Trivia Tuesday #7

It’s quiz night again tonight, and I don’t have anything much to talk about, so it’s time for another ten random facts that you may or may not have already known. Welcome to the seventh edition of my occasional series, Tuesday Trivia!

1. The national animal of Mauritius is the Dodo. The island of Mauritius is the only place that the Dodo is known to have lived.

2. There are volcanoes on Mars. The largest of them is  Olympus Mons, which is Latin for Mount Olympus.

3. JPEG (as in the file format for pictures) stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. PMG is Portable Network Graphics.

4. The kiwi fruit is also known as the Chinese gooseberry

5.  A dog’s normal body temperature is 101 degrees Fahrenheit, or 38°C.

6. Octopus blood is blue.

7. In Greek mythology, Hades (God of the Underworld) is the brother of both Zeus (God of the Sky and Thunder) and Poseidon (God of the Sea).

8. The highest value Euro bank note in circulation is €500

9. There are 1440 minutes in a day.

10. Nomophobia is the fear of being out of mobile phone contact. The term, an abbreviation for “no-mobile-phone phobia”, was coined during a study by the UK Post Office.

That’s all for today. I hope you enjoyed my little list of facts. Now, wish us luck in the quiz 😉

Advertisement

Trivia Tuesday #6

It’s quiz night again tonight, and we all know what that means… time for me to regale you with fascinating facts that will probably never actually come up in the quiz 😉

1. The artist who has featured most often on the “Now That’s What I Call Music” compliation series (which recently turned 30) is Robbie Williams.
2. Sticking with music… the only person to appear at both Live Aid concerts (London and Philadelphia) was Phil Collins. He used Concorde to fly between the two cities.
3. 5,000-year-old chewing gum made from bark tar, with tooth imprints, has been found in Kierikki, Yli-Ii, Finland
4. The Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year 2013 is Selfie. 
5. The sorceror that Mickey Mouse is apprenticed to in Disney’s Fantasia is called Yen Sid (Disney backwards)

   

   Epcot – Fantasia Topiary Scene – Sorceror’s Apprentice (Photo credit: keristars)

6. The music duo Simon & Garfunkel originally performed as Tom and Jerry
7. Tupperware is named after its inventor, Earl Silas Tupper.
8. The Picture of Dorian Grey was Oscar Wilde’s only novel.
9. The first commercially sold video game of any kind was called Computer Space.
10. The closest country to Australia is Papua New Guinea.

That’s all for today. I hope you learned something 😉

 

Trivia Tuesday #5

I do plan to write about the rest of my weekend trip, but I won’t have time to sort out the photos for my next post before going to the quiz tonight, so for today you’ll have to make do with some more Tuesday trivia. Here are today’s 10 random facts.

Photo : Wikipedia

1. The Sesame Street character Oscar the Grouch was originally orange. He became green in Season 2.
2. Sir Cliff Richard (birth name Harry Rodger Webb) will release his 100th album on 11 November 2013. He is is the only artist to have had at least one UK top five album in each of the last seven decades (1950s-2010s).

   

   Mr. Banks, is that you? (Photo: Wikipedia)

3. James Avery, who plays Will Smith’s uncle (Philip Banks) on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, was also the voice of Shredder in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles TV series.
4. Botanically speaking, a strawberry is not a berry… but a banana is.
5. Depending on the species, a jellyfish is between 95 and 98% water.
6. A group of hyenas is known as a Cackle – very appropriate!
7. Kazahkstan is the largest landlocked country by area. At 2,727,300 square kilometres (1,053,000 sq miles), its territory is larger than Western Europe!
8. The Michelin Man has a name… it’s Bibendum, or Bib for short.
9. Tina Turner’s real name is Annie Mae Bullock.
10. The Visitors album by Abba was the first CD to be produced, in 1982

Trivia Tuesday

Trivia! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s quiz night tonight, so I decided it was high time for another Trivia Tuesday.  I still live in hope that some day one of these posts might even be of use for the quiz 😉 Here are some random facts I’ve discovered over the past few weeks and thought were interesting enough to share…

• The first web cam watched a coffee pot. The Trojan Room Coffee Pot was created to save employees at The Cambridge University from having to make pointless trips to the coffee machine.
• Speaking of coffee… Central and South America produce approximately two thirds of the world’s coffee supply. The only US state in which coffee is grown commercially is Hawaii.
• From coffee to tea… The first tea bags were hand-sewn silk bags. They were originally intended hold samples of loose tea, which was meant to be removed from the bags, but customers found it easier to brew the tea with the tea still enclosed in the porous bags.
• The highest capital city in the world is Quito, Ecuador. The lowest is Baku, Azerbaijan.
• The term checkmate comes from the Persian phrase shāh māt, meaning “the king is helpless/defeated”.
• Almonds are a member of the peach family (they belong to the genus Prunus, which also includes plums, cherries and apricots. Almonds and peaches are classified in the sub-genus Amygdalus).
• Only female ducks quack. In general, ducks make a wide range of calls, including cooing, hooting and grunting, but the males never quack.
• One million seconds is roughly eleven and a half days (11.5741 days, to be precise).
• Albert Brooks, the actor who voiced Marlin the clownfish in Finding Nemo, was born Albert Einstein. He changed his surname to avoid confusion with the famous physicist.
• The Hundred Years’ War lasted 116 years, from 1337–1453. The Seven Years’ War lasted nine years, from 1754 to 1763, but the main period of fighting was in the seven years between 1756 and 1763.

And that was this month’s ten facts. I hope you enjoyed them! Wish us luck with the quiz…

The month of tea and soup

I read recently that January is apparantly National Hot Tea Month. I’m assuming the “National” here must refer to America – I’ve certainly never heard of it! Mind you, being British I have no need for a tea month. A nice cup of tea, according to we Brits, is the answer to everything, therefore every month is tea month!

January is also supposedly National Soup Month. Again, I can only assume the nation in question is America. I think this is one I could get on board with though. What could be better to counteract the awfulness of January than some nice hot soup? (I know it’s an utter cliché, but I think January is my least favourite month of the year, closely followed by November.)

World soup month is the way forward, I feel. Admittedly it’s not exactly soup weather in Australia and New Zealand, but there’s always Gazpacho and… other cold soups. I’m sure there must be some.

Homemade soup!

Since tonight, for me, is quiz night (the first one of the year!) here are some random facts about January for you:

Question marks (Photo credit: makeitgreat)

1. The birthstone for January is garnet.
2. 8 January is the birth date of Elvis Presley, Dame Shirley Bassey (a Welsh singer) and David Bowie.
3. The United Kingdom claimed sovereignty over the Falkland Islands on 1 January 1833.
4. January is named after the Roman God Janus, God of beginnings and transitions
5. Traditionally, the Roman calendar consisted of 10 months totalling 304 days, with winter as a “monthless” period. January and February were only added in around 713 BC, which explains the seeming weirdness of October, November and December – which mean eight, nine and ten respectively, despite, in fact, being the tenth, eleventh and twelfth months!
6. The London Underground, the world’s oldest underground railway, opened in 10 January 1863. That means the oldest section, which went from Paddington Station to Farringdon Street via King’s Cross and is now incorporated into the Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines, will be celebrating 150 years this year!

Totally trivial!

It’s the first Tuesday of the month, which in my world means it’s quiz night. My team won last month (mostly not through my efforts – I knew two answers). I wonder if we can do it again?

In honour of quiz night, I thought I’d write a post with some (hopefully interesting) random facts. Just in case you ever find yourself in need of some trivia. You never know… it could happen!

Question Mark Graffiti (Photo credit: Bilal Kamoon)

• The shortest war on record – between the United Kingdom and the Sultanate of Zanzibar – took place on 27 August 1896 and lasted 38 minutes.
• The first country in the world that allowed women to vote was New Zealand in 1893.
• The Bee Hummingbird is the smallest bird in the world. An adult male measures about 2.2 inches and weighs about 0.06 ounces.
• The first person on a British stamp other than royalty was William Shakespeare, in 1964. The first self-adhesive stamps were issued by Sierra Leone on 10 February 1964. (Obviously 1964 was the year for stamp-related trivia).
  
• Hong Kong is made up of 235 islands.
• The national bird of India is the peacock.
• The unit of currency in Ethiopia is called the Birr.
• The tallest waterfall in the world, at 3,212 feet (979 m),  is Angel Falls in Venezuela.  Second is Tugela Falls in South Africa, which is 3,110 feet (948 m).
• The first ever official international football match took place in Glasgow between England and Scotland on 30 November 1872. It finished in a 0-0 draw.
• The first SMS (text) message was sent over the Vodafone GSM network in the United Kingdom on 3 December 1992. It said “Merry Christmas”.

There you are – 10 random facts. Let it never be said that Confuzzledom is not educational 😉