Thursday, April 23, 2009

Trivia #13 : Pictures That Tell a Tale

A Pictures That Tell a Tale trivia about India.

Photo 1 :


It is evident that the above photo captures a construction work. What is being constructed there ?

Photo 2 :


The above photo is an iconic one which brought out the tragic effect of a man made disaster. What man made disaster are we talking about ?

Photo 3 :


Who is the foreigner sitting beside Mahatma Gandhi ?

Photo 4 :


The man in the center who is an Indian is being escorted by two foreign policemen after an assassination. Who did he assassinate?

Photo 5 :


Identify the object in the photo.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Answers to Trivia #10 : Pictures That Tell a Tale

Foto 1 is the pic of Lyndon B. Johnson being sworn in as The POTUS on board Air Force One after just 2 hours and 8 mins of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Standing next to him is Jacqueline Kennedy.

Foto 2 is the pic of a dramatic event that took place in 1957. In 1954, as a consequence of the US Supreme Court's judgment in Brown vs. Board of Education, segregation in public schools was declared unconstitutional. But Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus defied the judgment and went to the extent of deploying the state national guards to deny the 9 black students entry to Arkansas' Central High School at Little rock. That event captured in that foto is , in order to ensure that the landmark judgment is implemented President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division to escort those 9 students into the school building. This foto captures their entry into the school.

Foto 3 is the pic which captures an event during the Cuban Missile Crisis. On October 25, 1962 an emergency meeting of the Security Council was convened to deal with the crisis. In that meeting Adlai Stevenson, US Amassador to UN confronted Valerin Zorin, Soviet Ambassador to UN by asking him whether USSR had installed any nuclear missiles in Cuba for which a negative answer was given by Zorin. Then Stevenson took out the satellite photos showing the location of Soviet missiles in Cuba and displayed it to the gathering and stunned the world. This event is called as the Adlai Stevenson moment.

Foto 4 is the pic which captures a game of chess during the World Chess Championship in 1972 between Bobby Fischer of USA and Boris Spassky of USSR during the cold war. Fisher won the World championship that year and till now remains the only American to win the World Chess Championship. The guy sitting to the right is Bobby Fisher.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Trivia #12 : The Indian who impressed Einstein

When I was talking to a close friend of mine about this blog and solicited his advise regarding how it could be bettered he immediately retorted back by asking me to post some trivia related to India. I had been posting trivia about American history, a Dutch queen, an Argentinian revolutionary and even about an African first lady but nothing about India yet. This had to be amended. And here it has been.




Our Guy is a legendary Indian scientist who stands next to Jawaharlal Nehru in the above picture.

He was born in Kolkata and studied physics under Jagdish Chandra Bose, who is considered to be one of the fathers of radio science and Prafulla Chandra Ray, who is the founder of India's first pharmaceutical company.

He was interested in Einstein's works from his college days. This led to him to write a research paper in which he derived the Planck's Quantum Radiation law without any reference to classical physics. But unable to get his paper published in any journal he then sent the paper to Einstein himself. Einstein who was impressed with it translated it into german and submitted it to a reputed science journal of that time on Our Guy's behalf and got it published.

This turned out to be the turning point in Our Guy's career. He then traveled to Europe and started to collaborate with the likes of Einstein, Marie Curie etc.

We would have heard about the serendipitous discovery of Penicillin by Alexander Fleming. Our Guy too had his moment of serendipity.

While delivering a lecture on photoelectric effect in the University of Dhaka, Our Guy while trying to show that the current theory is inadequate to explain the concerned phenomenon committed a mistake in applying the theory. But the predictions given by the wrongly applied theory were proved experimentally. This led Our Guy to write a seminal paper on it, but as usual he was not able to publish it as it was thought to be a borne out of a mistake.

Here too Einstein came to Our Guy's rescue by asking a reputed science journal to publish Our Guy's paper along with his own, on the same topic. This led to the formulation of "Our Guy's name"-Einstein statistics. Then Einstein extended this statistics to atoms and predicted that certain subatomic particles would exist altogether in a different state of matter under certain conditions.

The ultimate recognition for Our Guy's work came when that subatomic particle later proved to exist, was named after him.

Our guy was the President of Indian Science Congress in 1944. He was also a Fellow of The Royal Society of UK.

Who is Our Guy?

Friday, April 3, 2009

Trivia #11 : Magazine name : Electronics; Quantity : 1; Price : $10,000

I am an American who co-founded a major electronics company which is world famous.

California Institute of Technology popularly known as Caltech is one of the institution in which I studied. Later on, I became the Chairman of board of trustees of Caltech. In 2001, I donated a whopping sum of $600 million to Caltech, making it the largest donation ever to an institute of higher education. In 2007, I donated an amount of $200 million to Caltech and University of California for the construction of the world's largest optical telescope.

The library at the Center for Mathematical Sciences in the University of Cambridge is named after me and my wife.

Here starts the interesting part of this trivia.

I wrote an article in Electronics, a magazine published by McGraw-Hill in April 19, 1965. That article outlined some of my predictions of the electronics industry which turned out to be prophetic.

In order to commemorate the 40th anniversary of me publishing that article the company which I founded put up an online auction in eBay.com on April 11, 2005. That announcement offered a reward of $10,000 to anyone who gives them the original copy of Electronics in which I had written that legendary article, as I myself was not in possession of an original copy.

This put the library copies of that magazine in danger and in fact one of the two copies of that magazine in the engineering library of University of Illinois was stolen. This prompted my company to announce that library copies of that magazine will not qualify for the reward.

David Clark, an engineer from UK, who had somehow preserved years old magazines under his floorboard turned out to be the winner.



The bloke in the above photo is David Clark and the magazine which fetched him $10,000 is in his hand.

1. Who am I ?

2. Which company did I co-found ?

3. What did I outline in that article ?

Thursday, April 2, 2009

One Happy Announcement

Ladies and Gentlemen. Ahem. I feel glad to let you guys know that this blog has been added to the Quizzer's Paradise which bears the URL
http://www.quizblogs.com/
I, on behalf of you, would like to thank the people of quizblogs especially Mr.Naveen Giles for the consideration shown.
Guys and gals interested in blogs similar to this one will find quizblogs.com, a one-stop-shop for trivia of all types extremely helpful. A link to the same is provided in the blogroll too.
Adios amigos.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Trivia #10 : Pictures That Tell a Tale

Friends before this trivia blog gets too monotonous just thought of changing the way questions are being asked. This trivia contains pictures which capture a historic moment in the history of The United States of America.

Foto I :


The man in the picture is a former US president. The lady standing next to him is the wife of the man who was the US president before this guy took office. Try figuring out what historic moment of US this foto captures.

Foto II :


The event depicted in this photo is an infamous one. It reminds us of one of the socially dark times of USA. Let me elaborate on what is going on in the above foto. A landmark judgement had been delivered by the Supreme Court of USA. But the State government wantedly ignores the judgement and refuses to implement it. So the Federal government sends a division of the United States Army to implement that judgement. What judgement am I referring to ?

Foto III :

This one is a scene of an emergency meeting of the Security Council of United Nations during the times of cold war, convened to discuss an issue of immense danger. What issue am I referring to ?

Foto IV :

This foto is also one of the cold war era. But the event captured above is not a political one but an event of sports. What event does this foto depict ?

Saturday, March 28, 2009

" Guerrillero Heroico ", the World's most famous Photo

Guys the answer to Trivia#8 : World's Famous photo is this.


The photographer Alberto Korda with his famous photo on his right, holds a cuban currency which features that great photo.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Trivia #9 : A Room in Canada that belonged to the World

The title of this trivia may sound confusing. Yes, confusing it is. By the time you finish reading I guess confusion would be replaced by elation as this trivia is about a gesture of extra-ordinary goodwill shown by a country to another in the times of crisis.

Let's start.

I am a country in Europe which is a monarchy.

I became a victim of Adolf Hitler's aggression during WWII.

My entire monarchy fled to UK.

My Princess Juliana along with her children decided to relocate to Ottawa in Canada for the time being. She was then loved by the people of Canada for the simplicity she displayed.

Here started the problem. Princess Juliana became pregnant.

According to my Constitution only if the heirs are born within my territory will they be allowed to accede the throne. Since WWII was raging on, there was no chance of Princess Juliana returing to my territory to give birth. This led to an unfortunate situation in which the child to be born would be rendered ineligible to become the King/Queen of me.

But here's where the government of Canada came in.

The Governor General of Canada, Alexander Cambridge, granted his assent to a special law declaring Princess Juliana's room at the Ottawa Civic Hospital as extraterritorial, which means that though that room is geographically in Canada it is legally not. Because of this special law the baby would have exclusively my nationality and not dual nationality.

The Canadian government then flew my flag on their parliament's Peace Tower while its bells rang out with my anthem at the news of Princess Margriet's birth. The lady in the photo below is the baby which was born in that peculiar hospital room. She is now 9th in the line to the throne.


After WWII ended the members of my monarchy returned back home.

As a token gesture of gratitude, Princess Juliana sent 100,000 tulip flowers to the city of Ottawa. She then sent another 20,500 tulip flowers requesting them to be placed in the garden of that hospital where she gave birth. She then pledged to send 10,000 tulip flowers every year as a gift to Canada.

Even today, Ottawa hosts the world's largest tulip festival in recognition of this endearing bond with my Princess who later became my Queen.

Sounds to be a heart warming story. Isn't it?

Identify me.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Trivia #8 : World's Most Famous Photo

I am a photo of Mr.X taken by Alberto Korda on March 5, 1960.

I was not published internationally for a period of seven years.

I am called by the Maryland Institute College of Art, a symbol of the 20th century and the world's most famous photo.

Victoria and Albert Museum, the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design in London says that I am the most reproduced photo in the history of photography.

There is a story of how I became famous. Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, an Italian publisher wanted a photo of Mr.X to promote a book to be published by him about Mr.X. He was directed to Alberto Korda, as he would be in possession of various photos of Mr.X. Korda gave this publisher me when I was not known to the world much. The publisher used me to promote the book which went on to sell a million copies. It is said that if the publisher was to give one lira (the Italian currency) for each of my reproduction to Korda it would run into millions. But Korda did not demand money for this reproduction and for that matter for any reproduction of me. After that I became very famous.

I am featured in currencies too.

Indeed I was instrumental in making the man in me Mr.X, one of the greatest men of the twentieth century.

Now I have become sort of a symbol which people all over the world recognize for a certain thing.

I am sure you would have seen me in some form or the other say on a T-shirt or a mug.
Ok take this. Mr.X is one the three men in the photo below.




Identify Mr.X.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Trivia #7 : For " the woman I love "


Guys just a few words before we start this trivia because this one is special. Special? Why? Because this trivia is about L.O.V.E. Here i do not refer to love as in "I love my mom " or as in "I love India " which are familial and impersonal in nature respectively. We are speaking about a heterosexual romantic LOVE between a man and a woman. It is said that people who have fallen in (this kind of) LOVE tend to express it in very special ways. People with power and money use it to show how much that LOVE means to them. The oft repeated story of Taj Mahal is a classic example illustrating the above point. But can you imagine somebody who gave up all his power for the woman he loved. This trivia is about a man who did just that. Read on.

He was the King of his country from 20, January 1936 till 11, December 1936.

He fell in LOVE with a twice divorced American named Wallis Simpson.

It is her photo which is right at the top.

When he decided to marry her and informed the same to his prime minister, the proposal was met with objection for varied reasons.

The primary one among them was that marrying a divorcee would be morally reprehensible to his subjects and to the religious establishment of his country.

Then he realised that he cannot have the cake and eat it too. He decided to abdicate the throne for "the woman i(he) love(d)" and did the same on 11, December 1936.

His reign of 325 days was the shortest one in the history of his country.

The famous quote in his farewell radio broadcast addressing his subjects is "I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king, as I would wish to do, without the help and support of the woman I love."

He was then conferred an official title in the category of Prince.

He relocated to france and spent his remaining life of 35 years there with the lady he loved whom he married on 3, June 1937.

Who is HE ?

What on earth was going on in his mind. He found more joy being with his lady-love than being The King of his country. Huhh.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Trivia #6 : The Guy who made Sachin's debut a dud


I am a Pakistani fast bowler who is considerd to be one of the greatest pace bowlers of all time.

I am famous for my striking ability to reverse swing the ball.

The above photo is one of mine with a fellow player.

I made my test debut on 15, November 1989 against India.

It was on the same day and match that the great Indian master batsman Sachin Tendulkar too made his debut.

It was me who bowled him out for just 15 runs and made his debut a disappointing one.

The story is not yet over. In the India-Pak ODI played on 18, December 1989 which happens to be Sachin's ODI debut, it was again me who sent him back to pavilion without him scoring a single run.

The guy sitting next to me in the above photo took that catch.

I have yet another rare connection with the Indian cricket team. In Anil Kumble's historic 10-wicket-haul record I hold a distinct position. While my entire team crumbled before Kumble's bowling I was the last man standing, the 11th wicket which the cricket rules prohibited Anil from taking.

I have also served as the captain of the Pakistani cricket team.

Lets have a look at my records.

I am the only bowler to have taken 5 wickets/ODI in 3 consecutive ODIs.

I hold the record for the fastest 50, 300, 350 and 400 wickets in ODI matches and the fastest 150, 200, 250, 300 and 350 wickets in Test matches when considered in terms of balls bowled.

I have a batting record too. I have scored a total of 1010 Test runs. The record is that I am the only batsman to have scored over 1000 test runs without having scored a single fifty.

My downside is I was the first player to be found guilty of ball tampering and was fined 50% of my match fee as a penalty.

Identify me.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Trivia #5 : Greatest Ad Ever


I am a television commercial.

The broadcast of me is considered a watershed event and I am considered a masterpiece in advertising. The above picture is a screen-shot of mine.

I was directed by Ridley Scott, an universally acclaimed director of the movie Gladiator in 1983 with a budget of $900,000.

Surprisingly, the board of directors of the company whose product I were to introduce were not impressed. But the co-founders of that company were so enthusiastic that they were even ready to fund my broadcast out of their personal money, if the board refuses.

The only daytime televised broadcast of me was on 22, January 1984 during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII, the most watched TV program in America.

One funny thing is that after my broadcast which amazed millions of people, I was instrumental in getting millions worth of free publicity for the product I introduced as news programs rebroadcast me as a news item the same night.

One more thing which adds to my aura is that though I am considered to be one of the greatest ads ever I was not rebroadcast after that single super-bowl broadcast.

The facts about me are over. Now it is time for the clues.

I was created to introduce a product which is very famous today. I am damn sure that u know the product which i introduced and the company which makes that product. That same company is also well known for a different product now.

In the above screen-shot, if you look carefully you will notice a picture on that woman's tank top. That is nothing but a picture of the product i introduced.

Ok, let me give you this, the product which I introduced is related to the field of computers.

Just name the product which i introduced or the company that makes that product.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Trivia #4 : An Animal which produces The World's Costliest Coffee


I am an animal who is a mammal of cat-size. The photo to the right is of mine.

I am native to South east asia, Southern china, South India and Srilanka.

In Malayalam, I am called "Marapatti".

In South east asian countries especially Indonesia, the Red coffee berries are a part of my diet.

But the inner bean of the berry is not digested by me and it is said that the enzymes in my stomach add to the coffee's flavor as they break down the proteins that give coffee its bitter taste.

Research by Dr. Massimo Marcone at the University of Guelph has shown that my digestive juices actually penetrates the beans and changes the proteins, resulting in the coffee's unique flavor.

Then I defecate the inner beans with the inner layers of the berry intact.

My poop is then collected by you humans, washed and the beans are roasted.

This coffee is then sold as the "World's Costliest Coffee" for around $120-$600 per pound.

Only around 100 pounds of my poop-coffee makes it to the world market.

My poop-coffee which is being sold in an Australian cafe for $33 a cup got wide publicity in the australian press recently.

Can you name my poop-coffee and if possible me.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Trivia #3 : Wife of Two Presidents


I served as the Minister for Education and Culture of my country in 1975.

In the same year, I married the President of my country.

The woman in the above picture is me and the man in the military fatigue is my husband.

My husband died in a plane crash in 1986.

Then I re-married an ex-president of the neighboring country on his 80th birthday in 1988.

The funny thing is while he was my second husband, I was his third wife.

I am credited to be the only woman to have married Presidents of two different countries.

I was the one put incharge by the United Nations to prepare a Report on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children, for which I received worldwide acclaim.

I am a recipient of the Nansen Medal given by United Nations and the North-South Prize.

I am not a famous personality. But my second husband is a legendary statesman who is world famous.

Tell me who my second husband is.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Trivia #2 : Longest standing ovation in Oscar history


I am a legendary actor.

I was given the first ever Academy Honorary Award since the academy felt that I was above competition and removed my nominations from competitive classes.

Ironically I had a disdain for the Academy Awards and invoked the ire of the Academy in the 1930s by jokingly using my 1929 Oscar as a doorstop.

But in spite of that I was given a second Academy Honorary Award in 1971 for 'the incalculable effect I had in making motion pictures the art form of this century'. The standing ovation, which was given to me by the audience while receiving this award went on for a full five minutes and is the longest in Oscar history. The picture on the left was taken on this occasion.

The only competitive Oscar which I won was in 1972 for the Best Music, Original Dramatic Score.

I am sure I am well known to you. Beware! The above photo is misleading as I am famous with a different visage.

Now I think it is time for u to tell me Who I Am ?

Trivia #1 : God of Free Software Movement

I was called by Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux as the God of the Free Software Movement.

I formulated the General Public License (GPL) well known to people as copyleft.

I authored the Free Software Manifesto.

Who am I ?