Brain Brawl Questions 1
Which song was Katherine Lee Bates inspired to write when she viewed the land below from the summit of Pike's Peak in 1893? It includes the lines: "O beautiful for spacious skies / For amber waves of grain."
"America the Beautiful."
Which 3 words complete the following passage from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan describing the existence of men without an all-powerful leader to direct them as "solitary, poor, __________, __________, and __________"?
"nasty, brutish, and short."
Identify the early U.S. warship that shares its name with the document signed on September 17, 1787.
(U.S.S.) Constitution
1) "All's fair in love and __________." 2) "All that glitters is not __________." 3) "Don't trust anyone over __________," the 1968 slogan of conspiracy 4) "Quoth the __________, `Nevermore'," the epitaph on the tombstone of Edgar Allan Poe's tombstone
1) "war" 2) "gold" 3) "30" 4) "Raven."
Identify the word used in law for each of the following. 1) Physical expulsion of someone from a piece of property through legal proceedings 2) Putting to death, as an act of mercy, someone in considerable pain without hope of recovery 3) Judicial remedy awarded to restrain a particular activity 4) Hold or claim upon the property of another as security for some debt
1) Eviction 2) Euthanasia 3) Injunction 4) Lien
Name both the American who wrote each of the following lines and the poem in which the line(s) appear. 1) "By the shining Big-Sea-Water" 2) "I celebrate myself, and sing myself"
1) Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and "The Song of Hiawatha" 2) Walt Whitman and "Song of Myself"
1) Horse race called "The Run for the Roses" 2) Richard Strauss opera translated in English as The Knight of the Roses 3) Film in which the central character dies saying the word "Rosebud" 4) Union general nicknamed "Old Rosy" who replaced General Pope as the head of the Army of the Mississippi, and who, later, suffered a decisive defeat at Chickamauga on September 19-20, 1863
1) Kentucky Derby 2) Der Rosenkavalier 3) Citizen Kane 4) William Starke Rosecrans
Identify the movie based on the literary work from which each of the following quotations has been taken. 1) "I'll take my chance against the law. You'll take yours against the sea." 2) "I was to think of these days many times. Of Jem and Dill and Boo Radley . . . and Atticus"
1) Mutiny on the Bounty 2) To Kill a Mockingbird
Identify both items in each of the following pairs. 1) Chemical element Ne and U.S. state whose postal abbreviation is NE 2) Organization GA to help people recover from the addiction of betting and U.S. state GA 3) Disease MS and U.S. state MS 4) Chemical element Mn and U.S. state MN
1) Neon and Nebraska 2) Gamblers Anonymous and Georgia 3) Multiple sclerosis and Mississippi 4) Manganese and Minnesota.
Identify each of the following associated with refusals. 1) Hero of a novel by Sir James Barrie about a little boy who refuses to grow up 2) Biblical figure who refused to obey God and spent 3 days in the body of a whale.
1) Peter Pan 2) Jonah
Answer each of the following concerning cities. 1) In 1663, in which city did François de Montmorency Laval, the first Catholic bishop in Canada, found a seminary that became Laval University? 2) In which city did the first Congress of the U.S. meet on March 4, 1789? 3) In which city did the murder of 11 Israelis in 1972 mar but not halt the Olympics? 4) In which New Jersey city did the Hindenburg, a German dirigible, explode on May 6, 1937, killing 36 of the 97 people on board?
1) Quebec 2) New York City 3) Munich (West Germany) 4) Lakehurst
Identify each of the following concerning the U.S. 1) State where Wild Bill Hickcok and Calamity Jane are buried in Deadwood 2) State that consists of the Upper Peninsula and the Lower Peninsula 3) Last settled colony of the 13 original English colonies 4) State in which Chief Joseph and his Nez Percé Indians surrendered to federal troops in 1877
1) South Dakota 2) Michigan 3) Georgia 4) Montana
What is 5 1/5 minus 2 3/5?
2 3/5 (accept 13/5)
Does the word impeach mean to question, remove from office, accuse, or libel?
Accuse
Name the British poet from whose An Essay on Criticism the phrase "To err is human, to forgive divine" is taken.
Alexander Pope
Which river is the world's widest and has the largest drainage basin?
Amazon
Of argon, ammonia, ozone, or methane, which gas, when dissolved in water, turns red litmus blue?
Ammonia
On the southeastern part of which peninsula are the countries of Abu Dhabi and Oman located?
Arabian Peninsula
Which vegetable is named after the capital city of Belgium?
Brussels sprouts
Identify the spiral-shaped part of the inner ear whose name derived from the Greek means "snail shell."
Cochlea
Of the 3 processes by which heat is transferred—conduction, convection, and radiation—which one is hindered when the air between the 2 glass bottles in a typical thermos is removed to create a partial vacuum?
Convection
Which capital city is the home of the Royal Danish Ballet?
Copenhagen (Denmark)
Which British general, called the "Achilles of England," defeated Napoleon at Waterloo?
Duke of Wellington (or Arthur Wellesley)
Identify the white powder used as a laxative and chemically known as magnesium sulfate. It is named for the springs in England where it was first obtained.
Epsom salt
Most of the revenue from which type of tax comes from the sale of alcohol, gasoline, and tobacco?
Excise
Name either of the 2 multipart Shakespearean plays about kings, one of which has Parts I and II, and the other, Parts I, II, and III. These kings were the first and last monarchs of the House of Lancaster.
Henry IV or Henry VI
Identify the French-born New Orleans smuggler and pirate who refused an offer of a commission in Britain's Royal Navy and instead aided General Andrew Jackson in the 1815 Battle of New Orleans.
Jean Laffite
Which Roman military leader authored Commentaries on the Gallic War?
Julius Caesar
Which U.S. state borders the Ohio River, the Mississippi River, the Appalachian Mountains, and the state of Tennessee?
Kentucky
Give the word for "a violently confused or tumultuous state of affairs, mind, or emotion," or for "any large or violent whirlpool." It originated as the name for a famous whirlpool off the northwestern coast of Norway.
Maelstrom
Which civilization that flourished between about A.D. 250 and 900 perfected the most complex writing system in the pre-Columbian New World? Its major cities were at Caracol, Dos Pilas, Tulum, and Chichén Itzá.
Maya
Which Soviet leader is closely associated with the word perestroika in his fight to radically restructure the Soviet Union?
Mikhail Gorbachev
Which town in Virginia shares its name with James Madison's estate and a New England capital?
Montpelier (Vermont)
In which country, whose official religion is Hindu, was Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, born? The Himalayan mountain range covers about 75% of its area, and its capital is Kathmandu (Katmandu).
Nepal
In Homer's Odyssey, what does Odysseus tell the Cyclops his name is?
No-Man (accept Nobody or No-one)
In which German city, where Nazis had earlier staged huge rallies, were war crime trials held from 1945 to 1949?
Nuremburg
Identify the kind of moderately long poem often written for ceremonial occasions and typified by the works of the Greek poet Pindar.
Ode
Which term is used in chemistry to designate the removal of hydrogen from a compound or of an electron from an atom or molecule?
Oxidation
Which element has an atomic number of 8 and is necessary to support combustion?
Oxygen
Which 2 elements make up more than 74% of the rocks in the earth's crust?
Oxygen (46.6%) and silicon (27.7%)
Which verb tense in the English language is formed by using the auxiliary helping verb had?
Past perfect tense
In which South American country did some army officers try to overthrow the government of President Alberto Fujimori in 1992?
Peru
Identify the branch of physics that deals with the behavior of matter at the level of the atom, the nucleus, and the elementary particle.
Quantum mechanics
Identify the classical literary language of ancient India and of its Hindu religion and culture.
Sanskrit
In which part of the atom is the electron found?
Shell
Which word commonly precedes proof, track, board, barrier, and effects?
Sound
Give the word that designates a person who explores caves.
Speleologist (spelunker)
In the astronomical year, what name is given to the period between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice?
Spring
Identify the physicist who published The Universe in a Nutshell in late 2001, thirteen years after his best seller A Brief History of Time. He holds the Lucasian chair of applied mathematics and physics at Cambridge University.
Stephen Hawking
In which city in which country are all Nobel Prizes except for the Nobel Peace Prize awarded?
Stockholm, Sweden
Which word designates a writ issued under authority of a court to compel the appearance of a witness at a judicial proceeding?
Subpoena
Which chemical element is named for the mythological king condemned to stand in water and remain eternally thirsty?
Tantalum (from Tantalus)
Give the name shared by the documents instituted in Britain in 1689, in France in 1789, and in America on December 15, 1791, defining and establishing the fundamental liberties of the people.
The Bill of Rights
Identify the title shared by all of the following: one of 4 Middle English alliterative poems, singer Janis Joplin, and John Steinbeck's novel about Kino and his wife Juana who return to the sea a gem that has brought them nothing but trouble.
The Pearl
Name the youngest U.S. Vice President to be sworn in as President upon the death of the President. He served in the 20th century.
Theodore Roosevelt (he was 42 at the time)
Identify the phrase meaning "to grin broadly and mysteriously" that alludes to a constantly smiling animal in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
To grin like a Cheshire cat
Name the former Soviet republic that is the site of Yalta, a favorite winter resort where a WWII meeting was held. This former republic was once referred to as the "bread box" of the U.S.S.R.
Ukraine
Identify the long bone of the arm from the elbow to the wrist whose name is derived from the Latin word for "elbow."
Ulna
Which California school founded in 1901 was named after the American Quaker poet and abolitionist whose middle name is Greenleaf?
Whittier (College)
Name the woman in the Canterbury Tales who refuses to be dominated by her husbands.
Wife of Bath
