ACHAMBHA THE POST END-SEM HUB QUIZ

NIT SILCHAR(Held on 5Tth December, 2014)

Questions by Amitabh Sharma

NOTE:This quiz presentation used 1 video, which you might not be able to view. The YouTube link for that video has been given on the relevant slide.

1. On 31st October, last year, the official Google+ page of this famous place changed its profile picture to this.

Something famous happened in this place, more than half a century back. What?Also, name the place.

The place is Bletchley Park.

Alan Turing and his team cracked the Enigma code here.

2. The ‘Bucky Clause’ is a common saying among comic-book fans, regarding deaths in comic storylines.According to the ‘clause’, no character stays dead except Bucky, Jason Todd and X.However, the first two were eventually brought back to life.X also reappeared after a few years, but it turned out X was from an alternate reality.Id X.

Uncle Ben

3. Funda? This day relenting GodHath placed within my handA wondrous thing; and GodBe praised. At His command,Seeking His secret deedsWith tears and toiling breath,I find thy cunning seeds,O million-murdering Death.I know this little thingA myriad men will save.O Death, where is thy sting?Thy victory, O Grave?

Ronald Ross wrote this poem after discovering how Malaria is spread by mosquitoes, which eventually got him the Noble Prize for Medicine.

4. According to Greek myth, King Peleas of Iolcus gave a youth called Jason, the extremely dangerous task of fetching the famous Golden Fleece from the island of Colchis, because the Oracle had foretold that Jason would overthrow him.

To help him in his journey, the goddess Athena helped create this. What?

The ship, ‘Argo’.

5. The Muisca were a tribe, who used to live in the central highlands of present-day Colombia. Their descendants survive till today.In one of their interesting traditions, their chief, as part of an initiation rite, would cover himself with gold dust and dive into the Lake Guatavita. This was once supposedly seen by Spanish adventurer Diego de Ordaz. While telling the story of his journey on his death-bed, he used a term to describe that chief, thereby giving birth to this very famous legend.

Which legend?

The legend of El Dorado (the city of gold)

El Dorado actually means ‘The Golden One’ in Spanish

6. X is a jargon term used by physicists to refer to the study of the unification of the four fundamental forces of nature- gravity, the strong force, the weak force and the electromagnetic force.Many famous physicists have worked on this, including Oersted, Faraday and Einstein.Another famous physicist who was initially very enthusiastic about research on X, later went on to become very pessimistic regarding the success of such research.

Id X

The Theory of Everything

7. In 1917, during World War I, at the height of anti-German sentiments, the head of the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha family was forced to change the family surname to something else, due to its obvious German nature.The change became especially necessary after the Germans began using the Gotha G.I.V, a heavy aircraft, for bombing London, due to which ‘Gotha’ became a household name.What new surname did the family adopt?

Windsor (The current British Royal Family)

8. In Indian literature, ‘Kamashastra’ refers to the series of texts on erotic love and desire (‘Kama’), which also includes the Kamasutra.The earliest text in the Kamashastra category is attributed to X, the official door-keeper of Y. Supposedly X overheard the love-making of Y and Z, and was moved to sacred utterances, which were later written down by the sage Shvetaketu.

Id X, Y and Z

X- NandiY- ShivaZ- Parvati

9. Daughter of Austrian entrepreneur, Emil Jellinek, this girl went on to become notorious for her two scandalous marriages. She left her first husband, a rich baron, after her family was reduced to begging on the streets of Vienna due to the First World War.

She is however famous today for what?

The Mercedes-Benz brand got part of its name from her.

10. Nike gave a special name to the kind of tennis played in this ad, as a part of their ad campaign in the 1990s, which also had the same name.The series of ads showed Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi travelling to different random locations. They would then suddenly get out of their vehicle, set up a net and start playing tennis.What name did Nike give to this kind of tennis?

(VIDEO ON NEXT SLIDE)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq710a9T-tc

Guerilla Tennis

11. X originated from an old French term meaning ‘horse-soldiery’ or ‘horseman’. However, X is used today in a quite different context.

The concept of X, which began in the medieval ages, was a product of the synthesis of Germanic and Roman martial traditions, including military bravery, individual training and service to others, among horse soldiers in Emperor Charlemagne's cavalry.

Id X

12. The man in the photo is a school teacher, graphic artist and author.He is famous for his ambigrams, some of which he published in his book, Wordplay.His work has been used by Dan Brown in one of his novels. As a mark of gratitude and tribute to this guy, what did Dan Brown do?

He named one of his main characters (Robert Langdon) after him (John Langdon)

13. The movie Megamind is full of spoofs of characters from Superman comics, including Lois Lane, Jor-El, Lex Luthor and Superman himself.

This character, however, is spoofing someone NOT from Superman comics.Who is it spoofing then?

Green Lantern

14. Connect-

Coca ColaBaseball running mudMrs. Fields Chocolate Chip cookiesThe New York Times Best Sellers' ListKFC chickenDr PepperGoogle Page-Rank

The process of creating each of them is a trade secret, and can never be revealed to the general public.

15. Supposedly, the name of this movie genre was coined by Italian journalist Alfonso Sancha, after which it eventually became popular with movie critics all over the world.The name refers to the fact that most movies of this genre were directed and produced by Italians, and sometimes even had Italians in the cast and crew.The most famous director in this genre has influenced directors like Akira Kurosowa and Ramesh Sippy.Which genre?

Spaghetti Western

16. This Japanese word (meaning- Divine Wind) was originally used to refer to two winds or storms that are said to have saved Japan from one of the largest naval invasions in history by the Mongols under Emperor Kublai Khan.

The word however gained worldwide fame during World War II, after it was used to refer to an unique strategy of suicide attacks used by Japanese pilots for destroying allied naval vessels.What word?

Kamikaze

17. ‘Lenna’ or ‘Lena’ is the name given to a standard test image widely used in the field of image processing since 1973.

Basically a cropped portion of an original photograph, ‘Lenna’ was used, interestingly because the scientist in concern could not find a good image with a human face in his office, to scan for a colleague’s conference paper. After publishing, it went on to become one of the most used images in computer history.

However, ‘Lenna’ also generated a huge controversy for being ‘degrading to women’, and an example of sexism in the scientific fraternity.

Why?

‘Lenna’ was taken from the centre-fold of the November 1972 issue of Playboy, showing a nude model called Lena Soderberg.

18. The term ‘Mare Nostrum’ was the Roman name for X.Originally, it referred only to a part of X, but the referred area increased to its actual size as the Roman Empire expanded. The term was also used by Benito Mussolini for use in fascist propaganda. Mussolini wanted to re-establish the greatness of the Roman Empire and declared that "the twentieth century will be a century of Italian power" and created one of the most powerful navies of the world in order to control X.Id X

The Mediterranean Sea

19. Born into the noble family of the Mimsy- Porpingtons, in the fifteenth century, he eventually was knighted and became a courtier of Henry VII’s royal court.

In 1492, while strolling through a park, he met a lady-in waiting from the royal court called Lady Grieve, who was convinced that he could straighten her crooked teeth. His resultant efforts resulted in a complete fiasco.

As a result, he was imprisoned and executed.Who?

Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington(Nearly Headless Nick)

20. What is being talked about?

"I have carried the manuscript of these translations about with me for days, reading it in railway trains, or on the top of omnibuses and in restaurants, and I have often had to close it lest some stranger would see how much it moved me. These lyrics---which are in the original, full of subtlety of rhythm, of untranslatable delicacies of colour, of metrical invention---display in their thought a world I have dreamed of all my live long. The work of a supreme culture, they yet appear as much the growth of the common soil as the grass and the rushes. A tradition, where poetry and religion are the same thing, has passed through the centuries, gathering from learned and unlearned metaphor and emotion, and carried back again to the multitude the thought of the scholar and of the noble"

Geetanjali

21. The ‘Immortals’ were an elite force of 10,000 soldiers, belonging to the Achaemenid Empire.

Used by most of the famous Persian Emperors, the Immortals famously fought against Alexander the Great as well as against Leonidas in the Battle of Thermopylae (also shown in the movie ‘300’).

Why were they called the Immortals?

Every killed, seriously wounded, or sick soldier was immediately replaced with a new one, to ensure that the unit’s total number of soldiers always remained at 10,000.

22. M.I.T has an interesting tradition of mailing its acceptance (or rejection) letters to prospective students on a particular date to honour a certain occasion. This was made an official practice from 2012 onwards.The occasion is normally celebrated on 14th March. However, through a different date format, the occasion could also have been celebrated on 22nd July. To avoid confusion, the second date has been chosen to represent something different, but essentially the same.

What occasion?

Pi Day