Test Your General Knowledge Quiz

1) What do you call a grouping of cobras?
Answer: A quiver of cobras.

2) In which country would you find the sea breeze called “the Doctor?”
Answer: Australia.

3) Name the first thirteen states to be admitted to the United States.
Answer: In the order of their statehood: Delaware, Pennsylvania, NewJerse}~ Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island.

4) Which composer’s works are known by “BWV” numbers?
Answer: J. S. Bach.

5) What delivery service operated between Missouri & California starting in 1860?
Answer: Pony Express.

6) Who killed John Lennon?
Answer: Mark David Chapman.

7) No one has yet found a particle that travels faster than the speed of light, but these hypothetical particles have been given a name. What is it?
Answer: Tachyom.

8) What was the term popularized by Winston Churchill for the imaginary boundary dividing Europe between the capitalist West and the communist East?
Answer: The Iron Curtain.

9) Metropolitan Kansas City lies in the state of Kansas and which other state?
Answer: Missouri.

10) Our solar system resides _______ of the Milky Way galaxy.
Answer: About 2/3 of the way out from the center.

11) In what direction does the Nile River flow?
Answer: North.

12) Amorphous means without shape or form. True or False?
Answer: True.

13) Which country does not touch the Gulf of Aqaba?
Answer: Yemen.

14) Whose claim that Spanish coastguards had cut off his ear provoked a war between Britain and Spain in 1739?
Answer: Captain Robert Jenkins (hence War of Jenkins’ Ear).

15) Which president grew up as an orphan?
Answer: Herbert Hoover.

16) Which Pharaoh is believed to be the Pharaoh during the Hebrew’s exodus from Egypt?
Answer: Ramses II.

17) What is the second tallest mountain in the United States?
Answer: Mt. St. Elias.

18) A pure substance whose atoms are of the same type is called:
Answer: An element.

19) In business, which London-based society of underwriters once insured Bruce Springsteen’s voice for three and a half million pounds?
Answer: Lloyd’s of London.

20) Which African city experiences the greatest average annual precipitation?
Answer: Algiers.

Test Your General Knowledge Quiz Part 2

21) Another name for a refracting telescope is a Newtonian telescope. True or False?
Answer: False.

22) Limestone is formed from:
Answer: Crushed shells or coral.

23) Pre-World War I Germany bordered which country to its east?
Answer: Russia.

24) Which prefix signifies “all”?
Answer: Pan-

25) Who is Adam holding out his hand to on the Sistine Chapel ceiling?
Answer: God.

26) Which is the largest order (type) of insect?
Answer: Coleoptera (beetles).

27) What is the largest island in Greece?
Answer: Crete.

28) In nature, a giant panda’s main source of food is derived from which type of woody tropical grass?
Answer: Bamboo.

29) The nearest spiral galaxy apart from the Milky Way galaxy is:
Answer: Andromeda.

30) The French Frigate Shoals are a group of islets that are part of which island group?
Answer: Hawaii.

31) All toadstools are mushrooms but not all mushrooms are toadstools. True or False?
Answer: True.

32) The rounded shape of the surface of a liquid in its container is called the:
Answer: Meniscus.

33) Which is not part of the body’s respiratory system?
Answer: Duodenum.

34) What do you call a grouping of colts?
Answer: A rag of colts.

35) About 70% of which country’s population lives in the capital, Pointe-Noire, or along the railroad that connects the two cities?
Answer: Republic of Congo.

36) Which eleven states seceded from the Union during the Civil War?
Answer: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee formed the Confederate States of America in 1861.

37) Who shot and killed Jesse James?
Answer: Robert Ford.

38) In 1961 which famous dancer sought political asylum in Paris?
Answer: Rudolf Nureyev.

39) Who was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize?
Answer: Marie Curie.

40) On which spring day is a hoax victim referred to as a ‘gowk’ in Scotland and a poisson d’avril in France?
Answer: April 1.

Test Your General Knowledge Quiz Part 3

41) Which country leads the world in duck production (for food)?
Answer: China.

42) The Earth weighs approximately _______ .
Answer: 6 billion trillion tons.

43) … describes the sequence wherein orbitals are filled.
Answer: Aufbau principle.

44) Which sea lies within the Philippines?
Answer: Sibuyan Sea.

45) In which of the arts is Henry Moore famous?
Answer: Sculpture.

46) Before Julius Caesar became Consul for the second time, he was the Governor and military leader of what province?
Answer: Gaul.

47) Who was the author of the book Middlemarch
Answer: George Eliot.

48) In what year was Amnesty International founded?
Answer: 1961.

49) Which ground bird is capable of killing a rattlesnake with little effort?
Answer: Roadrunner.

50) What former heavyweight boxing champion has sold over ten million units of his Lean Mean Grilling Machines?
Answer: George Foreman.

51) When the petals have fallen off a rose, the dried fruit that is left is called what?
Answer: Hip.

52) What is the lowest point in North America?
Answer: Death Valley.

53) Single-celled organisms are called:
Answer: Unicellular.

54) Which country includes the cities of Rostock, Leer, Barth, and Herford?
Answer: Germany.

55) The Beatles played at the Cavern Club, which was located in which European City?
Answer: Liverpool.

56) What range of mountains did Governor Phillip first call Carmarthen and Lansdowne Hills?
Answer: The Blue Mountains.

57) Who led the argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece?
Answer: Jason.

58) Which U.S. territory considers itself (with the slogan) “Where America’s Day Begins”?
Answer: Guam.

59) What is a column or monument made of a single block of stone?
Answer: Monolith.

60) In what book do all the events occur on June 16, 1904?
Answer: Ulysses.

Test Your General Knowledge Quiz Part 4

61) In what year did Garfield High School become the first Seattle high school with more than 50 percent nonwhite student body?
Answer: 1957.

62) Who was the author of the book Invisible Man
Answer: Ralph Ellison.

63) What was the first ship to ever use the SOS signal?
Answer: RMS Titanic.

64) The Afrikaans language is spoken in South Africa. It is a derivative of?
Answer: Dutch.

65) These are composed of transistors, which function as switches in computers:
Answer: Chips.

66) In history, what “A” is the Mexican empire ruled by Montezuma in the sixteenth century?
Answer: Aztecs.

67) In 1775, if two lights shone in the Old North Church, what “sea” would the British be crossing?
Answer: Charles River.

68) Fungi are not classified as plants because they have no:
Answer: Chlorophyll.

69) What US state is most of Death Valley in?
Answer: California.

70) Where was the first McDonald’s restaurant opened by Maurice and Richard McDonald?
Answer: San Bernardino, California.

71) Who collabrated with Karl Marx on “The Communist Manifesto?
Answer: Friedrich Engels.

72) What was Isaac Nichols licenced to sell in 1798?
Answer: Alcohol.

73) All planets except Venus and Uranus rotate:
Answer: Anti-clockwise.

74) Where is the Strait of Messina?
Answer: Between Italy and Sicily.

75) Ernest Hemingway asserted that all modern American literature comes from one book. What novel was Hemingway praising?
Answer: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

76) Dr. King was awarded honorary degrees from various colleges and universities in the United States and several foreign countries. How many were there in total?
Answer: 20.

77) Which country borders the Red Sea?
Answer: Sudan.

78) Examples of noble or inert gases are:
Answer: Helium and neon.

79) In movies, what actor cowrote and directed “Staying Alive”, the sequel to “Saturday Night Fever”?
Answer: Sylvester Stallone.

80) Which country is the world’s leading producer of oranges and sugar cane?
Answer: Brazil.

Test Your General Knowledge Quiz Part 5

81) What was the name of Bob Marley’s reggae group?
Answer: The Wailers.

82) A … is a cheaper, lighter type of Newtonian telescope.
Answer: Dobsonian.

83) Molten rock beneath the earth’s surface is:
Answer: Magma.

84) U.S. Interstate 10 does not pass through which city?
Answer: Dallas.

85) What kind of artist does the word limner describe?
Answer: A painter.

86) The Goliath beetle is the largest insect living today. How much does it weigh?
Answer: 4 oz.

87) Which country has the world’s largest merchant navy?
Answer: Liberia.

88) The distance that light travels in one year is called:
Answer: A light year.

89) The meniscus of a liquid is the result of the adhesive attraction between the particles of:
Answer: The liquid and the container.

90) Who was the first female U.S. Secretary of State?
Answer: Madeleine Albright.

91) A small atmospheric vortex that comes from surface heating is known as what?
Answer: Dust Devil.

92) What do you call a grouping of cows?
Answer: A kine.

93) The tallest mountain in the former Soviet Union was called Communism Peak; today, that mountain is known as Qullai Ismoili Somoni. In which country would you find the former Communism Peak?
Answer: Tajikistan.

94) Twenty-three states of the United States are on seacoasts. Can you name them?
Answer: Starting in the Northeast and going down the East Coast: Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Continuing with Florida, and crossing the Gulf of Mexico: Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. On the Pacific: Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, and Hawaii.

95) Which period of music came out of the Dark Ages, lasting from about 1450 – 1600?
Answer: The Renaissance Period.

96) Whose controversial radio broadcast of H. G. Wells The War of The Worlds (1938) caused widespread panic in the US?
Answer: Orson Welles.

97) Has any scientist won two Nobel Prizes?
Answer: Yes.
Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 for her work on radiation phenomena and also won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1911, the only winner in both Chemistry and Physics. Linus Pauling is the only winner of Nobel Prizes in Chemistry (1954) and Peace (1962). John Bardeen (Physics, 1956 and 1972) and Frederick Sanger (Chemistry, 1958 and 1980) have each won two Nobels in a single field.

98) Which nomadic people have an Arabic name which means ‘desert-dweller’?
Answer: Bedouins.

99) Scientists today estimate that the Milky Way galaxy is _______ years old.
Answer: 10 billion.

100) In which country is the North Magnetic Pole?
Answer: Canada.