Quiz #83

*Bulgaria’s win arguably saved the Eurovision organisers a major headache after a huge public vote for Israel had pushed it up from 8^th in the jury vote to a potential winner and therefore host for 2027, despite five nations boycotting the contest because of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

*Covered in snow, Eeyore visits Christopher Robin to say it is cold in his field at 3 o’clock in the morning, but at least it is not too stuffy and there has not been an earthquake recently.

*During his first performance, von Wangenheim fell from his horse, broke his collarbone, but remounted and finished without any further faults. He removed his sling before he began his second performance, but with one ineffective arm he fell again, this time with the horse falling on top of him. Nonetheless, he remounted once more and again finished without any further faults. Von Wangenheim would later fight with Nazi Germany in World War II, during which he was captured at the Battle of Stalingrad. He was found hanged in 1953 while still a prisoner of war, although it is unclear whether his death was suicide, execution, or murder.

*Claims of favouritism within Scottish football were made after an injury time VAR recommendation prompted the referee to award Celtic a highly controversial penalty to win their penultimate game; the win meant Celtic hosted underdogs Hearts in the final game knowing any win would win the title, rather than having to win by 3 clear goals. The final game itself was marred by a pitch invasion after Celtic scored two late goals, with fans running on to goad Hearts players, raising doubts about whether the final whistle was ever officially blown and prompting Hearts to leave the stadium within half an hour, the players still wearing their kit. The Scottish FA’s Key Match Incident panel has since ruled 2-to-1 that the controversial penalty was the incorrect decision and VAR should not have intervened, while there are also calls to punish Celtic after both of their final games involved pitch invasions. Some consolation arrived for Hearts’ when their women’s team won its first league title the next week.

*The T-Rex was an easy winner in the poll, gaining 30 per cent of the vote, compared to 12 per cent for the stegosaurus and 11 per cent for the triceratops. The diplodocus (10 per cent) and velociraptor (7 per cent) completed the top 5. As the poll also recorded the background of those who responded, it found that the T-Rex was particularly popular with male Conservative and Reform voters who voted to leave the European Union in the 2016 Brexit referendum.

*Fights for greater compensation from US firm Union Carbide, which owned the plant, continue to this day. Union Carbide paid the Indian government $479m to settle litigation, and it is believed the average payout for a death was $2200, with many who suffered injuries received nothing. A formal request to extradite Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson was rejected by the US, citing a lack of evidence.

*Three years after they were introduced to Hawaii, 102 cane toads were transported from Honolulu to Queensland, with the 101 animals that survived the journey starting an environmental disaster as they multiplied and poisoned many native species that attempted to eat them. The Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) in Geelong is trying to modify cane toad genetics so they are unpalatable but not deadly to animals such as Northern quolls – although the cane toad too is evolving, having grown longer legs so it now expands its distribution by around 50km a year rather than the original 10km. Cane toads had also been previously introduced to the Caribbean, Philippines, Fiji, and New Guinea, primarily after the whitegrub larva of another sugarcane pest, June beetles, declined after the toads’ arrival in Puerto Rico – probably due to record-breaking rainfall rather than anything than cane toads did. Despite the failed cane toad experiment, Hawaii tried a similar scheme in the 1950s, introducing rosy wolfsnails to control another introduced species, the giant African land snail. The wolfsnails mostly ignored the giant snails and began eating Hawaii’s native snails.

*Unused railways have been a common foundation for green corridors and cycle paths, as seen in Singapore, New York, Mexico City and Edinburgh.

*La Brea is the Spanish for ‘the tar’ and the name of LA’s famous tar pits, themselves about to start a renovation.

*Using evidence from various locations and cultural backgrounds, Hudson and Moscoso-Boedo specifically highlight the connection between phones and the rolling out of 4G and broadband and a subsequent rapid drop in socialising and fertility, as well as rises in suicide. Moreover, they propose that the drop in smartphone prices has created an expanded model that covers the broader economy rather than subsets.

*Jodrell Bank was used to intercept Soviet data during the Space Race. In 1966, the Lovell telescope picked up image transmissions from Luna 9, the first spaceship to make a soft landing on the moon, which scientists were then able to convert into a picture using a Radiofax machine borrowed from the Daily Express newspaper. However, it is suspected the Soviets deliberately chose a trackable medium to send the data so that Jodrell Bank would produce high quality images without the Soviets having the embarrassment of asking for help.

*The idea of ‘having the same number of flags and drums’ is believed to come from a letter written in the 1^st century by Emperor Guangwu to rebel army leader Wei Xiao in which he proposed collaborating in order to counter the strength of newly proclaimed ‘Emperor of Chengjia’ Gongsun Shu in Sichuan. Noting that his own army was weakened by also having to fight on an eastern front, Guangwu said it was only by cooperating that they would have the same number of flags and drums as the new rival. This collaboration led to a year long war between the sides, with Gongsun eventually killed in battle, resulting in surrender by his side – after which Gongsun’s entire family, plus the surrendering general and his entire family, were executed.

*Official North Korean history states that Kim Jong Il was born in 1942 in a log cabin in an anti-Japan resistance camp on the sacred Mount Paektu, on a day a double rainbow was seen in the sky. It is more likely he was born in the Soviet Union, where his father Kim Il Sung was undertaking guerilla training before successfully returning to the country in 1945.

*There are no recognised domestic breeds of swan.

*Doctor Doolittle starred in a series of books by Hugh Lofting, Eliza Doolittle appeared in George Bernard Shaw’s 1912 play Pygmalion, on which the musical My Fair Lady is based, and Col. James Doolittle led what was to become known as the ‘Doolittle Raid’ by the US against Japan.

*Nunavut’s capital, Iqaluit, has an official population of 7740, as of the 2016 census.

*The most famous enterovirus is poliovirus.

*Nine service areas on the Garden State Parkway are named after famous people from New Jersey. Bruce Springsteen declined the invitation to have a rest stop named after him.

*Although the Soviet Union originally said Laika had survived for multiple days in space, scientists who worked on the Sputnik II mission later admitted Laika had died of overheating less than seven hours into the mission. Several of the scientists have also said they regret Laika’s fate, and physician Vladimir Yazdovsky said he had taken Laika home for three days before her flight ‘because I wanted to do something nice for her: she had so little time left to live.’

*The comedy show that made a star of Will Smith, Fresh Prince sees ‘West Philadelphia born and raised’ Will move into the Bel Air home owned by his wealthy uncle and aunt in order to put him on the straight and narrow.

*Let’s Hear it from the Boy had its own future stars on backing vocals: George Merrill and Shannon Rubicam would soon write the Whitney Houston hits How Will I Know and I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me) before forming the group Boy Meets Girl and releasing the internationally successful Waiting for a Star to Fall.

*Heathers belong in the erica family, and originally ericaceous plants referred to these rather than the broader definition of plants which prefer acidic soil.

*Problems with Plato’s theory stem from the third part, as people can think they are justified in believing something but actually it is superstition, coincidence, luck, or ignorance – none of which would be greatly accepted as fundamental to knowledge. Examples that refute Plato include a person claiming he knew a horse would win a race when it was primarily a guess (even if an educated guess); a person incorrectly believing his friend is in Barcelona when in fact the friend lives in Madrid, only for the friend to be on holiday in Barcelona when the person calls him and therefore justifying an incorrect belief in the future; and a person feeling justified in ‘knowing’ his enemy is about to attack him when he is in fact looking at his enemy’s twin, unaware that the enemy is actually standing behind him holding a hammer.

*Various accounts exist detailing how the emperor drowned in the Saleph River in modern day Turkey, with versions saying he was trying to swim across, that he fell off his horse and his armour weighed him down beneath the water, that he was bathing, and that he was doing his laundry. What does appear to be known is that the water was not particularly deep, and that after Barbarossa’s death much of his army simply returned home.

*TV Globo has five domestic stations and seven international stations, plus over 100 affiliate stations within Brazil. Prior to any of the television stations, a 21-year old Marinho inherited the O Globo newspaper in 1925 after his father died just weeks after founding it. He later set up a radio network and publishing arm as part of ‘Grupo Globo’, and benefitted by supporting the military dictatorship in Brazil that ran from the 1960s to the 1980s.

*New Ulster, New Munster, and New Leinster did not last long as names, as the 1852 New Zealand Constitution Act granted New Zealand self-government and created six new provinces: Auckland, New Plymouth, Wellington, Nelson, Canterbury, and Otago.

*Coppola was also a co-writer of Patton, which is also on the registry. The documentary about making Apocalypse Now, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, appears on the 1001 movies list, but was directed by Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper, with additional oversight by Coppola’s wife Eleanor.

*Ms Louise also had her belly button and part of her liver removed, as well as scraping done to her diaphram and pelvis. She returned home 11 days later, and was back at work as a flight dispatcher by January 2025, although could not eat fibre for 3 months and described the recovery as ‘brutal’. Despite survival rates from pseudomyxoma peritonei, or PMP, being relatively good, its location within the body, the way in which it spreads, and the lack of obvious early symptoms means that treatment can be highly invasive. In 2022 an American man received seven organs from the same deceased donor in a single 17-hour operation to counter the condition, which generally starts as an appendix cancer and is known as ‘jelly belly’ due to the gluttonous cancerous cells which then harden and damage surrounding organs.