The Most Random Articles Found on Wikipedia Quiz

Answer: Bangladesh

Bangladesh is located east of India, in South Asia on the Bay of Bengal. Northwest of Bangladesh lie the Himalayas and Nepal, but the country is, for the most part, at a very low elevation. The three rivers that converge to form a massive delta in Bangladesh (the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna) create an alluvial plain that is excellent for farming. Once a major exporter of jute, Bangladesh is one of the world's largest exporters of rice, timber, and tea.

However, the low elevation and river system come with a curse: floods. Record flooding in 2007 in the Bengal region left 2000 dead and 30 million without homes. Hizla, which is located in the southern central part of the country, was less-hard hit than other regions, like Bangladesh's capital Dhaka.

Answer: Mexico

Mexican literature started to become more prominent at the twentieth century with the rise of novelists like Carlos Fuentes and Juan Rulfo, but it has a rich history. Beginning with the complex mythologies of the Maya (outlined in the "Popol Vuh") and the Aztecs, European-influenced Mexican literature began with the poetry of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, a colonial nun sometimes given the epithet "Tenth Muse." Political instability in the 1800s limited Mexican literary output, but by the turn-of-the-century Revolution, literature began to flourish once more. Octavio Paz, a native Mexican noted for his work as an ambassador to India, won the Nobel Prize in 1990 on the strength of his works like "The Labyrinth of Solitude" and "The Monkey Grammarian." Carlos Fuentes, author of "The Death of Artemio Cruz" and "The Old Gringo," became one of the world's leading authors with his forays into experimental narration.

Answer: Greece and Brazil

I wish I could say that Greco-Brazilian relations are fascinating, but they're not. Greece supports Brazil's desire to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and Brazil supports Greece's desire to become a member of the Human Rights Council.

In April 2009, the foreign ministers of Greece and Brazil (Dora Bakoyannis and Celso Amorim respectively) met to discuss the futures of the countries, including a desire to increase tourism and trade. Both ministers were semi-notable figures in modern history. Bakoyannis had achieved the highest position for a female in Greek Cabinet history when she was selected as Minister of Foreign Affairs; earlier, she was the first woman mayor of a city holding the Olympic Games (the 2004 Athens Summer Games). Amorim, earlier the ambassador to the UK for Brazil, was selected in 2009 as the "world's best foreign minister" according to "Foreign Policy" magazine.

Answer: They were minted in the United States

The Australian Sixpence was first minted in 1910 by the London Royal Mint and soon moved to the Melbourne mint, in 1916. After 1927, most sixpence were minted in Melbourne, but during World War II, the operations mysteriously moved to US mints, where the coins were made in San Francisco and Denver. Why? Quality in Australia had diminished during the war years, where there were more pressing needs than nice-looking coins. In 1942, 12 million sixpence were made in Denver alone, more than had been made in any years at the Melbourne location. An "S" or "D" on the coin indicated that it had been made at either American mint.

After World War II, production of the sixpence swung back to Australia, but the percent silver in each coin had dropped from 92.5% (sterling) to 50% to pay off war debt. Decimalization in 1966 changed the value of the sixpence to five cents, and they were no longer made.

Answer: Perseus

Perseus was the first of the great Greek heroes, coming before the exploits of Heracles or Theseus. Acrisius, Perseus' grandfather, imprisoned his daughter Danae in a tower when an oracle warned him that Acrisius' grandson would eventually kill him. Zeus impregnated Danae, and their son Perseus would become a result of one of many god-mortal liaisons in Greek myth.

As a boastful young man, Perseus promised King Polydectes of Seriphos that he would bring back the head of Medusa for a wedding gift. None had returned from the realm of the magical Gorgons alive (of the sisters, only Medusa was mortal, and looking at her hair turned a man to stone), but the gods intervened to help Perseus succeed. On his way home, Perseus encountered the maiden Andromeda chained to a rock. Rescuing her, Perseus was forced to encounter the wrath of King Phineus and Athis, which he handled easily.

Answer: Sugar glider

Organisms in Petaurus are known as flying phalangers or wrist-winged gliders because they can glide from tree to tree. The marsupials have loose flaps of skin that function like a bird's wings, to maximize air resistance when jumping from tree to tree, up to a distance of 100 meters. Primarily nocturnal creatures, Petaurus animals are probably best known for the sugar glider, which inhabits the eastern coast of Australia and parts of New Guinea.

Although the sugar glider is not endangered, other organisms in the genus are, especially the Mahogany Glider, which was lost to the scientific community for 100 years after its discovery in 1883.

Answer: Calvin and Hobbes

"Calvin and Hobbes" was a syndicated comic strip from November 1985 to December 31, 1995, written and illustrated by Bill Watterson. The two major characters of the strip are Calvin, a young boy, and Hobbes, his "pet" tiger that appears as a stuffed animal to all others. The two characters were named for two major Enlightenment thinkers, John Calvin (the Swiss theologian who introduced many Protestant ideas) and Thomas Hobbes (one of the first theorizers of the social contract).

Interesting things happen when comic strips are printed in languages other than the original; for example, the Finnish version of "Calvin and Hobbes" sometimes includes Elvis in the title. The Norwegian version translates literally as "Tommy and the Tiger," while in Poland, somehow the main characters were named after temperature scales (Kelvin and Celsius). In Brazil, the strip became "Calvin e Haroldo." My favorite, though, is the English translation of the Taiwanese version, "Calvin's Imaginary Tiger World." In retrospect, that's probably the most accurate title of the bunch.

Answer: Islam in the Czech Republic

By the start of the 21st century, there were approximately 10,000 Muslims living in the Czech Republic, long a home for Christians and Jews (the city of Prague has a vast religious heritage). Although the early period for Eastern Europe was marked with war with Muslim empires (especially the Ottomans), trade flourished in the nineteenth century. Islam was first recognized as a state religion in 1912, but it wasn't until 1989, almost simultaneously with the Velvet Revolution, that the first mosque was built in Prague.

Many Czech Muslims have a Balkan heritage, where countries like Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina have large Muslim populations. In 2006, a terror plot to blow up a Prague synagogue, allegedly led by Muslim terrorists, was foiled by the Czech government.

Answer: Gamma rays

The Mossbauer Effect is complicated, but interesting nonetheless, so here's a brief description. Atoms exist in high-energy (excited) and low-energy (stable) states. When an atom changes from being excited to being stable, it releases very high-energy radiation in the form of gamma rays. The amount of energy emitted as a gamma ray is slightly less than the original energy transition, because some of the energy is "lost" in a process called recoil. The gamma ray is radiated to another atom, and the energy of the radiation excites the atom to a higher-energy state. More of the ray's energy is lost in recoil during the absorption process. If very little is lost to recoil, then another gamma ray is released when that atom returns to a ground state, and the chain reaction continues.

Most people would expect that the gamma ray would eventually disperse because of the incrementing loss of energy due to recoil, but Mossbauer found that in solids, recoil sometimes affects the entire solid rather than individual atoms, essentially reducing the phenomenon to zero energy loss. For his discoveries in spectroscopy, Mossbauer won the 1961 Nobel Prize.

Answer: Charge of the Light Brigade

Born in 1830, Hughes was just 24 during the horrific Charge of the Light Brigade, one of the worst bungles in military history. During the Crimean War, a brigade of British cavalry at the Battle of Balaclava was led by Lord Cardigan straight into a valley between the Fedyukhin and Causeway Heights. They were met by heavy Russian fire, which killed more than 100, wounded at least as many, and caused the imprisonment of 60. The British cavalry were largely unsuccessful at defeating anyone, and this phase of the battle to capture the port of Sevastopol was won by the Russians.

Perhaps most famously, British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson immortalized the "noble six hundred" men who rode into the "valley of death" in his grand poem, "The Charge of the Light Brigade." Tennyson famously criticized the military bureaucracy and its indifference in his lines:

"Forward, the Light Brigade!
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred."