs were published as
1) Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall
2) Nostalgia isn't what it used to be
3) Bring on the Empty Horses
4) Out of Place
5) The London Years

London lights (odd but interesting)

1) What famous animal is honoured by a statue outside a hospital near Archway tube station?
( Clue -think of the pantomine season.)
2) Why, if you said you lived at 23 or 24 Leinster Gardens W2 (see photo), would you be assumed to be giving a false address?
3) What starts in Kilburn and comes out in Hyde Park before going on to cross Sloane Square station and eventually reach the Thames? (clue you'll find its name to a district and station on the Hammersmith and City Line).
4) Why might women visiting Camden Lock have given thanks, with relief, to George Bernard Shaw?
5) How might a district near Maida Vale be connected with Hugo Chavez?

HAPPY HOLIDAY TO ALL MY READERS,
ANSWERS WILL FOLLOW IN DUE COURSE, BUT NOT TOO SOON.