Lakes, Ponds and Streams Trivia Quiz

Answer: Baikal

Lake Baikal is 1,637 m (5,639 ft.) deep, and is home to some 1,085 species of plants and 1,550 species and varieties of animal life, including the Baikal seal, which is the only mammal living in the lake. The lake contains 20% of the world's fresh water and is classified as a continental rift lake. It was formed between 30 and 25 million years ago, which makes it one of the most ancient lakes in geological history.

Lake Baikal derives its name from the Tatars who called it Bai Kul (Rich Lake). In the Buryat and Mongol languages it is called Dalai-Nor (Sacred Sea). It is also called the Blue Eye of Siberia, which is where you'll have to travel if you want to visit Lake Baikal.

Answer: Veronica Lake

Veronica Lake (nee Constance Ockleman aka Constance Keane) was a stunning blonde with a distinctive hair style called the peekaboo - a long blonde mane worn over one eye. Bette Davis called her the most beautiful woman in Hollywood, but she was not an easy person to work with, and her continuing struggle with alcohol didn't help matters.

Although she was a major star in the early to mid-'40s, by the '50s her career and her personal life were on the skids. She suffered from frequent bouts of depression and mental illness (she had been diagnosed as a schizophrenic in her teens), and was institutionalized more than a few times.

She died destitute in 1973 at the age of 54.

Answer: Anton de Alaminos

The Gulf Stream, a warm swift Atlantic current, originates in the Gulf of Mexico, enters the Atlantic via the Straits of Florida, and moves north as far as Newfoundland before circling east across the ocean where it divides - the northern stream crosses to Northern Europe and the southern stream re-circulates off the coast of West Africa. Its extension toward Europe is called the North Atlantic Drift and it has the effect of making Western Europe and northern European winters warmer than they would be otherwise. (The mean temperature of coastal Norway in January is 30 degrees Celsius warmer than northern Canada, even though they are on the same latitude.)

While Cortez and the others must have been aware of the Gulf Stream as they sailed westward, it was Anton de Alaminos, sailing from Spain to Vera Cruz, who recorded the effects of the phenomenon. He had previously served as a pilot under Ponce de Leon and when he commanded his own expedition to the Americas, he plotted his course to take full advantage of the Gulf Stream. It was Benjamin Franklin who dubbed it the Gulf Stream. Franklin and his friend Timothy Folger printed the first charts of the Stream in 1769-70. Today, the Gulf Stream is showing some signs of weakening in the North Atlantic Drift, and scientists speculate that this is due to global warming.

Answer: Theron T. Pond

Theron T. Pond is the inventor of what we know today as Pond's Cold Cream. Pond's invention was called Pond's Extract and he promoted it to his customers as a healing cream (it was made from witch hazel and it was beneficial in the treatment of small cuts and other skin ailments). In 1849, Pond and some other businessmen formed the T.T. Pond Company. However, Pond's health was failing, so he sold his shares to the other investors. He died in 1852. In 1886, Pond's began to advertise the product nationally under the name of Pond's Healing. By the dawn of the 20th century, Pond's Healing had morphed into Pond's Vanishing Cream and with the company's increasing emphasis on cosmetics, it was soon joined by Pond's Cold Cream, which made inroads all over the world. Its advertising strategy was simple - hire well-known celebrities to sing the cream's praises. One such celebrity was Queen Marie of Rumania, a genuine Pond's Cold Cream enthusiast.

The company was eventually bought out by Cheesebrough and became Cheesebrough-Ponds, and in 1987 CP was acquired by the huge Anglo-Dutch company Unilever, giving Pond's Cold Cream an even broader international market. Its biggest sales are made in Spain, Japan and Thailand.

Answer: 1895

'Field and Stream' was born in a duck blind in Minnesota, the brain child of sportsmen and businessmen John P. Burkhard and Henry W. Wack, and first saw the light of day as 'Western Field and Stream', published in St. Paul, Minnesota. Sitting in the blind, waiting for ducks to fly over, the two men discussed their concern about the wholesale slaughter of wildlife by so-called sportsmen. The decimation of the buffalo herds was still fairly recent, and advances in technology had put hunting and fishing within reach of middle-class city dwellers, who hunted for sport rather than to stock the larder.

Early adherents of the new conservation movement, Burkhard and Wack deplored what they called thrill shooting, and their new magazine promoted their cause. They enlisted noted conservationists to write articles, among them Theodore Roosevelt. The magazine moved its base to New York in the early years of the twentieth century and became 'Field and Stream'. Eltinge Warner, who joined the magazine in 1906 as its business manager, bought the publication when Burkhard died in 1908. Warner later got involved in the movie business. The magazine, still preaching conservation measures, is now owned by Time Mirror Magazines.

Answer: Surface size and depth

In the U.S. a pond is defined as a body of water with a surface area of less than ten acres (40,000 square metres). By that definition, a puddle could be classed as a pond. On the other side of the 'Big Pond' (aka the Atlantic Ocean), in some parts of England, a pond is only called a pond if it is man-made.

The international definition is that a pond is a body of water into the deepest areas of which sunlight can reach. Some ponds are made by human hands (when our ancestors first began domesticating animals like sheep and cows, for instance, they created dew ponds to provide water for the stock, and we've all admired those lovely Japanese style artificial ponds stocked with beautiful koi).

Some ponds are ancient, left behind as the glaciers receded.

These are known to geologists as 'kettle ponds'. Thoreau's famous Walden is a kettle pond. Most ponds, however, are the result of rain run-off, small springs or small streams, while lakes are usually fed by rivers, creeks and/or springs. As to the choice that suggested that lakes support life and ponds do not, that's just silly. Mosquito larvae can grow to maturity in ditches and bird baths, so it follows that any body of water (with the exception of the overly-saline waters like the Dead Sea) can support life of one form or another.

Answer: William Wordsworth

Wordsworth was born (in Cockermouth, Cumberland) and educated (in Hawkshead in the southern part of the District) and spent most of his life in the Lake District, with the exception of a few years on the continent and in Somerset. He and his wife Mary, their family of five children and his sister Dorothy lived first at Grasmere, then at Ambleside, which is where Wordsworth died in 1850.

At the time of his death Wordsworth was England's Poet Laureate. There are 85 lakes in the lake District, variously called Tarns, Waters, or Meres (all of which mean lake), some of which have become reservoirs.

Answer: No

A loch is an inlet of the sea, some of which have become landlocked over the years.

Answer: Near Concord, Massachussetts

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was a philosopher, pacifist, transcendentalist, naturalist, tax resister, and ardent abolitionist. His parents named him David Henry, and for reasons known only to him, he switched his two first names around. He was a contemporary and close friend of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Waldo Emerson (the latter served as Thoreau's mentor). Between 1845 and 1847 (with the exception of a brief trip to Mount Katahdin in Maine), Thoreau conducted an experiment in simple, self-sufficient living at Walden Pond. He built a tiny cabin on land owned by Emerson on the shores of Walden Pond, which was set in a second-growth forest.

In 1854 he published 'Walden, or A Life in the Woods', an account of the two years, two months and two days he spent at Walden. However, the book, which is part memoir and part spiritual diary, compresses the two years into one and uses the seasons of the year as metaphor for human life and its stages. The book received a lukewarm reception at the time of its publication, but has since been recognized as a classic. It explores the role of simplicity, harmony and beauty in the quest for social justice and cultural development.

Answer: Gum Pond

Tupelo rejoiced in the odd name of Gum Pond prior to the American Civil War. The name was no doubt drawn from the fact that a great number of tupelo trees, colloquially known as sweetgum trees, grow in and around the area. Indeed, Tupelo hosts an annual outdoor Gumtree Festival, founded in 1961, celebrating the arts - visual, graphic, musical and written. Post-Civil War, Tupelo became a railway hub, which brought industrial development to the town, and it was incorporated as the City of Tupelo in 1870, when its population was 618.

In 1934 Tupelo made history as the first city in the U.S.A. to provide its inhabitants with electricity via the Tennessee Valley Authority. Tupelo is also the headquarters of the famous Natchez Trace Parkway which follows the route of the old Natchez Trace Trail connecting Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee.