General Knowledge 20

Question 1

What does P.R.B. stand for in Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s first major canvas?

Answer 1

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Question 2

Which prolific female novelist married twice to men with the surname McCorquodale?

Answer 2

Barbara Cartland

Question 3

What is the name of the deepest point anywhere on Earth’s surface?

Answer 3

Challenger Deep

Question 4

Who wrote The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice?

Answer 4

John Ruskin

Question 5

Who defined a critic as ‘a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car’?

Answer 5

Kenneth Tynan

Question 6

What material forms the center of the best-quality cricket balls?

Answer 6

Cork

Question 7

What form of communication was developed from ‘night-writing’?

Answer 7

Braille

Question 8

From which novel are the words ‘Mistah Kurtz – he dead’ taken?

Answer 8

Heart of Darkness

Question 9

Which film, inspired by Heart of Darkness, features a character referencing Eliot’s ‘The Hollow Men’?

Answer 9

Apocalypse Now

Question 10

Who was the Hungarian ballerina that published a biography of Nijinsky?

Answer 10

Romola de Pulszky

Question 11

Which Greek sculptor created the Statue of Zeus at Olympia?

Answer 11

Phidias

Question 12

Which two seas are connected by the Suez Canal?

Answer 12

Mediterranean and Red Sea

Question 13

Who used to sign off his news programmes with ‘And that’s the way it is’?

Answer 13

Walter Cronkite

Question 14

Which character does Alice encounter sitting on a mushroom in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?

Answer 14

The caterpillar

Question 15

What were Garraways, Jonathan’s, and Lloyd’s famous for in seventeenth and eighteenth-century London?

Answer 15

Coffee houses

Question 16

How many oxygen atoms are in a single molecule of sulphuric acid?

Answer 16

Four

Question 17

Ansel Adams is renowned in which field of the arts?

Answer 17

Photography

Question 18

Which group did Lionel Richie leave to pursue a solo career in the 1980s?

Answer 18

The Commodores

Question 19

What is the common English name for the species Troglodytes troglodytes?

Answer 19

The Wren

Question 20

Which Arabic word meaning benefits is widely used in Indian cookery to mean a mixture of spices?

Answer 20

Masala/Mosalla

Question 21

What is the forename of Dr Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s novel?

Answer 21

Victor

Question 22

How is the artist Domenikos Theotokopoulos better known?

Answer 22

El Greco

Question 23

What term, originally a nonsense word, is used for a three-pronged pickle fork?

Answer 23

Runcible spoon

Question 24

What is the commonly known name of the 22-storey triangular-shaped tower built in 1902 in Manhattan?

Answer 24

The Flatiron Building

Question 25

Who said ‘My dear boy, this is death’ before dying on 26th June 1830?

Answer 25

George IV

Question 26

Who were the principal clients of the anatomist Robert Knox?

Answer 26

Burke and Hare

Question 27

Which two sports are named in the full title of the All-England Club at Wimbledon?

Answer 27

Lawn Tennis and Croquet

Question 28

What does CITES stand for?

Answer 28

Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species

Question 29

What are the first ten amendments to the US constitution collectively known as?

Answer 29

The Bill of Rights

Question 30

Which former child actor became a top director with films like Frost/Nixon and Apollo 13?

Answer 30

Ron Howard

Question 31

What could result from a ‘casus belli’?

Answer 31

A war

Question 32

What is the three-word name for the game known as ‘Rochambeau’ in the US?

Answer 32

Paper, scissors, stone

Question 33

What is the equivalent decimal value of eight shillings and sixpence?

Answer 33

Forty-two and a half pence

Question 34

Who is the wicked headmaster in Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby?

Answer 34

Wackford Squeers

Question 35

In which continent are Wilkes Land, Queen Maud Land, and Marie Byrd Land located?

Answer 35

Antarctica

Question 36

Which famous sports team was founded in the late 1920s and featured members from the Savoy Big Five?

Answer 36

The Harlem Globetrotters

Question 37

What name is given to the peninsula that forms the former northern portion of Lancashire?

Answer 37

Furness

Question 38

What word refers to both a pidgin language and a style of cuisine typical of New Orleans?

Answer 38

Creole

Question 39

Which writer did Alex Jennings portray in a 2015 film where he argued with himself?

Answer 39

Alan Bennett

Question 40

What is the more common name for calcium magnesium carbonate?

Answer 40

Dolomite