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General Knowledge Quiz

DerekC

DerekC

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I like both ideas. It seems Napoleon did have a telescope but I can't find out where he got it from. However he left it on Elba, long before his St Helena finale so it can't be that. From there it went to a farmhouse in Wales, where it was found recently! Gnomons are interesting too and I can't deny that there may have been one on St Helena as well as Florence Cathedral, but wasn't want I had in mind.

The thing I have in mind might be better called an astronomical body - and a hint - I have seen it once but I very much doubt that I will see it again.
 
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DerekC

DerekC

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Ok - just trying it on! Good guess, then. The link is that the supervising architect for Florence Cathedral was Giotto. The European spacecraft Giotto visited Halley's Comet and Sir Edmund Halley built an observatory on St Helena.

Open floor it is.
 
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Calthrop

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DerekC said:
Ok - just trying it on! Good guess, then. The link is that the supervising architect for Florence Cathedral was Giotto. The European spacecraft Giotto visited Halley's Comet and Sir Edmund Halley built an observatory on St Helena.
Click to expand...

In the nicest possible way -- my brain hurts !

As it's open floor -- continuously for a good deal of the 20th century (though not up until decimalisation), the British definitive (i.e. ordinary, everyday) -- plus in some exceptional commemorative issues too; one-old-penny stamp: was consistently of one colour. Which colour?
 
DerekC

DerekC

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Not sure if it's cheating but I got my old stamp album out. I think the answer is red, although KGVI and QEII both had some blue ones as well.

Open floor if that's right. (Sorry about Halley's Comet - it came up in discussion with one of my granddaughters - she had an Italian marking pen set called Giotto - so I looked him up and one thing led to another!)
 
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C

Calthrop

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DerekC said:
Not sure if it's cheating but I got my old stamp album out. I think the answer is red, although KGVI and QEII both had some blue ones as well.
Click to expand...

Not cheating in the slightest: you collect stamps, now or long ago -- you're likely to know these things, and indeed you do. From 1902 to 1950, the low-value definitive stamps -- the small ones, showing the monarch's head -- were in the same set of colours per value; and the one-penny one was always red. With effect from 1950, toward the end of George VI's reign, the colours were all switched around, into a sequence which lasted till decimalisation. Under the new set-up, the one-penny stamp indeed became blue; and the two-and-a-half-penny one went from blue to red.

Open floor, as requested.
 
341o2

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In 1872 USA, what was used to challenge and disprove the way a certain occurrence was depicted, and how was it achieved?
 
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C

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Photographer Eadweard Muybridge was hired in 1872 by railroad baron Leland Stanford, to find out whether there was a moment mid-stride, when all four of a horse's hooves were off the ground. His investigations / experiments took till 1878 to resolve the question: turned out that the answer was "yes", but only when all the hooves are pulled in, as opposed to with legs extended.

If correct, open floor please.
 
341o2

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You are indeed right, Muybridge had a horse gallop past a series of cameras, each one triggered to fire as the horse passed it, for the first time it was possible to accurately see the legs in motion. Previously, this image (sourced through Google) was how artists saw horses travelling at speed
horse-316929_1280.jpg

Open floor as requested
 
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C

Calthrop

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It was totally the "horses" hint that clued me in -- otherwise, I'd have had no idea. Wonderful name -- not so? -- Eadweard (plain "Edward" wasn't enough for him) Muybridge. Puts "Raymond Luxury Yacht" and all that, right in the shade.
 
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Several days "without" -- can I give it another go?

Thomas Hardy renownedly set his novels in the south-western part of England; which he called "Wessex", after the kingdom from ancient times, of that name.

For the purposes of his fiction, he gave various parts of his "Wessex", different "**** Wessex" names, county by county. His favourite county Dorset -- location of the majority of his works -- he called "South Wessex".

What were his names, per this system, for:

Wiltshire

Somerset

Devon

?
 
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Calthrop

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Afraid not -- old Thomas tended on the whole, to be a bit more coy with his place-naming. Most of his "**** Wessexes" were kind-of directional, but not as per points of compass. A hint: his two-word name for Wiltshire, is reminiscent of the one-word name of a certain real county -- in southern England but not among the parts thereof, which he wrote about -- which was an existing and functioning county in Hardy's time, but is not one any longer.
 
krus_aragon

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Calthrop said:
A hint: his two-word name for Wiltshire, is reminiscent of the one-word name of a certain real county -- in southern England but not among the parts thereof, which he wrote about -- which was an existing and functioning county in Hardy's time, but is not one any longer.
Click to expand...
Stab-in-the-dark time: could this hint indicate Middlesex, possibly recycled as Mid Wessex?
 
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Calthrop

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Calthrop said:
A hint: his two-word name for Wiltshire, is reminiscent of the one-word name of a certain real county -- in southern England but not among the parts thereof, which he wrote about -- which was an existing and functioning county in Hardy's time, but is not one any longer.
Click to expand...

krus_aragon said:
Stab-in-the-dark time: could this hint indicate Middlesex, possibly recycled as Mid Wessex?
Click to expand...

Basically, you've got it -- Wiltshire is Mid Wessex (sounds and looks reminiscent of Middlesex; but that, I think, is just coincidence).

DerekC said:
That rings a bell with me - and I recall Outer Wessex as well (I once read TH's complete works from cover to cover). Could that be Somerset?
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Correct: Somerset = Outer Wessex (occasionally he varied things by calling it Nether Wessex). You've read throughout, the whole of the miserable old so-and-so's output, and you are -- presumably -- still a functioning person, not sunk into permanent utter melancholia without hope of retrieval? I'm impressed !

@krus_aragon has got one, @DerekC another; that just leaves Devon.
 
341o2

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The Saint, by Leslie Charteris has been dramatised on radio, TV, and film from the early 50's to the present day.

How many actors who have played the part of Simon Templar can you name?
 
341o2

341o2

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krus_aragon said:
I think Paul Rhys has portrayed him on radio, among others.
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Yes, a good one as most radio episodes were in the 40's and 50's, BBC R4 decided to make three one hour dramatisations of 3 Charteris stories starring Paul Rhys, which were first broadcast in 1995, and periodically are repeated on BBC R4extra
 
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