Never Before! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Sputnik-1

The launch of Sputnik-1 caused great consternation in the West and was responsible, in part, for starting the Space Race and the Cold War. Sputnik-1 was a tiny orb, around twenty-three inches in diameter; its mission was to study the upper atmosphere. Sputnik-1, whose name means 'Satellite-1', was only in orbit for three months before it was destroyed as it re-entered the atmosphere on the 4th of January 1958.

The legacy of this tiny satellite was out of all proportion to its size. Skylab was launched on May 1973 and fell from orbit across Australia, re-entering earth's atmosphere on the 11th of July 1979 with debris landing close to the Western Australian capital city of Perth. Voyager 1, a probe whose mission was to survey the outer solar system was launched on the 5th of September 1977 and is currently the most remote man-made object in existence. HMS Bellerophon was the British 74-gun warship upon which Napoleon finally surrendered on July 15th 1815.

Answer: Jupiter

Comet Shoemaker-Levy had been discovered by astronomers Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy on the 24th of March 1993. Further calculations showed that the comet was to collide with Jupiter the following year. An earlier fly-by of Jupiter had resulted in the enormous gravitational forces of the planet tearing the comet into fragments.

These fragments, which ranged in size up to around 2km in diameter, collided with Jupiter's southern hemisphere between July the 16th and July the 22nd 1994 at a speed of around 134,000mph.

The impact sites were still visible for some months afterwards.

Answer: Dr Christiaan Barnard

Dr Christiaan Barnard, a South African cardiac surgeon working in Cape Town performed, with his brother and fellow surgeon Marius, and a team of around thirty other doctors and nurses, the world's first heart transplant in a nine hour operation that made him an overnight celebrity.

The recipient of the heart was Mr Louis Washkansky, a South African of Lithuanian descent and grocer from Cape Town who survived the operation and lived for a further eighteen days until succumbing to pneumonia. The healthy heart that he had received had been harvested from a young woman called Denise Darvall; she had been in collision with, and killed by, a car the day previously. Pioneering further surgical transplant techniques, Dr Barnard's most successful transplant in 1971 resulted in the recipient, Mr Dirk van Zyl, surviving for over twenty three years. Dr Barnard passed away whilst on holiday in Cyprus at the age of 78 on the 2nd of September 2001.

Answer: Movable type and the printing press

Although it is accepted that movable type first appeared in what is now China during the 11th Century, it was invented, independently, and introduced throughout Europe by the German Johannes Gutenberg. For the first time printed materials could be made available to those other than the clergy, academics and the aristocracy; it truly allowed the spread of ideas and learning that had been denied to millions for centuries. Gutenberg's invention of the printing press revolutionised European society and is considered the catalyst for the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Age of Enlightenment.

Answer: The Challenger Deep

After a descent that took almost five hours, the bathyscaphe 'Trieste', designed by Auguste Piccard, the father of crew member Jacques, could spend only twenty minutes at depth before beginning the three and a half our ascent back to the surface. Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard and United States Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh were the crew for the expedition to the bottom of the Challenger Deep, a depth of 35,797 feet which was the culmination of 'Project Nekton', a US Navy project to advance their knowledge of sunlight penetration, underwater visibility and sound transmission at great depth. Project Nekton came to an end in January 1960 after the Challenger dive but the 'Trieste' continued to serve the US Navy until 1980 when she went on display at the National Museum of the US Navy at Washington Navy Yard.

Answer: Coelacanth

On the 23rd of December 1938, whilst searching a local fisherman's catch for unusual specimens for her museum, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer revealed what she later described as "the most beautiful fish that I had ever seen, five feet long, and a pale mauve-blue with silver iridescent markings".

After returning to her museum in East London, just north of Cape Town, the fish was photographed and pictures were sent to Professor JLB Smith at nearby Rhodes University. Unfortunately he was away for the Christmas holidays at the time. On the 3rd of January 1939 Miss Courtenay-Latimer received a message requesting that she preserve the skeleton and gills of the fish. Professor Smith had identified the fish as a 'Coelacanth', a creature believed to have become extinct millions of years before. News of the find flashed quickly around the world and the fish was described as 'the most important zoological find of the century'. Further specimens proved difficult to find but in 1952 a Coelacanth was captured by fishermen in the Comoros Islands but died before scientists could arrive to study it. Nevertheless, the fish was complete and became the object of intense study.

It is ironic that the Coelacanth, 'Latimeria chalumnae', has survived for hundreds of millions of years in its isolated habitat and yet, in the seventy-five years since its rediscovery, it has been categorized as a critically endangered species.

Answer: Antikythera

Revealed within a quantity of artefacts that had been recovered by sponge divers from a wreck lying sixty metres down in the waters around the tiny Aegean island of Antikythera, the machine now known as the 'Antikythera Mechanism' caused a sensation on its discovery in 1902.

Whilst examining some of the recovered items, a former Greek government minister, Spyridon Stais, noticed a small piece of corroded bronze and a section of toothed gear wheel. After the study of a number of other segments further components, and parts of components were recovered and showed that what had been discovered was the earliest known example of an analogue computer.

A number of reproductions of the Antikythera Mechanism have been assembled and are on display at museums around the world. Examination of the mechanism is ongoing and this fabulous machine continues to enthrall and mystify those academics fortunate enough to study it.

Answer: True

Delivered by Caesarean Section, at birth Louise Brown weighed a healthy 5lb 12ozs. Her parents had been unable to conceive naturally due to her mother, Lesley Brown, having blocked fallopian tubes. Although she came to be known as a 'test-tube baby', she was actually conceived in a Petri dish, using a technique that had been pioneered by surgeons Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe; Edwards went on to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2010 for his extensive work in this field. Four years later Louise Brown became elder sister to Natalie, also conceived through IVF technology. Both Louise and Natalie have since produced their own children naturally. Since their births, IVF treatments have produced many children, the technique is now regarded as 'routine' and it has been responsible for a great many of the multiple births that have taken place in the last three decades.

Answer: Chuck Yeager

On the 14th of October 1947, as the experimental aircraft shot across the skies above the Mojave Desert, one of the greatest questions in aviation was finally answered. Could an aircraft and its pilot survive breaking what had been coined the 'sound barrier'? The answer was a resounding yes and the pilot at the centre of this event became a legend. Charles Elwood 'Chuck' Yeager, a United States Air Force captain piloted his rocket powered Bell X-1 aircraft into the history books attaining a speed of Mach 1.06 on his eighth attempt and after a flight of only twenty seconds at this speed, Yeager powered down his rockets and landed safely.

The Bell X-1 aircraft named 'Glamorous Glennis' after his wife is on display at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.

Interestingly, two days before his historic flight, Yeager suffered two broken ribs in a riding accident and had his torso taped up by a local doctor in secret. For all the technology involved in the successful completion of these attempts to break the sound barrier, Yeager relied on something as simple as a broom handle to close and secure the door on his aircraft!

Answer: Neil Armstrong

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do those other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organise and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win". Televised across the world; this author can recall watching the events unfold on our tiny black and white television set, the moon landing of July 1969 was the pinnacle of human achievement during the 20th century and the final culmination of US President John F. Kennedy's promise as he laid out in his address above.

Much has already been said about the Apollo 11 mission and its crew of Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and 'Buzz' Aldrin but the world watched and held its breath when, on 21st July 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped from the ladder of the 'Eagle' landing vehicle and uttered the words "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" - A historical first indeed!