Through Rose-Coloured Glasses Trivia Quiz

Answer: hanami

The custom of hanami (meaning simply "flower viewing") is believed to have started in the 8th century AD, during the Nara period - though at first the blossoms admired by people were those of plum ("ume") trees rather than cherry ("sakura").

The cherry blossom season begins in mid-January in the southern island of Okinawa, while in the main archipelago the trees bloom from the end of March to early May. Nowadays hanami parties consist mainly of picnics taking place under the trees during the day or at night (in which case they are called "yozakura", or "night sakura"). People flock to the many parks of Japan, eating special foods prepared for the occasion (such as dango, rice-flour dumplings tinted white, pink and green), drinking sake, and playing and listening to music. Similar celebrations exist in other parts of the world, especially in places where cherry trees donated by Japan have been planted. One such place is the Tidal Basin in Washington, DC, which hosts a yearly National Cherry Blossom Festival in the early spring.

The most common cultivar of cherry tree found throughout modern Japan is the Yoshino cherry (Prunus x yedoensis), a hybrid between the Oshima cherry and the wild species Prunus itosakura. The photo shows cherry trees in bloom in Kayoichou Park in Fukuoka, on the island of Kyushu.

Kabuki is a form of classical Japanese theatre, while sashimi (thinly sliced raw fish) and wasabi (green horseradish paste) are culinary terms.

Answer: galah

Found in most of Australia (including Tasmania), the galah (Eolophus roseicapilla) is the only member of its genus, part of the family Cacatuidae of the order Psittaciformes. Its common name comes from "gilaa", a word in the Aboriginal Yuwalaraay language of north-western New South Wales. While this smallish parrot's back and rump are a silvery grey colour, its face and breast are deep pink, with a pale pink mobile crest. The galah occurs in large numbers both in metropolitan and rural areas, living in flocks that can number up to 1,000 individuals. As they feed by stripping leaves and bark from trees (which often leads to the trees' death), these birds are considered pests in some parts of the country; they are also commonly kept as pets, and can live to over 70 years of age.

In Australian slang, the name galah has come to mean fool or clown - possibly because of its somewhat gaudy pink plumage. Another Australian bird that has become synonymous with stupidity is the drongo, which is a passerine.

The budgerigar is also a parrot, while the kookaburra belongs to the kingfisher family, and the cassowary is a large flightless bird related to the emu.

Answer: Eos

The daughter of the Titans Hyperion and Theia - both associated with light - Eos was the sister of the sun god Helios and the moon goddess Selene. She was the personification of dawn (also the meaning of her name in Greek, translated in Latin as "Aurora"), who rose each morning to banish the shadows of the night, opening the gates for the Sun to pass through. In Ancient Greek art, especially vase painting, she was often depicted as winged, or riding in a chariot drawn by winged horses. In her literary descriptions, she is associated with pink, yellow and gold - the colours of the sky at sunrise. In Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey", she is given the epithet "Rhododactylos" (rosy-fingered); in a fragment by Sappho, she is instead referred to as "rosy-armed".

According to some sources, Eos' insatiable appetite for men was due to having been cursed by the love goddess Aphrodite, who shared some of her attributes. Among her lovers were the hunter Orion, the Athenian prince Cephalus, and the Trojan prince Tithonus, whom she abducted from Troy's royal palace to make him her consort. When the goddess asked Zeus to make him immortal, she forgot to ask for eternal youth. Withered by age but unable to die, the unfortunate prince was eventually turned into a cicada. A poignant interpretation of this unhappy love affair - which produced a son, Memnon, slain in the Trojan War - can be found in Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem "Tithonus" (1859).

Iris was the Greek goddess of the rainbow, while Persephone was both a vegetation goddess and the queen of the Underworld.

The beautiful photo of a sunrise over the Aegean Sea was taken on the Greek island of Serifos.

Answer: the wine's colour comes from black grape skins

The colour of wine is determined not only by the type of grape used, but also by the presence of grape skins during fermentation. The skin of wine grape cultivars is considerably thicker and richer in pigments and other chemical compounds than the skin of table grapes. In the making of rosé wine, the skins of black (actually dark purple) grapes remain in contact with the juice for a shorter time than for red wine - on average 2 to 20 hours rather than for the whole of the fermentation stage - resulting in a wide range of hues of pink and rose, from pale orange to an intense purple-pink.

There are, however, two other ways to produce rosé wine. The one known by the French word "saignée" (bleeding) involves using some of the pink juice removed from the must during the making of red wine (whose colour becomes deeper as a result). Some red can also be blended into white wine to produce rosé: this method, however, is frowned upon, or even forbidden, in many wine-producing regions. Rosé wine is found at all levels of sweetness, and can also be made sparkling or semi-sparkling.

The beautiful colour of rosé wine, though reminiscent of fruits such as raspberries, strawberries, or redcurrants, has nothing to do with the addition of juice of fruits other than grapes (preferably of the Vitis vinifera species). In fact, in the European Union alcoholic beverages made with the juice of other fruits cannot be marketed as wine - something that is instead allowed in the US.

Answer: Grace Jones

Written in 1945 by Edith Piaf and composer Louiguy, "La vie en rose" ("Life Through Rose-Coloured Glasses") was released as a single in 1947, contributing to the French singer's international fame. Though apparently a song about the sheer joy of finding true love, the song was also meant to send a strong message of optimism, hope and love of life to the generation that had just lived through the horrors and deprivations of WWII. Piaf's lyrics were translated into English by Mack David; in 1950 the song was recorded in the US by a number of high-profile artists, including Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, and Louis Armstrong.

Grace Jones' disco-meets-bossa nova cover version, featured on her debut album "Portfolio" (1977) and then released as a single, also became an international hit - complemented by a rather sexy video. In 1985's "A View to a Kill", the last James Bond movie starring Roger Moore in the role of the iconic secret agent, Jones was cast as May Day, the bodyguard and lover of the film's main antagonist. The movie also features a scene filmed on the Eiffel Tower - which in the photo is framed by the rose-pink sky of a beautiful sunset.

The three wrong options are all famous disco-era women singers.

Answer: Iran

Noor-ul-Ain means "light of the eye" in Persian. It is a fitting name for this magnificent gem, an oval-cut pale pink diamond set in an equally magnificent tiara containing a total of 324 diamonds set in platinum, created in 1958 by famous jeweler Harry Winston for the wedding of Farah Diba to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. Together with another large diamond, the square-cut Darya-i-Noor ("sea of light") - also part of the National Treasury of Iran - the 60-carat Noor-ul-Ain is believed to have been cut in the early 19th century from the huge, legendary Great Table diamond, a possession of India's Mughal emperors found in the 17th century in the fabled mines of Golconda. Empress Farah wore the tiara regularly at gala functions; the stunning piece of jewelry, however, was left behind when the Iranian imperial family went into exile in 1979.

Among coloured diamonds, pink diamonds are said to be the rarest, and as such command very high prices. The Noor-ul-Ain is classified as a type IIa, the most sought-after kind of natural coloured diamonds. Pink diamonds do not owe their colour to the presence of trace minerals, but rather to a highly compressed internal structure, which causes a distortion in the stone's crystal lattice and alters the qualities of the light reflected by it.

Answer: True

In modern times pink has become associated with femininity, giving rise to expressions such as "pink collar jobs" (jobs conventionally performed by women) or "pink tax" (the higher price of items produced and marketed exclusively for women). Although the colour has consequently become unpopular with men, in the past things were quite different - as witnessed by a large number of works of art that show boys and men wearing various shades of pink and rose, or some of the exhibits held by specialized museums such as London's V&A. In fact, the practice of using pink as synonymous for the female gender dates from less than one century ago - probably from the 1950s, when the colour's association with women was reinforced by a number of high-profile women - such as US First Lady Mamie Eisenhower - wearing pink clothing or expressing their preference for the colour.

In the 19th century, in particular during the Victorian era, baby boys were often dressed in white and pink. Queen Victoria was portrayed holding her third son (and seventh child), Prince Arthur, who wore pink and white clothing. As red was traditionally considered a masculine colour - in particular for military uniforms - pink was deemed suitable for males that were still a long way away from adulthood. The painting in the photo, by an unidentified American painter, dating from around 1840, portrays a young boy wearing a dress in a beautiful shade of salmon pink and holding a whip.

Answer: algae

Located on Middle Island, in the Recherche Archipelago off the south coast of Western Australia, Lake Hillier is one of the numerous pink lakes found around the world. These bodies of water - many of them located in Australia - are in most cases salt lakes; the colour of their waters ranges from a bright bubblegum pink to deep crimson, and often changes according to the season. The most common reason for these unusual hues is the presence of halophile (salt-tolerant) algae that produce carotenoids - organic pigments such as those found in carrots or pumpkins.

One such organism is the unicellular green algae Dunaliella salina, which is present in Lake Hillier and many of the other pink lakes. However, scientists have found that other microorganisms - such as bacteria and archaea - are involved in the process of imparting a pink, orange or red hue to the waters of a saline lake. The pink colouring generally intensifies in warm and dry weather, when the salt concentration is higher, while it may disappear altogether with high rainfall or inflow of fresh water.

The only non-saline pink lake, known as Dusty Rose Lake, is located in British Columbia (Canada). It is an anoxic lake (devoid of oxygen and thus of any form of life) that owes its colour to the particulate from the surrounding purplish pink rocks.

Answer: Elsa Schiaparelli

Born in Rome in 1890 from highly educated, upper-class parents, Elsa Schiaparelli found fame and fortune in Paris, where she founded her own fashion house in 1927. Though she had never received any formal training in fashion design, she relied on her natural flair to create clothes that were at the same time stylish and wearable. She also became involved with the Dada and Surrealist artistic movements: some of her most famous, boundary-pushing creations - such as the Lobster, the Tears and the Skeleton dresses - were produced in collaboration with Salvador Dalí. When the House of Schiaparelli closed down in 1954, Elsa had already secured her place as an icon of unconventional fashion design.

Schiaparelli's designs privileged bold patterns, innovative materials and bright colours - such as her signature shocking pink, a vibrant shade of magenta named after the packaging of her most famous perfume, "Shocking!" (launched in 1937), whose bottle was inspired by Mae West's curves. The negligee sachet in the photo, part of the wedding trousseau of Nancy Webber Sutherland, a lady from New Zealand, is an original Schiaparelli creation bearing the designer's label.

The three wrong options are all well-known contemporary fashion designers from Italy.

Answer: Rajasthan

Named for its founder, Sawai Jai Singh, Jaipur ("Jai's city") is one of India's ten largest cities, home to over 3 million people. Located in the northeastern part of Rajasthan, India's largest state, it is surrounded by fertile plains, hills, and the Thar Desert. The nation's capital, Delhi, lies 268 km (197 mi) to the north-east. Founded in 1927, Jaipur is famous for its imposing buildings made of rose-coloured sandstone - one of the likely origins of its nickname of "Pink City". Among the city's attractions - which have made it one of India's biggest tourist destinations - there is the magnificent Hawa Mahal ("Palace of the Winds", in the photo), built in 1799 of rose and pink sandstone, with its elaborately decorated façade pierced by 935 small windows.

Another explanation for Jaipur's nickname lies in the initiative taken by Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh II in 1876: he had the city painted a warm terracotta pink - a symbol of hospitality - to welcome Edward Albert, Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII). This beautiful colour can still be seen when walking around the city centre, though somewhat tarnished by pollution. The walled city of Jaipur was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019.

The city of Toulouse, in southern France, has also been nicknamed "la Ville rose" (the pink city) because most of the buildings in its historic centre are made of pinkish terracotta bricks.

Kerala and Karnataka are both located in southern India, while Assam lies in the northeastern part of the country.