CL Trivia Quiz

Answer: 96

The options given are all the number 150 in different bases:

1100 is 150 in base-5;
410 is 150 in base-6;
226 is 150 in base-8; and
96 is 150 in base-16.

How does it work with base-16 when there are only the numbers 0-9 to deal with? Counting from (decimal) 1 to 16 would look like this:

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - A - B - C - D - E - F - 10.

Answer: The Hudson Bay Company

Of the incorrect choices, the Baker Chocolate Company began in 1765, JPMorgan Chase & Company was formed in 1799, and DuPont in 1802. That would put their respective sesquicentennials at 1915, 1949, and 1952. It should be noted that the Baker Chocolate Company is now a brand under the umbrella of Kraft Foods Inc.

The Hudson Bay Company began with two Frenchmen named Radisson and des Groseilliers, who found the interior of North America to be a wealth of fur-trading possibilities. They managed to acquire a Royal Charter from King Charles II of England that granted in May of 1670, "the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson Bay." (quote from HBC website)

Answer: Wednesday

Developed in the time of Julius Caesar (either by him or under his direction), the Julian Calendar took the roughly .25 of a day that there is in a solar year into account, allowing for leap years to compensate. Unfortunately, it didn't take into account that the solar year is closer to 365.2425 days long (slightly less than a nice even 365 1/4). Thus, the Gregorian Calendar was developed to fix the issue (it drops a leap year 3 times every 400 years).

All that to say that even with the Julian Calendar in use in the 2nd century, one had to take the leap year into account to make the day calculation required in the above question. Leap years occurred in every year that was divisible by four.

January 1st, A.D. 145 was on a Thursday. A.D. 146 began on a Friday. A.D 147 started with a Saturday. Sunday began A.D. 148, and as that was a leap year, A.D. 149 began on a Tuesday. Thus, in answer to the question, A.D. 150 began on a Wednesday.

Answer: 3, 10, 17, 24, 31, 38, 45, 52, 59, 66...

The incorrect responses are:

The Fibonacci Sequence, where the next number is the sum of the two previous numbers: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233... (does not hit 150).

A sequence of square numbers: 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100, 121, 144, 169... (does not hit 150).

Multiplying by two: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256... (does not hit 150).

The correct pattern is as simple as adding seven, beginning on the number 3: 3, 10, 17, 24, 31, 38, 45, 52, 59, 66, 73, 80, 87, 94, 101, 108, 115, 122, 129, 136, 143, 150...

Answer: Psalms

The Book of Psalms has precisely 150 chapters, and beats out its closest competitor in that area by a wide margin. Isaiah holds second place on the list with a mere 66 chapters.

Psalm 150 has only six verses. Here it is in its entirety:

"1 Praise the Lord!

Praise God in His sanctuary;
Praise Him in His mighty firmament!

2 Praise Him for His mighty acts;
Praise Him according to His excellent greatness!

3 Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet;
Praise Him with the lute and harp!
4 Praise Him with the timbrel and dance;
Praise Him with stringed instruments and flutes!
5 Praise Him with loud cymbals;
Praise Him with clashing cymbals!

6 Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord!"

Answer: Cessna

The Cessna 150 was built as a follow-up to the successful Model 140, whose production run had ended in 1951. It was itself followed by the Cessna 152, which began production in 1977 until 1985. The 152 was virtually the same as the 150 in design, only it had a more powerful engine and some other minor differences.

Both the Cessna 150 and 152 are popular personal-use airplanes, as well as being commonly used as flight-training airplanes.

Answer: "O from what power hast thou this powerful might,"

To choose the 'wrong' responses to my question, I did a web-search on Shakespeare's most popular sonnets. The short list of five included:

#18 - Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
#29 - When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
#116 - Let me not to the marriage of true minds
#126 - O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
#130 - My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Sonnet 150 may not have made the top five list, but here it is in all its splendor, nevertheless:

"O, from what power hast thou this powerful might
With insufficiency my heart to sway?
To make me give the lie to my true sight,
And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?
Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,
That in the very refuse of thy deeds
There is such strength and warrantize of skill
That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds?
Who taught thee how to make me love thee more
The more I hear and see just cause of hate?
O, though I love what others do abhor,
With others thou shouldst not abhor my state:
If thy unworthiness raised love in me,
More worthy I to be beloved of thee."

Answer: Stable social relationships

With the recent surge in social networking, Professor Dunbar took his work from the 1990s (that studied social groups through the centuries), and applied it to the 'Facebook Effect' to see if it still applied. He found that there was no discernible difference.

From a news article in 2010 highlighting his findings:

""The interesting thing is that you can have 1,500 friends but when you actually look at traffic on sites, you see people maintain the same inner circle of around 150 people that we observe in the real world," said Dunbar.

"People obviously like the kudos of having hundreds of friends but the reality is that they're unlikely to be bigger than anyone else's."

Dunbar defined 'maintained' friends as those you care about and contact at least once a year."

(Quote from UK MailOnline website article dated January 24, 2010)

Answer: Minnesota

In its totality, U.S. Route 150 begins just outside of Moline, Illinois, and travels in a generally south-easterly direction through Indiana, through Louisville, Kentucky, and finally ending at Mount Vernon, Kentucky.

Answer: May 29th

May 29th also happens to be the birth date of my dear mother.

Other weird and wonderful things that have happened on May 29ths in years past:

1328: Philip VI crowned King of France
1453: Fall of Constantinople (and Byzantine Empire)
1660: English Restoration: Charles II returned to throne
1727: Peter II becomes Tsar of Russia
1790: Rhode Island becomes 13th state
1848: Wisconsin becomes 30th state
1903: Bob Hope born
1913: Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" premieres in Paris, inciting a riot
1914: RMS Empress of Ireland sinks in the Gulf of St. Lawrence
1917: John F. Kennedy born
1953: Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay reach the summit of Mount Everest
1979: Actress Mary Pickford died
1988: U.S. President Ronald Reagan begins his first visit to the Soviet Union
1990: Boris Yeltsin elected Russian president
1999: Space Shuttle Discovery completes the first docking with the International Space Station
2010: Actor Dennis Hopper died