The new trivia thread.

[TheDr]

Answer time.....

How many wives did Henry VIII have?

Two, or four if you are Catholic.
We are taught six but....
His fourth marriage to Anne of Cleves was annulled, meaning legally the marriage never took place. that leaves five.
The Pope declared his marriage to Anne Boleyn illegal as the king was still married to his first wife Catherine of Aragon.
Henry, as head of the new Church of England, in turn declared fis first marriage was invalid on the legal ground that a man could not sleep with his brothers widow. He cited the Old Testament claiming it was 'Gods Law' weather the Pope liked it or not. That leaves four or three depeniding on if you go with the King or the Popes point of view.
He annulled his marriage to Anne Boleyn before he had her executed for adultery, somewhat illogical, as how could she have betrayed a marriage that never legally existed?
He did the same for his fifth wife Catherine Howard.
That makes four annullments and only two incontestibly legal marriages.

What is the most dangerous animal that has ever lived?
The female mosquito - the males only bite plants.

What man-made artefacts can be seen from the moon?
None with the naked eye, even the continents are barely visible. And despite Trivial Pursuit telling you otherwise, there is no point in between earth and the moon where only the Great Wall of China is visible.

What is Croatia's most lasting contribution to world business?
The neck tie.

 

[TheDr]

Who inveted champagne?

Not the French, nor Monks.

Actually in the sixteenth century the English developed a taste for fizzy wine importing barrels of green, flat wine from Champagne and adding sugar and molasses to start it fermenting. They also developed the strong coal fired glass bottles and corks to keep it in.
The records of the Royal society show that what is now called methode champenoise was first written down in England in 1662. The French added finesse and marketing, but it wasnt until 1876 that they perfected the modern style, and even then it was for export to England.
The Benedictine monk Dom Perignon actually spent most of his time trying to remove the bubbles from champagne. His real legacy was the skilfull blending of grape varieties from different vineyards and the use of a wire cage for the cork.

 

[Ceiling Cat]

On Star Trek TOS, you will see tubes in engineering and in the corridors with the letters GNDN. What does GNDN mean?

 

[K Douglas]

Nena's "99 Red Balloons", what was the song about?

It was about balloons triggering a nuclear war between Germany and Russia.

 

[TheDr]

More answers.

What was Tutankhamun's curse?
There isnt one, it was made up by the Cairo correspondent of the Daily Express.
The article reported an inscription that stated: 'They who enter this sacred tomb shall swiftly be visited by the wings of death.'
There is no such inscription, the nearest equivalent appears over a shrine dedicated to the god Anubis and reads: 'It is I who hinder the sand from choking the secret chamber. I am for the protection of the deceased.'


What is the Number of the Beast?
For 2000 years 666 was given as the number of the beast, but in 2005 a new translation of the earliest known copy of the Book of Revelation clearly show it to actually be 616.

How many people died in the Great fire of London?
Five. Despite destroying 80% of London there are only five recorded deaths - the maid of the baker who started it; Paul Lowell, a Shoe Lane watchmaker; an old man who rescued a blanket from St Pauls but later succumbed to the smoke; and two others who fell into their cellars in an ill-fated attempt to rescue goods and chattels.
The true death toll will never be known, as given the intense heat some of the corpses would almost certainly have been vapourised and thus never recorded.

Name a poisonous snake.
Whatever you initially said is probably wrong. The correct answer is japanese grass snake.
Definition is important here: Poison harms you when you ingest it, venom when it is injected into you. So something is poisonous when you bite it and venomous when it bites you.

Which animals are best endowed of all?
Barnacles have the longest penis relative to their size of any creature. It can be up to seven times longer than their body.

What does the moon smell like?
Gunpowder apparently. Plenty of it was brought back into the cabin when astronauts returned from the moons surface. They reported it as feeling like snow, smelling like gunpowder and doesnt taste too bad.

What's the commonest material in the world?
Perovskite, a mineral made from silicon, magnesuim and oxygen. It amounts to about half the total mass of the planet as its what the earths mantle is mostly made from, or so they think as no one has managed to actually obtain a sample yet.

How many states of matter are there?
Easy isnt it? three - solid, liquid and gas.
Well thats what they teach at school, and its wrong. Actually its more like 15 and the list grows almost daily.

solid, amorphorous solid, liquid, gas, plasma, superfluid, supersolid, degenerate matter, neutronium, strongly symmetric matter, weakly symmetric matter, quark-gluon plasma, fermonic condensate, Bose-Einstein condensate and strange matter.


More fiendishly obscure trivia later....

 

[TheDr]

On Star Trek TOS, you will see tubes in engineering and in the corridors with the letters GNDN. What does GNDN mean?

Good Name Does Nothing

 

[K Douglas]

Wayne Gretzky was the most prolific point getter during the 1980's.

Who ranked number 2?

it was NOT Kurri

Peter Stastny

 

[TheDr]

What is noteable about Scotland, kilts, bagpipes, haggis, porridge, whisky and tartan?

and please state the reasoning for your answers....

 

[Ceiling Cat]

Who inveted champagne?

Not the French, nor Monks.

Actually in the sixteenth century the English developed a taste for fizzy wine importing barrels of green, flat wine from Champagne and adding sugar and molasses to start it fermenting. They also developed the strong coal fired glass bottles and corks to keep it in.
The records of the Royal society show that what is now called methode champenoise was first written down in England in 1662. The French added finesse and marketing, but it wasnt until 1876 that they perfected the modern style, and even then it was for export to England.
The Benedictine monk Dom Perignon actually spent most of his time trying to remove the bubbles from champagne. His real legacy was the skilfull blending of grape varieties from different vineyards and the use of a wire cage for the cork.

It may be that the English invented sparkling wines ( fizzy ) Monks in Champagne invented sparkling fizzy wines in that region of France. Only sparkling wines from Champagne can be called Champagne, and only brandy from Cognac can be legally called Cognac because they are produced from that region. If you are talking about Champangne then it was monks who first produced sparkling wines in that region.

Champagne and Cognac is regulated and limited in production to keep prices high. If too much champagne or cognac is produced the regulation board for these regions will ship the product out of the region to be sold as simple sparkling wine or Brandy. Sadly, they try to limit these sales to consumption in France.

 

[K Douglas]

most everyone knows that Michael Jackson's Thriller is the best-selling album of all time...what album is in 2nd place?

Eagles - Hotel California

 

[TheDr]

It may be that the English invented sparkling wines ( fizzy ) Monks in Champagne invented sparkling fizzy wines in that region of France. Only sparkling wines from Champagne can be called Champagne, and only brandy from Cognac can be legally called Cognac because they are produced from that region. If you are talking about Champangne then it was monks who first produced sparkling wines in that region.

Champagne and Cognac is regulated and limited in production to keep prices high. If too much champagne or cognac is produced the regulation board for these regions will ship the product out of the region to be sold as simple sparkling wine or Brandy. Sadly, they try to limit these sales to consumption in France.

the English invented the technique using imported flat wine from the Champagne region of France. The technique was further refined by the French. The Treaty of Madrid in 1891 decreed that only wine produced in the Champagne region may use the name, and this was reaffirmed by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, but the US signed a seperate peace treaty with Germany creating the legal loophole that allows any sparkling wine to be sold as champagne in the US, much to the annoyance of the French.

 

[Ceiling Cat]

More answers.

What was Tutankhamun's curse?
There isnt one, it was made up by the Cairo correspondent of the Daily Express.
The article reported an inscription that stated: 'They who enter this sacred tomb shall swiftly be visited by the wings of death.'
There is no such inscription, the nearest equivalent appears over a shrine dedicated to the god Anubis and reads: 'It is I who hinder the sand from choking the secret chamber. I am for the protection of the deceased.'

The myth of the curse may be that people going into the tombs inhaled bat crap which were full of spores that gave them repiratory disease. Many people got sick and died soon after going into the tombs. At that time antibiotics were almost unknown to medical people.

What does the moon smell like?
Gunpowder apparently. Plenty of it was brought back into the cabin when astronauts returned from the moons surface. They reported it as feeling like snow, smelling like gunpowder and doesnt taste too bad.

I have actually seen a piece of moon rock, actually it was a moon crumb the size of an large ant. It was all black and looked like something you might scrape off a BBQ. Maybe that would explain the gunpowder smell.

More fiendishly obscure trivia later....

Thanks, Barney.

 

[Ben Hogan]

What was the song George Harrison wrote that was about him being sued for palgarizing the Chiffon's "He's So Fine"?

This Song

 

[Ben Hogan]

In baseball, why is the pitcher's rubber 60"-6" away from homeplate?, why that extra 6", why not an even 60'?

The distance was supposed to be 60 feet and they forgot when they they measured that the plate iadds another 6 inches.

 

[TheDr]

What was James Bond's favourite drink?

 

[TheDr]

In what year did World War 2 end?

 

[descartes]

Name the song about a certain TTC route, this route has since been renamed.

Spadina Bus?

 

[Brill]

What's the first song played on the radio to use the word "fuck"?

"Ol Man Mose" by Eddy Duchin & His Orchestra featuring Patricia Norman on vocals reached #2 on Billboard back in 1938. It created a scandal at the time, resulting in sales of 170,000 copies. When released in the UK it was immediately banned.

 

[Brill]

I remember "Too Drunk To Fuck" by the Dead Kennedys being a hit in the UK, it reached #31 in 1981.

 

[TheDr]

1945

Nope.... In 1990

Though actual hostilities came to an end with the Japanese surrender on 2nd September 1945, the Cold War got in the way of a formal legal settlement. Peace treaties were signed with Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland in 1950. All the Allies except the USSR signed a peace treaty with Japan in 1951. Austria waited until 1955 to regain its sovreignty. Germany, however was divided between the Western powers and the USSR so no peace treaty was signed with what emerged as the German Democratic Republic in 1949.
The first celebration of German reunification on 3 October 1990 marks the official end to World War II