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The All New Groundspeak Uk Pub Quiz!

The Golem
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Carlos & The Birdie Crew

+Carlos & The Birdie Crew

Posted
Posted

Hi Forrester

Remeber me, I set the Rolls Royce question previously.

Just to keep you up to date regarding my insistance that a Gipsy Moth had a RR engine. I got in touch with one of the guys who was with me on that day back in '87.

He (over many beers) continued to insist that the plane was in fact a Sopwith Camel, would this fit with you?

 

Regards, Carlos:anicute:

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The Forester

+The Forester

Posted
Posted

I should've explained better.

 

When I say 'much closer' I should have said much closer. The barycentre is in fact located within the spheroid of the Earth itself, about a quarter of the way down to the centre of the Earth.

 

This, of course, presumes that the moon is above our local horizon. If not, our local barycentre becomes the single-body barycentre which is the centre of the Earth itself because the two-body barycentre is further from us than the earth's centre is.

 

Another way of explaining the 2-body barycenre is that it's the dynamic centre of the wobble that is induced by the Moon's orbit around us.

 

All of this is presuming that we do not believe the Catholic faith's insistence that everything revolves around No 1a St Peter's Square.

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dodgydaved

dodgydaved

Posted
Posted

I'm not sure how to define aircraft and pilot, but the Chinese strapped observers to captive kites to spy on enemy lines, and I think that was before the end of the first century AD.

 

More recently didn't the kudos of 1 st glider flight goto Otto Lillienthal (German count geezer in the late 18th ealy 19th century?)

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Dobunnis

+Dobunnis

Posted
Posted

Who piloted the world's first heavier than air aircraft?

 

I think the question is a bit ambiguous since most of these type of firsts are heavily debated and have slight differences between them.

 

You do not mention powered so I will presume that is not a requirement. Does piloted mean that there has to be controls? I'll presume no. In which case I thought it was a boy and then the coachman who flew in an aircraft dragged by horses designed by the Yorkshire man aluded to earlier, George Cayley.

 

The Chard reference is to do with a company that was going to produce steam powered planes and only got as far as models as I recall: the first powered, but unmanned, flight.

 

Helen

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The Forester

+The Forester

Posted
Posted (edited)

You do not mention powered so I will presume that is not a requirement.

 

Does piloted mean that there has to be controls?

Yes.

 

In which case I thought it was a boy and then the coachman who flew in an aircraft dragged by horses designed by the Yorkshire man aluded to earlier, George Cayley.

 

I believe there was a boy involved in the earliest test, but the aircraft was tethered, not freeflying and he did not control the aircraft so was not piloting it.

 

The first piloted flight was not powered by horses, but was indeed piloted by Caley's coachman, who subsequently resigned in disgust on the grounds that was a horseman not an airman.

 

I'd been hoping that somone would come up with the actual first glider pilot, Hans Andreas Navrestad, who not only built his aircraft but actually had the courage to fly it himself. His first flight covered around 400 metres which is rather more than the much more famous Wright brother did. Navrestad's first flight was in 1825, 179 years before the Wrights and half a century or so before Caley's experiments.

 

Caley is still a worthy record holder though. He had a superb grasp of the physics of flight and was the first to identify the four forces of flight. Aviation was only one of his accomplishments. He also invented the tension spoked wheel, without which bicycle makers such as the somewhat over-rated Wright brothers would probably never have had their business. He also invented such useful things as the caterpillar traction system, seatbelts, self-righting lifeboats, automatic railway signals and made a whole raft of minor discoveries in the sciences of electricity and optics.

 

I think MartyBartFast and Helen deserve a shared Ding on that one as most Brits like to believe that a Brit beat the Norwegian guy to be the first man to fly a heavier than air aircraft.

Edited by The Forester
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Dobunnis

+Dobunnis

Posted
Posted

I'd been hoping that somone would come up with the actual first glider pilot, Hans Andreas Navrestad, who not only built his aircraft but actually had the courage to fly it himself. His first flight covered around 400 metres which is rather more than the much more famous Wright brother did. Navrestad's first flight was in 1825, 179 years before the Wrights and half a century or so before Caley's experiments.

 

You need to get a programme on the telly about him ;) Like I say, while the question at first is simple it can become ambiguous. Looking now in Wikipedia, that font of all knowledge, it does say about Navrestad's flight "allegedly flew manned glider" but there is no page on him solely. I only knew about Cayley because of the Adam Hart Davies programme too :D plus some reading from around that period.

 

I think MartyBartFast and Helen deserve a shared Ding on that one as most Brits like to believe that a Brit beat the Norwegian guy to be the first man to fly a heavier than air aircraft.

 

I will let MartyBartFast have the honours. Over to you Marty :D

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Dobunnis

+Dobunnis

Posted
Posted

What happened in Britain on September 3rd, 1752?

 

That would be a trick question since in September 1752 Britain adopted the Gregorian calender and 11 days were skipped. Although I am not sure of the exact date I am guessing that the 3rd was one of the days skipped so September 3rd became September 14th.

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Tiger-Eyes

+Tiger-Eyes

Posted
Posted

What happened in Britain on September 3rd, 1752?

 

That would be a trick question since in September 1752 Britain adopted the Gregorian calender and 11 days were skipped. Although I am not sure of the exact date I am guessing that the 3rd was one of the days skipped so September 3rd became September 14th.

 

DING :D

One of these days i will think of a question hard enough to keep you all guessing a little longer :laughing:

come to think of it my underground quiz is challaging some

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The Forester

+The Forester

Posted
Posted

I know nothing whatsoever about football and I care even less, but I do speak some Arabic. "House" in Arabic is Bur. One of the words for 'trade' is sina'a. Bur Sina'a actually means place of business, but that's very close to House of Trade, so I suspect that bur sina'a has become corrupted somewhere along the way (presumably either during the crusades or when the Moors hung around those nightclubs in Ibiza) to Arsenal. There is certainly a football team of that name and it seems plausible to me that a place where guns are bought/sold/stored could derive its name from a place of business or trade.

 

Flogging guns to Arabs and then duffing them up for using those guns is something of an old tradition for Brits, rather like losing cricket matches to Ozzies has become a modern tradition.

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The Forester

+The Forester

Posted
Posted

That's a Ding for ScotsBob.

 

Burxina exists only in the mind(s) of Doublespeak Inc. It's not a real country at all. It was inserted into a list of real countries, together with a one or two other traps, by the original compliers of a dropdown list as a way of identifying copyright theft.

 

Because of the profound ignorance by so many Murricanes about the very existence of countries beyond their own shores, the jape has gone unnoticed by TPTB for years and years.

 

This Murricane ignorance is a product of their education system and is rife throughout America -- all the way to the top. Even the State Dept (their equivalent of a Foreign Office) has some laughable ideas about the world outside the Beltway. For example, take a look at the dropdown options on their online Visa Application form.

 

One of the country options which applicants are invited to select as their country of origin is Bessarabia! It has never been recognised by any country under that name. For about a fortnight in 1918, after a three-day period of rule by the new soviet Black Sea Fleet of the nascent Red Navy, Moldavia formed a breakway state and called itself Bessarabia, but it was rapidly subsumed by Romania. Nevertheless, the US State Dept offers people the right to claim to come from Bessarabia.

 

Another example of State Dept silliness goes back to the glory days when Dubya's grandpappy Perscott Bush was Adolf Hilters banker in America, bankrolling the Third Reich. Bush's spensored chum invaded Poland and renamed the port city of Gdansk as "Danzig". Today, in 2007, the State Dept still has "Danzig" as a Country in its dropdown list of countries for visa applicants to select.

 

Baker Island is another "country" which the US State Dept invites people to claim to come from. Not only is Baker Island not a country (nor ever has been one), the bloody place, which is a little more than a scrap of coral whose highest point is much lower than a basketball net, is totally ininhabited othar than by a few frigate birds and albatrosses and landcrabs.

 

I sometimes wonder what planet the State Dept - and their boss the Secretary of State - comes from.

condeleeza_klingon.jpg

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Scotsbob

+Scotsbob

Posted
Posted

Sorry folks, I cheated, I've only just read post No.1, Rule No.1 on Page No.1 - No Googling, I just jumped straight to the end of the posts and never started at the beginning (at least I'm honest about it).

 

Anyway not to totally spoil the fun

 

Name the 3 actors who've played Father Mulcahy.

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