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The All New All New Groundspeak UK Pub Quiz


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Posted (edited)

British Airways and Pan Am had previous names, so they're out. Even though Air France and KLM liveries can still be seen, they are now one airline ("Air France-KLM") as they merged in the last decade, and so they're also out. IIRC, Lufthansa formed from another merger in the late 1920s. So I suspect that leaves QANTAS (Queensland and Northern Territories Air Services?) as the only airline from the early 1920s still operating under it's original name.

 

Edited to add: Darn it -- beaten by two minutes. When will I learn to just type the answer rather than giving an explanation. ;)

Edited by Pajaholic
Posted

Hm... I am going to go with KLM. Although it has merged ownership as KLM-AirFrance, if you get on a KLM aircraft you get on a KLM flight, not a KLM-AirFrance one. Mr F. think's KLM is older than Qantas but stopped during the war.

Posted

Hm... I am going to go with KLM. Although it has merged ownership as KLM-AirFrance, if you get on a KLM aircraft you get on a KLM flight, not a KLM-AirFrance one. Mr F. think's KLM is older than Qantas but stopped during the war.

 

Ding!

 

7th October 1919 - Operations stopped during World War II apart from the operations in the Dutch Antilles in the Caribbean. Merged with Air France in 2004. Currently the oldest existing airline.

 

More controversy, I see it coming.....

Posted (edited)

Hey, Marty, if you're off out to the pub tonight, bring a question back with you! :laughing:

 

Oops, here's a proper pub quiz question then

 

General John Manners, was in the habit of setting up some of the old soldiers under his command as publicans when they left his service, many of whom gave the same name to their pub, what is that name?

 

(not at the pub but at home sharing a bottle of Chianti & a Toblerone!)

 

edit for typo

Edited by MartyBartfast
Posted

Something a bit different...

 

Jupiter is prominent in the western evening sky at the moment along with Venus. A good pair of binoculars or a small telescope will show up to four small bright dots in line with its equator. These are known as the Galilean moons. What are their names?

Posted

Something a bit different...

 

Jupiter is prominent in the western evening sky at the moment along with Venus. A good pair of binoculars or a small telescope will show up to four small bright dots in line with its equator. These are known as the Galilean moons. What are their names?

Io Titan Gannymede and Europa?

(guessing here, one or more might be from Saturn!)

Posted

Something a bit different...

 

Jupiter is prominent in the western evening sky at the moment along with Venus. A good pair of binoculars or a small telescope will show up to four small bright dots in line with its equator. These are known as the Galilean moons. What are their names?

Io Titan Gannymede and Europa?

(guessing here, one or more might be from Saturn!)

 

Io and Ganymede are right, Europa is a Jovian moon but not one of the Galileans and Titan is, as you thought, a moon of Saturn - it's largest moon in fact :)

 

Close but no ding ;)

Posted

Amateur astronomer for more than 50 years.. so the moons of Jupiter are like a mantra!

 

Question coming up....

 

This is the coat of arms of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Which country is represented by the Unicorn?

 

coatbrit.jpg

Posted

Amateur astronomer for more than 50 years.. so the moons of Jupiter are like a mantra!

 

Question coming up....

 

This is the coat of arms of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Which country is represented by the Unicorn?

 

coatbrit.jpg

 

Scotland

Posted (edited)

Thanks.

 

'Nemo me impune lacessit' is the Latin motto of the Order of the Thistle and other organisations... What is the English translation of this motto?

Edited by Fianccetto
Posted

Quotes:

 

"Good tea. Nice house."

"I am NOT a merry man."

"Today is a good day to die"

 

Which character said these lines and in which TV series franchise. The name of the overall franchise will do - specific series not required.

Posted (edited)

Sounds like Worf in Star Trek TNG.

 

Good Tea, nice house -- possibly the episode where only a husband and wife were left on a planet; but the husband was some superior being who'd 'resurrected' a facsimile of his wife.

 

I an NOT a merry man -- when they first met Data in a holodeck simulation of Robin Hood

 

Today is a good day to die -- just about every other episode.

Edited by Pajaholic
Posted

Sounds like Worf in Star Trek TNG.

 

Good Tea, nice house -- possibly the episode where only a husband and wife were left on a planet; but the husband was some superior being who'd 'resurrected' a facsimile of his wife.

 

I an NOT a merry man -- when they first met Data in a holodeck simulation of Robin Hood

 

Today is a good day to die -- just about every other episode.

DING to Pajaholic.

Posted

Thanks.

 

Continuing the sci-fi theme ... I'm a sucker for pulp fiction, so this is one for E.E. 'Doc' Smith fans:

The first of the Skylark series (Skylark of Space) begins with Doctor Richard Seaton conducting an experiment when a steam bath unexpectedly flies off with terrific speed over a laboratory table, through an open window, and continues accelerating in a straight line out of sight. The phenomenon that caused this unexpected incident was later to power the Skylark. My question is simply, what was that source of power?

Posted

I've no idea who Doc smith is, or what the Skylark series was.

 

However the scenario sounds very much like an Isaac Asimov short story I read many years ago. I can't rememebr the exact plot but think it revolved around two scientists arguing over what would happen if you were playing pool and turned off gravity. To resolve the argument they invented an anti-gravity machine to test the theory. When they tried it the pool ball accelerated off killing one of the scientists.

 

So that's my answer; gravity

Posted

Anti-gravity was what H.G. Wells 'used' in "First Men in the Moon", which pre-dates Asimov. However, although anti-gravity has been used by so many sci-fi authors, it's not the answer here.

Posted

Not anti-inertia either. To be honest, this book was published in 1928 and so well before the stuff it attempts to describe were understood. The mechanism for transmitting the power is very loosely described. Some of that description borders on gravity, but it's more than just gravitational attraction. That said, I'm after just the source of power rather than the mechanism by which that power moves stuff.

 

To make this fair on those who're not familiar with E.E. Smith, I'll mention that getting the answer by reading the book is not cheating, and that some of the Skylark series are available as free eBooks. They can be downloaded in a variety of formats from http://manybooks.net/authors/smithee.html (among others). ;)

 

BTW, I loved the Lensman series when I read them decades ago, but I haven't been able to find more than Triplanetary as an eBook and so I might be a while before I get around to re-reading them!

Posted

I'm going off-grid for a while and so won't be able to hand over the ding. TBH I'm surprised that nobody has correctly answered this question -- even more so since I've given a freely accessible source of the answer. FWIW, E.E. Smith appears alongside Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, et al. in just about every top 10 list of sci-fi authors I've seen. We've already had a question from "A Stranger in a Strange Land" (Heinlein) and this question seems to me no more obscure than that as it asks for the pivotal 'fact' of the book.

 

Since I'm unable to participate for a while, I guess it's time to roll things back. I pm'd earlier today to ask Mellers to set another question, but haven't had a reply. So if anyone wants to jump in and set a question, please go ahead.

Posted (edited)

OK..I'm up for it.

 

What don't UK stamps have on them that other countries do?

 

 

The price?

And having just looked at one... The country!!

Edited by Pharisee
Posted

I guess we're all familiar with the events of "9/11"... the 11th September 2001, but there was another 9/11 event that for those involved was probably just as momentous but without the extreme trauma and horrific loss of life. This "9/11" was the 9th November 1989.... What happened?

Posted

I think that might be when the Berlin wall came down (but Mr f says it has something to do with a Rugby match England did particularly well at...)

 

That's close enough for a DING. In fact, it was the day that the East German government announced that travel restrictions on their citizens had been lifted and that they were free to travel into the west if they wanted to. The wall started to come down that evening but it was quite some time before it was completely demolished.

Posted

Thanks for the clarification.

 

On 9th November, 1921, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics "for services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".

Posted (edited)

Well, I suspect there is going to be a QI style klaxon going off but I can only think of one physicist from that era so....

 

Albert Einstein

 

Oops, looks like I missed the boat on that one!

Edited by MartyBartfast

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