happyholidays
Copyleft: feel free to use these questions in your quizzes. This is not a game, there’s no scoring, and questions are provided as a service only. Some answers are a little lengthy as players requested clarification. “NEW” means less than a month old. Spanish flags denote Spanish-based questions.
General Knowledge
209 questions in this category
Trooping the Colour (also known as the King's Birthday Parade)
Geography (MA Hons 2005)
Edinburgh Castle (correctly known as the Honours of Scotland)
The Tudor Crown, also known as Henry VIII's Crown
King Charles III in 1978, as he believed that it was his duty as Colonel-in-Chief of the Parachute Regiment to do this
Hong Kong – Taipei-Taoyuan with 6,476,268 passengers in 2018 is the busiest. Kuala Lumpur – Singapore is the busiest by number of flights, 30,537 in 2018.
Reiwa (㋿) is the current era of Japan’s official calendar. Reiwa 1 is the first year of the era, beginning on 1 May 2019, the day on which Emperor Akihito’s elder son, Naruhito, ascended the throne as the 126th Emperor of Japan.
Nîmes in France (Denim=de Nîmes). It was originally called Serge de Nîmes.
With thanks to Godfrey Donaldson of Jeffreys Bay, South Africa, for fine tuning the answer
Sociedad Española de Automóviles de Turismo
Seven, except the Hannukkiyah used during Hanukkah which has nine
With thanks to Esther Ford for correcting the answer to this question
The King of Hearts as he has his sword going into his head
A partridge in a pear tree
The first woman Prime Minister in the world (Ceylon and then Sri Lanka)
With thanks to Alan for providing a more accurate answer
One square metre
With thanks to Jurgen Lobert for correcting this question
Theodore Roosevelt at 42 – JFK was 43 and Clinton was 46. (However, JFK was the youngest elected president as Theo Roosevelt took office on the assasination of McKinley but wasn’t elected until he was 46 years old).
With thanks to Tony Newman for fine tuning the answer to this question
An illegitimate son
A New York ticker-tape parade
The gift of gab
The Banshee
The President of France as Co-Prince of Andorra
Abdullah or Abdallah (Arabic: عبد الله)
Diamond shaped
Boot, dog, racing car, iron, ship, thimble, top hat and wheel barrow
KLM (Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij) founded on 7 October 1919.
A boomerang or hunting stick
Minoru Yamasaki designed World Trade Center 1 and 2 (the twin towers) in New York. Which building in Madrid did he design?
Torre Picasso
Modern-day Canada and Ireland or, more accurately, from the Dominion of Newfoundland to the United Kingdom as they were then. (In June 1919, John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown made the first non-stop Transatlantic flight from St John’s, Newfoundland to Clifden, Co. Galway, in a modified Vickers Vimy bomber.)
With thanks to Terry Denham for providing a more accurate answer to this question
London winning the Olympic bid
The Salvation Army
Jim Davis
The first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation
A fish (Zeus faber)
Denis Thatcher
American (USA)
The California Gold Rush
The nave of the church, aisles are along the sides.
The three wise monkeys: Mizaru (See no evil), Mikazaru (Hear no evil), and Mazaru (Speak no evil)
With thanks to Mike O'Shea for correcting this question
Do not dry clean
Nothing, SOS is a Morse code distress signal (···———···), originally established for maritime use. There is no spacing between the dots and dashes as the code is not made up of individual letters. ‘SOS’ is simply an easy way of remembering the code. IWB, VZE, 3B, and V7 form equivalent sequences, but traditionally SOS is the easiest to remember.
Tailor and Cobbler
Beating prisoners on the soles of their feet
SS, unpopular after World War Ⅱ, originally stood for Swallow Sidecar Company.
With thanks to George Pitchley and Colin Hurst for amending this question and clarifying the answer
The first three-light electric traffic lights were installed in Detroit in 1920. Earlier, on 10 December 1868, the first gas traffic lights were installed outside the Houses of Parliament in London. They resembled the railway signals of the time, with semaphore arms and red and green gas lamps for night use. They exploded on 2 January 1869.
With thanks to Jonathan Burt for expanding and clarifying the answer
$100, larger denominations were discontinued in 1969
The Michelin Man
Richard Nixon
Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius.
A second legal marriage
No choice at all
The Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus
The Union Flag. According to the Flag Institute “it is often stated that the Union Flag should only be described as the Union Jack when flown in the bows of a warship, but this is a relatively recent idea. From early in its life the Admiralty itself frequently referred to the flag as the Union Jack, whatever its use, and in 1902 an Admiralty circular announced that Their Lordships had decided that either name could be used officially. In 1908, a government minister stated, in response to a parliamentary question, that the Union Jack should be regarded as the National flag.”
With thanks to George Holdstock for correcting this question
Laszlo and Georg Biro.
Colin Chapman
In a book (left and right pages).
Pandora released all of mankind’s miseries and evils but closed the lid with hope still inside.
With thanks to Chris Goode and Nic Crequer for amending this question and clarifying the answer
Ambassador to the Court of Saint James’s
Diner’s Club
Popular dances in 1962
Senate and House of Commons
The fourth (not the last) Thursday in November.
Heracles (or Hercules in Roman mythology)
The Books (from Koine Greek τὰ βιβλία, tà biblía)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Second Lord of the Treasury)
Destroying books usually ceremonially
According to legend, who was the tallest of Robin Hood’s men and the only one with him when he died?
Little John
Perforations
The (14th) Dalai Lama
The Speaker of the House of Representatives
They were all trademarks
Strasbourg and Brussels
Olympic and Britannic
Lego, from ‘Leg godt’.
Israel and Palestine
Near Waco, Texas
Somalia
Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path)
Stockholm syndrome
The femur and the stirrup
Sinterklaas (Santa Claus)
Fear of pain
White Star
The Times of India (3,146,000 according to the World Association of Newspapers, 2008).
The Church of Scientology (usually known as L. Ron Hubbard)
Honolulu, Hawaii
A Yonic symbol
Vancouver, BC, Canada in the 1970s
Royal Mail Ship (or Steamer or Steamship)
Petroleum jelly (also called soft paraffin or petrolatum)
Ultra-high temperature processing or ultra-heat treatment
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (Bavarian Motor Works)
The Shetland Isles
Shannon International
They all competed in the Olympic games. Borbón - sailing in 1992; Spock - rowing (gold medal in Paris 1924) and Nero - chariot racing in 67.
Superdelegate
The Prime (or Greenwich) Meridian
Grandson of and son of…
Son of (fils de)
The sun (St Patrick added the pagan symbol)
The Prime Minister of Ireland
Hot air balloon
The Greek letter Chi (uppercase Χ, lowercase χ; Greek: χῖ) for Christ
The three wise men supposedly brought gold, frankincense and myrrh. What are frankincense and myrrh?
Resins
His heart was two sizes too small
Switzerland and Montenegro
A market with a single buyer, the opposite of monopoly
Columbia University
Out of many, one
Devil’s Advocate (advocatus diaboli)
Seraphim, Cherubim and Ophanim (Seraph, Cherub, and Ophan in the singular)
With thanks to Nick Dadds for correcting the answer to this question
The Yellow Submarine
USA (50 stars) and Brazil (27 stars).
Opening moves in Chess
On an elephant (or an Oliphaunt in The Hobbit)
Somewhere else
The ECU (European Currency Unit)
The United States has no official language
Hakuna matata
Indonesia, followed by Pakistan and India
United States, followed by Brazil and Mexico (2010)
Urdu (and English for certain things)
Ghana. It is contained behind the Akosombo Dam which generates a substantial amount of Ghana’s electricity.
Fifth generation. A technology standard for broadband cellular networks.
Lie detector
Oology, the study (and collecting) of eggs
They were all trademarks
Moving Picture (MP3 is short for MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 and MPEG is Moving Picture Experts Group).
India has over 7000, the US comes second with over 4000
Loss of muscle control
Submission
Became the first woman in space
Mickey Mouse
The wealthy