General knowledge paper 2014-2015, sat by the pupils of King William’s College, Isle of Man
“Scire ubi aliquid invenire possis, ea demum maxima pars eruditionis est”
1. During 1914:
1 for whom was Potiorek’s invitation disastrous?
2 where did Harry make it six, a record still standing?
3 in whose composition were they called in from the glen?
4 which composition brought some colour to the state of Missouri?
5 who was brutally attacked as she lay naked in her boudoir eight years after her move from the north-east?
6 who (fortuitously) evaded Sydney and led his men from Tikus on an epic journey which would last 195 days?
7 where did the commander and officers of the Third Cavalry Brigade threaten “mutiny”?
8 what, despite her name, lost her way off the Berwickshire coast?
9 who deprived a leading French newspaper of its editor?
10 how did monkey hangers gain an unenviable first?
2.
1 What agent eradicated the Candorians?
2 What tragedy is enacted in Hilljoy Square?
3 What did Vincent develop from Gunga Din?
4 Who was the daughter of Keikobad, king of the spirits?
5 Where did Dan sham death before sending Nora packing with the Tramp?
6 In mourning her lost son, what have the power to shake Margaret as they pass?
7 What is life, apart from being a strutting and fretting poor player?
8 What is play’d in a box whose candle is the sun?
9 What includes some echoes from the hills?
10 What was hidden beneath Rite of Man?
3.
1 Who died following mutual insults at Madame Larina’s ball?
2 Who killed a gentleman of the bedchamber to King James near Bergen op Zoom?
3 Who was saved by a large button in a duel following a performance of his opponent’s Cleopatra?
4 Who killed a French baron for calling his king “the arrantest coward in the world” at a dinner party?
5 Which duellists fought unknowingly with unloaded pistols, following an accusation of cheating at the Lamb Inn?
6 Following victory in a duel in Bengal, which ship’s surgeon operated on himself to remove a bullet from his chest?
7 Which future president shot and killed his opponent following a suggestion that his wife was a bigamist?
8 Which antagonists both missed their target when duelling on the golf course beyond Juan les Pins?
9 Who fought in the Forêt de Saint-Germain following a contretemps in the Café Guerbois?
10 Which two ladies fought, first with pistols and then with swords, in Hyde Park?
4.
1 Which particular ear listens to everything?
2 Which books did Luther compare unfavourably to Aesop?
3 Who eviscerated himself and then shook his intestines at the onlookers?
4 Who likened a bird-scarer among gourds to a thorn much-favoured by birds?
5 Who stabbed the royal pachyderm from below and perished when the dead animal fell on him?
6 The theft of food set out for which idol was revealed through clerical footsteps in the prepared ashes?
7 Which scribe inspired the creation of the Gudger, Ricketts and Woods families?
8 Which bathing beauty owed her vindication to conflicting descriptions of a tree?
9 Whose scimitar required two strokes to divide his cervical vertebrae?
10 Who was blinded by passerine droppings as he slept?
5.
1 What game was depicted by Morland?
2 Who were the victims of a triple caudectomy?
3 The restoration of whose sight was depicted by the Greek?
4 Who wondered whether a matchbox would hold his clothes?
5 Which blind man’s dictation to his three daughters was depicted by the alleged bastard son of Talleyrand?
6 Following the escape of the lugger from the Hole, who expressed gladness at having trodden on which blind man’s corns?
7 What blind musician’s noble title recalls his appreciation of a Palacio Real?
8 How do the visually impaired benefit from a golden duck?
9 Deafer than the blue-eyed cat and thrice as blind as what?
10 Who blinded the cannibal son of Thoosa?
6. What dual enterprise:
1 produced 693?
2 has come to manage without corporal liberation?
3 started with the well-heeled clientele of Eastbourne?
4 moved to magnificent premises next to Marylebone Lane?
5 combined one of Queen Anne’s footmen and a Somerset House porter?
6 began when two pharmacists were inspired by a gourmet’s Bengali experience?
7 confusingly operates under the sign of the coffee-grinder?
8 after 86 years brought Aquila chrysaetos to the Borders?
9 had its foundation in a Bolognese’s pursuit of a diva?
10 was a favourite West End meeting place?
7.
1 Who played hide and seek on Crete?
2 On what type of craft did Murad Reis lose his head?
3 What strange gas was identified by Ramsay and Travers?
4 Who described the retreat from Mesopotamia to Trebizond?
5 Where was there a place of pleasure associated with a sacred subterranean river?
6 Who won a famous land battle, but was defeated at sea and failed to conquer Greece?
7 What palpebral disfigurement may signify a susceptibility to arteriosclerosis?
8 With whom did the son of the late Antonio compare Kate?
9 To what pigment does the fall owe much of its beauty?
10 What represented the fossils in a popular carnival?
8.
1 Where did Mac and Gin defy Cruz?
2 Who wrote of the impartiality of the rain forest?
3 Whose failure to “Mind the gap” sadly cost him his life?
4 Which industry developed from the initiative of a Charentais entrepreneur?
5 Which home-grown war hero was awarded an OBE which was later rescinded?
6 What mountain retreat was established following an episcopal search for a missing person?
7 For what did the company agree to an annual rent of 6,000 Spanish dollars?
8 Which administrator was fatally speared during his riverside ablutions?
9 What was swapped for a penal settlement in Sumatra?
10 Who left footprints when he was over 90?
9.
1 Where is French cricket played?
2 What did Jake find good company at the Marinas?
3 What, confusingly, depicts the premises of a neighbour?
4 What was depicted by two dancing clowns made of gold and pearls?
5 What was the cherished bottle that wine-buff Miles drank in solitude?
6 What was considered to have “a good and most particular taste” at the Royall Oak Tavern?
7 For whom did Kandinsky succeed Chagall, who had succeeded Mir?
8 What did Vesper and James share on the train to Montenegro?
9 What did Pettigrew-Robinson try out on his Lordship?
10 What was presented to Bertrand by Berald?
10.
1 Who led the great exodus to Persia?
2 Which great patriot was lauded by Keats, Hunt and Coleridge?
3 Which celebrated concert pianist signed the Treaty of Versailles?
4 Who shot the president at an art exhibition five days after his election?
5 Whose work on pitchblende probably led to death from leukaemia more than 35 years later?
6 Who was imprisoned in a Tyrolean castle by the Holy Roman Emperor on her way to join her fiance in Rome?
7 Which polymath canon of a northern cathedral challenged the opinion of Ptolemy?
8 Whose martyrdom was recalled 900 years later at whose promotion?
9 Who holidayed on Majorca with Aurore and created a Raindrop?
10 Who is commemorated in the Upper Galleries of the Rock?
11.
1 Which volcano was explored by Dante?
2 Which eruption brought the Olympiad to London?
3 What was named after the commander of HMS Monarch?
4 Where did the activities of Queen Mary necessitate a rescue operation by RIL?
5 Having entered via Snæfell, where did the professor’s party make its explosive exit?
6 Which princess and warrior are joined by a saddle named after a stout conquistador?
7 Which volcano was depicted in the death of a sexagenarian philosopher by Rosa?
8 Which explosion is estimated to have generated around 180 decibels?
9 Which eruption was probably witnessed by Columbus?
10 What volcanic glow was a magnet to Resolution?
12.
1 What was renamed after Mr Pusey’s boss?
2 Who rose to a great height following her marriage?
3 Which Gypsy wore an old red blanket and a chip hat?
4 Whose death in a Norwegian outpost precipitated a constitutional crisis?
5 Which widow allegedly poisoned her husband with powdered glass in his coffee?
6 Who joined in stabbing the heir to the throne, perhaps fictitiously, atop a mole-hill?
7 Who supported the proclamation of her apparent nephew as King Richard IV?
8 Who looked to Basingstoke for the restoration of sanity?
9 Who might be regarded as the last Queen of Mann?
10 Who, “in death, was not divided” from her brother?
13.
1 Who reflected?
2 Whose murder was intended to save 100,000?
3 Who unwisely suggested that starving people should eat grass?
4 Where were clerics executed en masse in a novel and breathtaking manner?
5 Whose grand-nephew lent him his cloak, enabling his escape, and was executed in his stead?
6 Where did the Frogs put the portable guillotine to good use while the Lobsters guarded the ford nearby?
7 Who, disguised as Benjamin Rosenbaum, led his adversary to Père Blanchard’s hut?
8 Who were the two deputies flung into the river at Savigné-l’Evêque?
9 Who succeeded the novice duellist as deputy for Ancenis?
10 Justify deux cent quatre-vingts.
14.
1 What is “cut up wi’ ready slicht”?
2 What recipe was created at Twomey’s?
3 For what innovation did Roth use a Mirror?
4 What North African creation includes rice, liver and heart?
5 What is described as picante or dulce depending on the paprika?
6 To what are chitterlings put to good, if malodorous, use in Aube?
7 What sanguineous rye mixture is enjoyed with puolukkahillo?
8 What beauty is smoked over juniper in tuyés?
9 What can be found at Schützenstrasse 70?
10 For what is sage the main additive?
15. Where is or was:
1 a guineafowl worth ½?
2 a partridge worth 1?
3 a magpie robin worth 2?
4 a heron worth 3?
5 a hornbill worth 5?
6 a capercaillie worth 10?
7 a bee-eater worth 25
8 a woodcock worth 50?
9 a nightingale worth 100?
10 a spectacled owl worth 25,000?
16.
1 Who knocked out Jake at the Café Suizo?
2 Whose cuffs were decorated with buttons of dental origin?
3 Who reported the exchange of a treasured turquoise for a monkey?
4 Whose cadaver was swapped for that of a pauper and dissected at St Luke’s?
5 Who persuaded Wilfred to fight on behalf of his daughter, who was accused of witchcraft?
6 Who presented his colleague with a contracted Dupuytren hand, preserved in spirit of wine, in Gibraltar?
7 Who sent his daughter to a nunnery before feeding all the nuns with poisoned porridge?
8 Who sang the Kol Nidre at the expense of the opening night on Broadway?
9 Who worked at St Mary Axe, then settled with a troglodyte?
10 Who responded to an SOS from his arachnophobe ex?
17.
1 Who let Olafsson have the Sudreys?
2 Where was Don Nicolás’s Galician invasion crushed?
3 Which monarch was killed by which Mormaer near Elgin?
4 By what treaty was independence secured for the next 275 years?
5 Who released the Kirk from English supremacy, placing it under direct Roman jurisdiction?
6 Who aimed to see Scotland seated at the United Nations in her appropriate alphabetical position?
7 Whose longevity was compared to that of Solomon at his funeral service?
8 Whence did the general flee from his nest like an ill scar’d bird?
9 What regal title was assumed by the Bishop of Frascati?
10 Who killed Badenoch in Greyfriars Kirk?
18. During 2014:
1 whatever happened to the lats?
2 and whatever happened to Pom Pom?
3 who has finally capsized, while his cat lives on?
4 who have rekindled memories of Holmes and Sutcliffe?
5 how did coughing in Bali leave two German doctors exposed?
6 how have we had a final reminder of the labial requirements of whistling?
7 with what overseas challenge was the IWBKA confronted?
8 what was the singular achievement of Connor Hobson?
9 where did Gorillas and Rhinos go top by 575m?
10 which gatekeeper has lost his place?
• The answers will appear next term.
