To round off the year in holiday mood, another Quiz

EAST ENDER WITH WEST HAM AND ENGLAND'S BOBBY MOORE. See Anniversaries question 9. (pic from TGWU Record)

These things also happened in 2006:

1) Which MP surprised supporters by announcing he would be absent from the House of Commons, and might face his last election, in January; and was ousted from the House a few weeks later?.

2) "Never have so many owed so much ..." Brits are the most indebted people in Europe. , and many families come under strain from the cost of debts and mortgage. But who announced in March that she was separating from her husband after reports on how he had repaid a mortgage on their north London home?

3) On April 6 a jury at St.Pancras Coroner's Court returned a verdict of unlawful killing on the death three years earlier of Welsh news cameraman James Miller, saying he had been murdered. By whom?

4) Which political party lost 200 seats in local council elections on May 4, and come third in vote totals?

5) On May 7, what happened for the last time in 93 years at Gillespie Rd., North London?

6) Which conflict thirty years ago apparently remains controversial enough for leaflets advertising a commemorative event in September to be banned from the London Borough of Brent's public libraries?

7) In October Chancellor Gordon Brown announced public sector pay restraint to 2 per cent, though some government employees required a bigger rise to bring them up to the legal minimum wage. At the other end, which public employees have put in for a 66 per cent increase?

8) When I saw the slogan "Keep Britain Working With Labour" on my union hq back in May, I thought it might be referring to the Blair government resisting ithe EU working hours directive. But what change announced in the Queen's Speech in November gives it an added meaning?

9) Who issued a press statement in December assuring us his staff had co-operated fully in handing over e-mails and documents to police investigating honours scandals?

10) What investigation was cancelled, supposedly because it would be difficult to get a conviction, but also because it harm Britain's diplomatic and national security interests?

Anniversaries

1) What event, involving James Connoly, Padraig Pearse and Constance Markiewicz, among others, had its 90th anniversaty in April 2006?

2) What officially lasted nine days, and had its 80th anniversary in May?

3) How did a flight from Croydon airport to pick up a passenger from the Canary Islands help spark off a major conflict with international involvment, in July 1936?

4) What 60th anniversary was commemorated by former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians on 20 July, 2006?

5) Writer and journalist Peter Fryer died this Autumn. He had written on subjects including Black history, censorship, jazz and birth control; but his coverage of what events fifty years ago led to him quitting the Daily Worker, and being honoured by a foreign government fifty years later?

6) What was Operation Musketeer, whose 50th anniversary was marked in 2006?

7) What major strike in 1966 did Prime Minister Harold Wilson, relying on MI5 advice, blame on "a tightly-knit group of politically motivated men" ?

8) Where is Tel al Zataar, the hill of thyme? Who were besieged there in the summer of 1976, and by what forces?

9) England had its one World Cup triumph so far in 1966, beating Germany 4-2. in the final. Sadly, England captain, West Ham's Bobby Moore, on the right in our photograph above, died in 1993. But the man with him in our picture, one-time cabbie turned travel agent Aubrey Morris, returned to his roots in London's East End in October 2006, to commemorate another famous victory, 70 years before. What was that?

10) Finally, and leading to our next round, who was Pickles, and how did he become famous in 1966?

Animal ...

1) Who were the Tamworth Two, who escaped in 1998 but were recaptured after a week?

2) What are Holsteins and Friesians and how could you tell them apart?

3) What creatures provide the material for an industry which began in China, spread to Europe, and was brought by French refugees to Spitallfields in London, and Macclesfield in Cheshire?

4) Who were Mick the Miller and Master McGrath?

5) What unusual visitor became stranded in London almost a year ago, and died on January 21, 2006, despite rescue attempts?

Vegetable

1) When it was King, its realm included the American South and Egypt, but its capital was in Manchester. What?

2) Where could you have found the 'Rhubarb Triangle'?

3) For the growing of what crop has Ormskirk, in west Lancashire, long been an important centre ?

4) What plant contributes to Irish linen, the decorating trade, and cricket?

5) Trading and speculation in what commodity from 1634-7, in Holland, ended in a market crash, and inspired a novel by Alexandre Dumas?

WE HAD A MINERAL ROUND IN THE LAST QUIZ, so moving on, can you recognise these

True Colours

1) The surname of Richmal Crompton's William.

2) This Earl was a Foreign Secretary with a taste in tea.

3) Nichols had five pennies, Adair put out oilfield fires.

4) Captain Jack joined Irish Citizen Army, and Anarchists in Spain.

5) He gave up Canada to become a Lord, but in America he's charged with fraud.


By any other name....

By what other names did the following people become better-known?

1) Margarita Carmen Cansino (b.1918, Brooklyn, New York)

2) Betty Joan Perske (b.1924, New York city)

3) Norma Deloris Egstrom (b,1920, Jamestown, N.Dakota)

4) Lilian Alice Marks (b.1910, Finsbury Park, N.London)

5) Edris Stannus (b.1898, Baltiboys, Co.Wicklow)

6) Bernard Schwartz (b.1925, Bronx, NY)

7) Thomas Hicks (b.1936, Bermondsey, S.E. London)

8) Maurice Joseph Micklewhite (b.1933, Rotherhithe, SE London)

9) Elaine Bookbinder (b.1946, Salford, Lancs)

10) Robert Davies (b.1945, Birmingham)

11) Mary Ann Evans (b.1819, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire)

12) Teodor Józef Konrad Korzeniowski, (b.1857, Berdichev, Ukraine)

13) Sholem Yakov Rabinovitsh (b.1859, near Kiev, Ukraine)

14) Ján Ludvík Hoch, (b, 1923, Slatinsky Doly, then part of Czechoslovakia)

15) Edson Arentes do Nascimento (b.1940, Três Corações, Brazil)

HOPE YOU HAVE FUN WITH THESE,
and SEE YOU NEXT YEAR.
HAVE A HAPPY ONE.

Charlie Pottins