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The All New All New Groundspeak UK Pub Quiz


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As it's my (no longer) secret ambition to see this become the UKs first 100 page thread, I'm going to jump in with a question.

 

What does 49!/(6!*(49-6)!) mean, and what numerical figure does it give you?

 

hhmmm lets see - the ! notation means all the numbers multiplied together upto that number, so:

 

(1x2x3......x49) / ((1x2....x6)x(1 x 2 x 3....x 43)) = (44 x 45 x 46 x 47 x 48 x 49)/ (1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6) = 13983816?

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As it's my (no longer) secret ambition to see this become the UKs first 100 page thread, I'm going to jump in with a question.

 

What does 49!/(6!*(49-6)!) mean, and what numerical figure does it give you?

 

It's the odds against getting 6 numbers (in no order) on the lottery. 13 983 816 is the result. Being pedantic about it, the ! is the factorial symbol meaning, as said above, all of the +ve integer numbers up to and including that number multiplied together.

Edited by jerryo
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This isn't covered by the copy of British Hit Singles I have, so I'm going to have a wild guess at Elton John, Cliff Richard, 'Various Artists' (Do They Know It's Christmas?), Slade and Queen.

 

Cliff, and Queen is correct - can you be more specific than "Various Artists"?

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Spice Girls had Xmas number ones three years in a row in their heyday, Leona won X Factor this time last year so could only have had one, therefore it must be the Spice Girls!

 

Correct - DING to GG&GD!

 

Wonder if we'll ever see anyone getting 2 xmas singles again, given that the X-Factor winner seems to automatically get the slot nowadays.....

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Ok, in the spirit of moving on ... here's the next question!

 

thisplace.jpg

 

To get the ding, you need to name this place and also the nearest geocache together with its gc.com waypoint number ...

 

(You may use any method to find the name of this place if you haven't a clue).

 

Well it has to be Jodrell Bank Observatory and the nearest cache would therefore be GCHP1X, Jodrell View :)

Was it cheating to GC.com to find the cache details?

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I recognise some of them as Hawker aircraft types, so I will guess that they're all Hawker types?

 

DING DING to DG. Specifically they are all Hawker Biplanes used by the RAF in the 1920's and early 30's.

Not very aggressive names compared with just after that period, when they had the Hurricane, Typhoon, Tempest :) I guess I made it a bit easier by including Nimrod, which of course was reused in the 1960s.

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Well with far toooo many years as an aircraft engineer, I'll see if anyone else can get this one in the next few hours before I jump back in... :)

 

Edited at 06:50 Monday...

 

Well none of the overnight crew or the early birds have come in on this, so...

 

QFE and QNH are Q codes in Aircrew/ATC speak, for the barometric pressure of a given location, e.g. the airfield.

QFE is the pressure for the location at it's altitude, (often thought of as Field Elevation) while QNH is what the pressure would be at sea level at that location (often regarded as Nautical Height) .

 

So if QFE is set on your altimeter it will read Zero when on the ground. If you have the QNH set, and are on the ground, your altimeter will read the elevation of the airfield above sea level.

 

Therefore when approaching an airfield that is 500 ft above sea level, if you have the QNH set but think you have QFE set, you're still going to be reading 500ft when you slam into the ground! :)

 

I just hope I got those the right way around... :D

Edited by careygang
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Careygang has got it right -- and the right way round.

 

One tiny quibble would be that we never refer to an airfield's "nautical height".

 

By definition "Height" is height above a ground datum level, usually an airfield. Altitude is above sea level.

QFE-set altimeter readings are called "Height". QNH-set altimeter readings are called altitude.

 

There are a couple of other Q-codes.

 

One is QNE, which is always set at 1013mB, regardless of meteorological air pressure variations. QNE is set when flying above a certain level and altitudes measured by QNE are then called Flight Levels, which are expressed as an integer number of hundreds of feet.

 

Another is QAQ. QAQ means:

I am a duck. Please flood the runway.

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Well with far toooo many years as an aircraft engineer, I'll see if anyone else can get this one in the next few hours before I jump back in... :lol:

 

Edited at 06:50 Monday...

 

Well none of the overnight crew or the early birds have come in on this, so...

 

QFE and QNH are Q codes in Aircrew/ATC speak, for the barometric pressure of a given location, e.g. the airfield.

QFE is the pressure for the location at it's altitude, (often thought of as Field Elevation) while QNH is what the pressure would be at sea level at that location (often regarded as Nautical Height) .

 

So if QFE is set on your altimeter it will read Zero when on the ground. If you have the QNH set, and are on the ground, your altimeter will read the elevation of the airfield above sea level.

 

Therefore when approaching an airfield that is 500 ft above sea level, if you have the QNH set but think you have QFE set, you're still going to be reading 500ft when you slam into the ground! :rolleyes:

 

I just hope I got those the right way around... :lol:

 

DING! Over to you :rolleyes:

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It was the Lusitania, she was reportadly sunk by a Germnan U boat although it has also been said that she was sunk by the British to bring the USofA into the war. Although she was a passenger liner she had all the needed brackets and fittings to have guns fitted and spies in America reported that she was also carrying arms material in her bilges/holds.

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Like all liners of the era, I believe she was indeed fitted with brackets but I understood that was part of a government subsidy scheme and that she was not actually anything but a passenger vessel at the time of the attack.

 

The larger liners were too big, and would have stuck out like sore thumbs!

 

There's a lot of difference between a ship having a gun bracket and a gun :rolleyes:

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Seem to remember reading (or seeing) somewher that that she probably wouldn't have sunk from the torpedo hit had she not been carrying a hold full of explosives, in contravention of some agreement or other that forbade passenger liners from doing just that. But I could be wrong.... again. :rolleyes:

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What significant event occured on 7 May 1915.

Sometimes said to have helped move the USA from a nutural into a participant in WWI

 

Sinking of the Lucitania (sp?)

DING to MartyBartfast

 

Cunard Liner RMS Lusitania was sunk by German U-20 on 7 May 1915. Probably rates as second most famous sinking of a passenger ship, after the Titanic. (So my questions are far too easy)

There was a lot of controversy at the time. The German Embassy in the US had warned about travel on British flagged vessels, specifically the Lusitania, only a week or so beforehand, which gave the impression that she was deliberately targeted.

Unlike the Titanic, she carried more than enough lifeboats for everyone, but she quickly developed such a list that most of them could not be launched. The list was likely caused by poor design of watertight bulkheads. With a lot of portholes open, she quickly took on more water and sank in about 20 minutes.

 

DG is right in that she was fitted with gun mountings because many vessels in those days were built with a reserve commitment to be called into naval service, (her sister ship Mauretania was called up as a troopship) but Lusitania was not armed. She did have some 15,000 rounds of standard .303 ammo in the forward section, but that didn't go off and cause the 'second' explosion that some reported, which is now thought to have been a boiler or steam pipes fracturing.

 

The big moral issue of the time, sinking a cruise liner without letting the passengers off first, was explained away by the fact that like other ships, she was known to be operating under Admiralty instructions to report sightings of U-Boats and ram them if seen on the surface. That technically made her a Naval Auxiliary in the German viewpoint and a legitimate target.

Edited by careygang
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There was also a theory that the second explosion could have been caused by the coal dust in an empty coal bunker as coal dust is very volatile.

 

Part of the cargo included

Military goods x 189 packages

Ammunition Cases x 1271 cases

Cartridges & ammunition x 4200 cases

The shipping note, dated 28 April 1915, shows 'consignment number 23' as being '1,248 cases of three-inch calibre shrapnel shells, filled; four shells to each case'. These shells were consigned to the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich and as our own subsequent research, aided by the Royal Artillery Historical Trust has revealed, they were for use by the Royal Artillery in the 13-pounder field gun.

 

Ok back to someone setting the next question

Edited by DrDick&Vick
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