"...the bottom..." - You're the Top III Quiz

Answer: Michael Faraday

Although balloons had been prevalent for many centuries, with the Aztecs creating balloon sculptures that were presented to the Gods as sacrifices, these tended to be made from the bladders and intestines of animals - indeed, there is reference to such balloons as late as 1851 in "Moby Dick", when they are made from whale intestine. However, in 1824, while conducting experiments using hydrogen at the Royal Institution in London, Michael Faraday devised a new type of balloon that he produced using natural rubber. By cutting round two sheets of rubber that had been laid together, and then pressing the two edges down, he created a bond through the natural adhesion of the rubber itself. To then prevent the inside surfaces from sticking together, he rubbed them with flour.

The year after Faraday's invention, Thomas Hancock pioneered the sale of rubber toy balloons, initially in the form of DIY kits consisting of a bottle of rubber solution and a condensing syringe. In 1847, J.G. Ingram produced the first balloons made of vulcanised rubber, which made them impervious to temperature changes, and can be regarded as the prototypes of the modern toy balloon.

Answer: Troy

Cluett Peabody & Company traces its history back to 1851, when a company named Maullin & Blanchard, established to manufacture separate shirt collars, began operating in Troy, NY. This company was succeeded by a number of others featuring the name of Joseph Maullin and his later partner, George Cluett, until it eventually became Cluett Peabody & Company in 1899. Around the same time, the Arrow Shirt Company of Chicago, originally founded by William Titus, merged with Cluett Peabody, with the new company's principal business remaining the manufacture of shirt collars. In 1905, this led to the start of an advertising campaign featuring what came to be known as the "Arrow Collar Man", who eventually became a fashion icon of the period.

By the 1920s, Cluett Peabody had diversified, owing to the increasing popularity of shirts with attached collars. As a result, in 1929 the company began a national menswear business using the Arrow brand name, which included shirts, collars, pyjamas, underwear, cravats and handkerchiefs. In 2004, the Arrow brand was separated from the remainder of Cluett Peabody in 2004 when it was acquired by the clothing company Phillips-Van Heusen. Arrow remains as a significant brand name in menswear in the United States.

Answer: Massachusetts

Calvin Coolidge was born in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, on 4 July 1872. As a young man, he attended Amherst College in Massachusetts before, at the urging of his father, joining a law firm in Northampton to undertake legal training. Admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1897, he opened his own law firm in Northampton in 1898.

The same year, he began a career in politics, being elected to Northampton's City Council. He occupied a number of local and state offices, including in both chambers of the Massachusetts legislature, and as Mayor of Northampton, before he was convinced to run for Lieutenant Governor in 1915 alongside Samuel McCall. The pair were elected twice more in successive one year terms until 1918, when McCall decided to step down, and Coolidge ran in that year's gubernatorial election.

Coolidge was elected governor of Massachusetts in 1918, and served two single-year terms in the office - during his time in office, although personally opposed to Prohibition, he vetoed a state law that allowed the sale of beer or wine under a certain alcohol level, which would have been contrary to the 18th Amendment. At the 1920 Republican National Convention, Coolidge, although not a serious contender for the presidential nomination, was selected by the membership as their vice-presidential candidate. Alongside Warren G. Harding, Coolidge was elected at that year's election, and was respected enough by Harding to become the first Vice-President to regularly attend Cabinet meetings. Coolidge succeeded to the Presidency on 2 August 1923 following the unexpected death of President Harding. Coolidge was sworn in by his own father, with whom he was staying, and who was a local justice of the peace. He served as President until 1929, when he decided not to serve a second full term.

Answer: Eleanor Powell

By 1939, Fred Astaire had made nine musical pictures in six years alongside Ginger Rogers for RKO. Although their last film together, "The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle", made close to $2m at the box office, it was still a disappointment. Seeking to move on, Astaire left RKO at the end of his contract and, in a rare move for the period, when the studio system was at its height and their stars usually signed to exclusive contracts for a salary, he elected to work freelance, making films for many different studios. This also led Astaire to start working with other choreographers, unlike during his period with RKO, when he collaborated almost exclusively with his friend, Hermes Pan.

Astaire's first film after his departure from RKO came when, in September 1939 he began work on "Broadway Melody of 1940", the fourth in MGM's loosely connected musical series under the "Broadway Melody" banner. His co-star in the film was Eleanor Powell, who had appeared in both "Broadway Melody of 1936" and "Broadway Melody of 1938". At the time, Powell was one of the top film musical stars, and was regarded in Hollywood as one of the most talented tap dancers, male or female. Indeed, Astaire was intimidated by her prowess, as she was considered the only female dancer that could "out-dance" him. "Broadway Melody of 1940 was released in February 1940, and was a major success, containing what is regarded as the finest dance sequences on film, Astaire and Powell's finale dancing side by side to Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine".

Answer: Stockholm

Eugene O'Neill had been employed as a reporter for the New London Telegraph, a newspaper in New London, Connecticut, where in addition he had also written poetry, when, owing to his suffering from tuberculosis, he spent 1912-1913 in a sanatorium. Following his discharge, he elected to become a full-time playwright. His first published play, "Beyond the Horizon", opened on Broadway in 1920 to significant acclaim, and led to his first Pulitzer Prize. His subsequent works led to two more Pulitzers being awarded in the 1920s, as well as his receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936.

"Long Day's Journey Into Night" was originally written between 1939 and 1941, although O'Neill stated that he did not want to see it produced, or even published during his lifetime. In 1945, he sent a sealed copy to his publisher with instructions that it not be released until 25 years after his death, with a second copy sent to the O'Neill collection at Yale University. However, because he did not copyright the work, following his death in 1953 his widow was able to have it published almost straight away, with the first publication released in 1956. Owing to O'Neill's high reputation in Sweden, where his work was embraced more than anywhere else, the play was premiered at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm on 2 February 1956, before a Broadway production opened in November of the same year. The production won a number of Tony Awards, and saw O'Neill awarded a posthumous fourth Pulitzer Prize.

Answer: Musée d'Orsay

"Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1", usually known simply as "Whistler's Mother", is an oil painting by American artist Jams MacNeil Whistler of his mother, Anna. It was produced in 1871, while Whistler was living with his mother in London. The painting was submitted for exhibit at the 1872 Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Art, where it was displayed as "Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter's mother"; the inclusion of the subtitle was to meet the Victorian sensibilities that would not accept a portrait as an "arrangement". It was from this that it became known as simply "Whistler's Mother". A second, similar painting, this time of the philosopher Thomas Carlyle, was produced the same year, and was named "Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 2", leading to the first painting receiving the designation "No. 1".

Whistler eventually pawned the painting, leading to, in 1891, its procurement by the French government, which displayed it in the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris. The painting was subsequently displayed in a number of the public art galleries in Paris, including becoming the first painting by an American artist to be part of the Louvre's collection. In 1986, a new gallery, intended to form a bridge between the collections of the Louvre and the Musée National d'Art Moderne, opened in the former Gare d'Orsay. Included in the works transferred to the new Musée d'Orsay was "Whistler's Mother", where, with the exception of a number of temporary displays in various American galleries, it has remained ever since.

Answer: Normandy

Camembert is a soft cow's milk cheese first produced in the Camembert region of Normandy in north-western France. The cheese is produced by introducing mesophilic bacteria, which is bacteria that thrive in moderate temperatures, into warmed milk that, following the addition of rennet, is then allowed to coagulate. The resulting curd is cut into cubes and added to special molds that are turned every six to twelve hours, eventually forming a flat cylinder of cheese. The surface of the cheese is then sprayed with a solution containing a species of penicillium fungus, and left to ripen for a minimum of three weeks, after which they are wrapped for transport.

Camembert is believed to have originated from a cheese developed by Marie Harel, a farmer from Normandy, in 1791, when she refined an existing recipe from elsewhere in France. Before the workings of the fungi were properly understood, the colour of the rind was essentially down to chance. Although white rind became more common during the 20th century, it did not become the standard until the 1970s. In 1992, "Camembert de Normandie" became a protected designation - to carry this name, the cheese must be produced specifically using unpasturised milk from Normandes dairy cows.

Answer: Slovenia

Cockta is a Slovenian soft drink made primarily using the hips of the dog rose, a climbing wild rose species from Europe, north-west Africa and western Asia. Cockta originated in 1952 when Ivan Deu. a director of Slovenijavino, a state-owned drinks manufacturer, came up with an idea to produce a specifically Slovenian product to try and compete with overseas soft drink manufacturers that had not yet made their way into the Yugoslavian market. One of the company's chemical engineers, Emerik Zelinka, devised a formula containing a blend of eleven different herbs and spices, including, most prominently, the rose hip. The new product, which was named as Cockta (the name stemmed from the "cocktail" of herbs and spices), was introduced for the first time on 8 March 1953 at a ski jumping competition at Planica in Slovenia.

Although Cockta's share of the market fell following the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991, by the 21st century it had rebounded, and has remained one of the most popular and recognisible brands in Slovenia - in a 2013 survey, Cockta placed 6th in a list of the strongest brands in the country, while in 2019, a sugar-free version was introduced.

Answer: Virgil

The "Inferno" is the first part of Dante Alighieri's epic poem "The Divine Comedy", a three part narrative piece presenting Dante's view of the afterlife. In the "Inferno", the poet, who is the narrator of the work, describes his journey into Hell, which begins shortly before dawn on Good Friday in 1300. Dante describes how he is lost in a dark wood, where he is confronted by three beasts symbolising three kinds of sin that lead an unrepentant soul into Hell. Dante is rescued from the beasts by a figure who introduces himself as Virgil, the great Roman poet and author of the "Aenied". Virgil then proceeds to act as Dante's guide during his journey through the nine levels of Hell and into the land of Purgatory, which forms the subject of the second part of the poem, "Purgatorio".

Although little specifically is known about Dante Alighieri's education, it is known that he studied various schools of poetry during his youth, including Latin writers from antiquity, with Virgil as a major figure in Dante's work. Not only does he feature as Dante's guide in "Inferno" and the majority of "Purgatorio", but he is also a major point of discussion in Dante's essay "De vulgari eloquentia", a work of scholarship looking at the evolution of language up to his lifetime, where he is described as being one of the four "regulati poetae" or main poets.

Answer: It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Jimmy Durante was born in New York City in February 1893, the youngest of four children of Italian immigrants from Salerno. Having dropped out of school in the seventh grade, Jimmy became a full-time ragtime pianist, playing on the city's bar circuit before joining the Original New Orleans Jazz Band as its pianist. Before long, Jimmy began a routine where he would break into the middle of a song to deliver a joke, which became his trademark, and led to the group being renamed as Jimmy Durante's Jazz Band in 1920. His success as a vaudeville performer during the 1920s led to his screen debut in the 1930 film "Roadhouse Nights", and led to Durante becoming a major comedy figure on film and radio over the next decades.

The heyday of Durante's film career came in the 1930s and 1940s. Although he made only a few films after 1950, he continued to be a major presence on radio, as well as also establishing himself on television. In 1963, having appeared in what proved to be Doris Day's last musical the previous year, he was cast "Smiler" Grogan, the released convict who gives five motorists a clue to where he has hidden $350,000 of loot, in Stanley Kramer's comedy "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World". This, combined with his appearances in a successful series of commercials for Kellogg's in the late 1960s, led to his being introduced to a new audience in his later years.