The Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Highlands

The Highlands covers more than half of the country of Scotland; it is in the northwest of the country. It includes all of the country north-west of the Great Glen running from Forth William to Inverness; it also covers the Isle of Arran, and the area of the country bounded approximately by a line from Helensburgh, near Glasgow, to Forfar, north of Dundee, then curving round the Cairngorms to the North Sea coast just east of Nairn.

The Highlands is the part of Scotland with the highest mountains, including Ben Nevis (the tallest in the United Kingdom), many beautiful lochs, both on the coast and inland, and the fewest people. It is also the part where the Gaelic language is still spoken in some places. Inverness is regarded as the capital of the Highlands; it is home to the headquarters of the Highland Council, which administers most of the geographic region of the Highlands.

Answer: The Bronx

The Bronx is the most northerly of the five boroughs in New York City. It is bordered to the south-west by the Harlem river, and then Manhattan. To the south is the East River and Queens. Brooklyn lies south of Queens, and Staten Island is south of Manhattan.

The borough of the Bronx takes its name from the river of the same name, which divides the borough in two. The river was named for an early settler, Jonas Bronck. The borough has some of the biggest open spaces in New York City, including the world-famous Bronx Zoo, and the adjacent New York Botanical Gardens which were established around the ancient Thain Family Forest.

Answer: The Doldrums

In everyday life being in the doldrums describes someone who is bored or listless. Nautically, the doldrums describes the state of a sailing ship which is unable to make much progress because of light winds or a calm. The Intertropical Convergence Zone is the area near the equator where the northeast and southeast trade winds converge, leading to very light winds or a calm, so it is known by sailors as The Doldrums.

Answer: The Hague

The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland, and also the seat of government for the country of the Netherlands. It is the third largest city in the country, and also home to the royal family. In the fifteenth century, des Graven hage (the count's grove) replaced Di Haghe as the city's name; by the seventeenth century the city was officially known by the abbreviated 's-Gravenhage.

By the twenty-first century that name was only used for official documents, and the city was generally known as den Haag, and so called The Hague by the English speaking world.

Answer: The Maldives

The Maldives is regarded as the smallest country in Asia. It has a land area of only 298 square kilometres, composed of over 100 islands grouped into twenty-six atolls. It lies south-west of the Indian subcontinent and stretches from Ihavandhippolhu Atoll in the north to Addu Atoll just south of the equator. Addu Atoll is where the highest point of the country is to be found; it is Mount Villingili at 5.1m tall. Perhaps not surprisingly, the country has the lowest average elevation in the world at 1.5m.

The largest city is Malé, which is also the capital; it is in the middle of the chain of islands.

Answer: The Oval

The Oval cricket ground was built at Kennington in south London in the middle of the nineteenth century, and became the home of the Surrey County Cricket Club. The ground takes its name from the road which surrounds it; originally called Poplar Grove, it had become known as the Oval from its shape.

The ground was the first in England to host an international cricket match when an Aboriginal team visited in 1868. In 1880 it hosted the first Test Match in England, against Australia, who won in two days, leading to the famous obituary to English cricket, and the subsequent creation of The Ashes as a trophy for the winning team in a series of Test Matches between England and Australia.

Answer: The Wash

Lying around the middle of the east coast of England, The Wash is a square-shaped bay lying between Lincolnshire to the north-west and west, Norfolk to the south and south-east, and the North Sea on the north-east; all the sides are about 25km long. I have found two possible sources for the name. One is from the Old English 'waesc' meaning a sandbank washed by the sea.

The other is also from Old English; the word 'wase' means mud, slime or ooze. A fifteenth century dictionary defines the word 'wasche' as a ford.

The rivers Welland, Nene and Great Ouse all drain into The Wash after flowing through the surrounding fenland.

Answer: The Dolomites

The Dolomites are mountains in north-eastern Italy, lying between the province of Tirol in Austria to the north, and the Adriatic coast at Venice to the south. Also known as the Pale Mountains, the Dolomites take their name from the rocks from which they are formed. An eighteenth century French mineralogist, Déodat Gratet de Dolomieu, was one of the first people to identify the sedimentary rock, similar to limestone, which contains a high percentage of the anhydrous mineral calcium magnesium carbonate (CaMg(CO3)2); both the rock and the mineral are called after him - dolomite.

Answer: The Jungfrau

The Jungfrau (maiden) is the highest of a group of three mountains which are visible (on a clear day) to the south of Interlaken in central Switzerland; the other two are the Eiger (ogre) and the Mönch (monk). The Jungfrau is 4158m high, and was first climbed, in 1811, by the Meyer brothers from Aarau. Constructed at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Jungfraubahn was one of the highest mountain railways in the world.

It runs through a tunnel inside the Eiger and Mönch to a destination at the Jungfraujoch at 3463m, between the peaks of the Jungfrau and the Mönch.

Answer: The Sahara

The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world. It covers parts of Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Algeria, Mali, Tunisia, Libya, Niger, Chad, Egypt and Sudan. Often thought of as being completely covered in a sea of sand shaped by the wind, known as an erg, only part of it is like that; most of the desert is composed of hard rocky barren plateaus, called hamadas.

Not very surprisingly, there is very little rainfall. While temperatures can be record-breakingly hot a lot of the time, parts of the higher mountainous areas can reach freezing point in the winter.

Answer: The Himalayas

The Himalayas lie between the Indian subcontinent and the Tibetan plateau. They cover parts of Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal and Pakistan, and are home to some of the highest mountains in the world. More than one hundred of these mountains are to be found in either the Himalayas or the neighbouring Karakoram range, and all are over 7000m tall.

The highest mountain not in this region is Aconcagua at 6960m, which is found in the Andes on the border between Argentina and Chile.

Answer: The Outback

Sometimes thought to refer to inland Australia, the Outback stretches from the Timor Sea to the Great Australian Bight, and from the Indian Ocean to the Coral Sea. It includes all of the Northern Territory, much of Western Australia and South Australia, and parts of Queensland and New South Wales.

A lot of the Outback is desert area, as seen around the iconic monolith known as Uluru in the centre of the country. However there are also wetter parts such as the rainforests to be found in the Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory, the Daintree Forest in Queensland and some parts of the Kimberley region in the northern part of Western Australia. Being home to the indigenous peoples of the country, and with comparatively few settlers, the Outback is one of the largest unspoilt areas of the world.

Answer: The Shambles

Taking its name from an old term for a slaughterhouse, The Shambles in York used to have more than thirty butcher's shops; by the twenty-first century, none remained. With some of the buildings dating from the fourteenth century, the street is thought to be one of the best preserved medieval streets in Europe, and is regarded as a major tourist attraction.

It may be the most well-known, but York is not unique in having a street with that name. There are streets called The Shambles in nearby Malton, as well as further afield including in Guildford, Bradford-on-Avon, and Sevenoaks.

Answer: The Amazon

The Amazon river is known for having the largest volume of water in the world; some people also regard it as the longest, but many think the River Nile (in Africa) is longer. The river gained its name in the sixteenth century after a group of warriors, led by women, attacked an expedition led by Francisco de Orellana, and he was reminded of the Amazon warriors from Greek myth.

The sources of the tributaries of the Amazon lie in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela, and those tributaries flow into Brazil, where they combine to form the main river which empties into the Atlantic Ocean.

Answer: The Arctic

The Arctic takes its name from the Geek ἄρκτος (arktos), which means bear; it refers to the constellations of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor which are visible in the norther part of the globe. It consists of the area north of the Arctic Circle at 66° 34'N, which is the region where there is midnight sun in the summer, and the corresponding polar night in the winter. Most of the area is covered by the often frozen Arctic Ocean, but it also includes parts of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia.

Despite the very cold winters and cool summers, there are number of plant and animal species which have adapted to the conditions. These include the Arctic poppy and the bearberry, and also Arctic hares, snowy owls, seals, orcas, polar bears and reindeer.