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General Knowledge Quiz

perryman

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No, not Sudan and South Sudan.

The countries are situated inbetween the previous guess of Germany/Denmark and Sudan/South Sudan.
 
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Calthrop

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The word "exclave" always brings to mind for me, the Dutch / Belgian nonsense in the Baarle area (just within Holland, but featuring assorted small Belgian bits, and more). Does the answer have to do with one of the several tiny Belgian enclaves in that set-up, which enclose even tinier Dutch exclaves?
 

perryman

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No, I'm aware of the occasional weird border arrangements between Belgium and Holland but it's not there.
 

Calthrop

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Probably getting increasingly desperate: I gather that the world's most complicated enclave / exclave set-up involves India and Bangladesh. Might this be the one? (you've said -- approx. -- "between Germany and Sudan"; so probably not.)
 

perryman

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Ah......and given the previous clue is it the bit of Spain in Morocco?

I have posted a reply but I think as I have included a link, the post is up for moderation and will come through at some point. In the meantime, the floor is yours as you are correct - the post to follow will have more detail. The floor is yours.
 

MotCO

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I think Monaco is an French enclave, so shares no border with Italy (or any other country except France).

Accordding to www.informationfrance.com, " Not officially a part of France, Monaco is the second smallest country in the world; only Vatican City is smaller. As such, Monaco is also the world's smallest monarchy (and principality to be exact)." It doesn't have a boder with Italy, but its border with France is 5.47km according to wikipaedia (" The border is located between the French department of Alpes-Maritimes in the French region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur and the entire land territory of Monaco. It is 5.47 kilometres (3.40 mi) in length and is the only land border Monaco possesses. The French port of Cap d'Ail borders Monaco to the southwest. ")

So I assume your answer is less than 5.47km.
 

perryman

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Accordding to www.informationfrance.com, " Not officially a part of France, Monaco is the second smallest country in the world; only Vatican City is smaller. As such, Monaco is also the world's smallest monarchy (and principality to be exact)." It doesn't have a boder with Italy, but its border with France is 5.47km according to wikipaedia (" The border is located between the French department of Alpes-Maritimes in the French region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur and the entire land territory of Monaco. It is 5.47 kilometres (3.40 mi) in length and is the only land border Monaco possesses. The French port of Cap d'Ail borders Monaco to the southwest. ")

So I assume your answer is less than 5.47km.

Yes, the post has come through at #14,108. Between 74 and 85 metres, depending on which source one takes.
 

SteveM70

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What unique once in every hundred years event happened for precisely one second at lunchtime on 7th August 1990?

Edit - my use of the word unique isn’t really correct. I should have said “once every hundred years” (although it’ll doubtless be unique in my lifetime)
 
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xotGD

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An astronomical event? Am alignment of multiple planets? Maybe Venus, Earth and Mars?
 

MotCO

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Was an extra second added to allign clocks with 'real time', i.e. the length of a year is not exactly 365 1/4 days, so a periodic adjustment is required. Or is it nothing to do with time?
 

SteveM70

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Was an extra second added to allign clocks with 'real time', i.e. the length of a year is not exactly 365 1/4 days, so a periodic adjustment is required. Or is it nothing to do with time?

It is to do with time, but it isn’t that
 

DerekC

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The only thing I can think of is to do with the sequence of numbers. I suppose 12:34:56 on 7.8.90 is a kind of event! And the next one would be in 2090.
 

SteveM70

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The only thing I can think of is to do with the sequence of numbers. I suppose 12:34:56 on 7.8.90 is a kind of event! And the next one would be in 2090.

Is spot on, well done. My then employers made a big deal of it for some unfathomable reason

all yours....
 

DerekC

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OK. A topical one. The two rounds of bubonic plague in about 540AD and in the 1340s killed a substantial proportion of the population of Europe in each case (in the tens to hundreds of millions). The impact of Spanish flu in 1918-1920 was of the same order, worldwide. What is the other epidemic known to have caused deaths in the tens of millions?
 

Calthrop

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Might it be the thing of -- from early in the 16th century: the rapid and catastrophic spread in North America -- owing to early contact with discoverers / explorers from Europe and their "crews" -- of several European diseases hitherto unknown in the New World; so North America's, quite large and quite advanced as at 1500AD, Native American population -- with no immunity to the new sicknesses -- died in enormous numbers (of the order of nine-tenths of the population, it's reckoned).
 

MotCO

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Was it the Black Death at around 1666 - the time of Samuel Pepys and the Great Fire Of London?
 
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GRALISTAIR

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OK. A topical one. The two rounds of bubonic plague in about 540AD and in the 1340s killed a substantial proportion of the population of Europe in each case (in the tens to hundreds of millions). The impact of Spanish flu in 1918-1920 was of the same order, worldwide. What is the other epidemic known to have caused deaths in the tens of millions?
Does HIV/AIDS count? It has to be close to 40 million now surely?

Otherwise I would go for Cholera in the 1800s
 

DerekC

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Might it be the thing of -- from early in the 16th century: the rapid and catastrophic spread in North America -- owing to early contact with discoverers / explorers from Europe and their "crews" -- of several European diseases hitherto unknown in the New World; so North America's, quite large and quite advanced as at 1500AD, Native American population -- with no immunity to the new sicknesses -- died in enormous numbers (of the order of nine-tenths of the population, it's reckoned).

This certainly should be included in the top epidemics list, but doesn't seem to be. I think this is for two reasons. First, the pre-Columbian Native American population of North America is unknown and estimates vary wildly and second that there were almost certainly multiple epidemics of different diseases overlapping in time. The population is unknown because the epidemics ran ahead of the wave of European migration, so by the time anything was documented the native population had already been drastically reduced.


Was it the Black Death at around 1666 - the time of Samuel Pepys and the Great Fire Of London?

No - estimates of the death toll in 1666 are around the 100,000 mark. (If you added up all the bubonic plague epidemics in history, you would get to an enormous number)

Does HIV/AIDS count? It has to be close to 40 million now surely?

Otherwise I would go for Cholera in the 1800s

HIV/AIDS is the one I had in mind. The death toll (estimated between 23 and 43 million) is much larger than I realised when I researched this question. (The cholera pandemic in the 1880s is quoted as killing about 300,000).

Although I think @GRALISTAIR should have the floor, @Calthrop gets respect points for drawing my/our attention to a catastrophe that I knew very little about.
 

Calthrop

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@GRALISTAIR -- I reckon it eminently right, that you have the floor; the North America business is just something that I'd rather vaguely heard of (but found decidedly saddening).
 

GRALISTAIR

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Tomorrow I am visiting a state capital in the USA that is named after a city in France but it is not the state of Louisiana. Where am I going. Brucie bonus if you can guess which airport I am flying in/out of. You may use flight software and Expedia but not Wikipedia or google
 

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