FunTrivia Humanities Mix: Vol 13 Quiz

Answer: Africa

Tongue clicks, or simply clicks, are found exclusively in two language families of sub-Saharan Africa: the Khosian languages, and a few Bantu languages that seem to have borrowed them. For a great example of clicks in action, listen to Miriam Makeba performing the "Click Song"!

Question by player pu2-ke-qi-ri

Answer: Damn Yankees

Joe Hardy is a long-suffering fan of Washington's baseball team. He makes a deal with the devil to become the slugger that will enable Washington to beat those "Damn Yankees".

Question by player SJM2015

Answer: Cats

Every single character is a cat! The cats each sing a song describing why they deserve to go to the Heaviside Layer, which is basically Heaven for cats.

Question by player Democropolis

Answer: Bobby

The British Home Secretary, Sir Robert Peel, established the Metropolitan Police Force in London in 1829. As a result, police officers were sometimes informally called 'bobbies' or 'peelers'. When the force began, officers patrolled parts of London wearing a top hat and blue tailcoat, and were armed with a truncheon and handcuffs. Bobbies also had a rattle or a whistle in order to signal for help.

Question by player AcrylicInk

Answer: my preference; what I wanted

This colloquialism is a contracted alteration of "would rather", indicating having or getting things the way one would like them to be. The term evolved into a noun, thus the preferred state of affairs became the "druthers". It dates back to at least the 1890s as said by Tom Sawyer to Huck Finn in Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer, Detective". To wit: "There ain't no druthers about it Huck. Nobody said anything about druthers."

Question by player Nealzineatser

Answer: free-standing hanger for coats and hats

The "hat tree" in the Pajama Sam adventure is an actual tree in which Sam and his buddy Carrot find hats which, when they try them on, turn them into adventurous characters. In the US, since about 1810, the phrase "hat tree" has described a tall stand on which coats, hats and scarves are hung.

This furnishing is variously called a hat stand, a hat rack and a hallstand. The typical hat tree is made of wood, with hooks or arms extending from a central pole to afford lots of room for garments to be hung.

This was especially useful for drying outdoor wear which was soaked with rain or snow. The synonym "halltree" refers to the stand's likely location in a hallway just inside an outer door. It is not unusual for hat trees to be as much as six feet tall (except in the homes of very short people).

Question by player FatherSteve

Answer: The wax on his wings melted, so he fell.

The tale of Icarus is a cautionary one. Icarus ignored the instructions of his father, Daedalus, who designed the wings. Daedalus warned Icarus not too fly too high, lest the sun melt the wax on his wings. Icarus failed to heed the warning, and the wax did melt, causing Icarus to plunge into the sea, where he drowned.

Question by player Lalenya

Answer: Stockholm

In 1973, a gang was trapped by police while trying to rob a bank in Stockholm, Sweden. They took four hostages and made a number of demands. Six days later, when the siege was ended, the hostages resisted rescue and later refused to testify against their captors. The phenomenon became known as "the Stockholm Syndrome."

Question by player darksplash

Answer: Clergyman

A clerk, in our modern world, is an office worker whose duties include filing, typing, bookkeeping, and other forms of record keeping and tasks involved in the running of a business. Originating from the old Latin word, "clericus", when it was associated with clergymen, the duties of a clergyman by medieval times had also come to include a wide range of writing tasks.

The very simple reason behind this association came from the fact that, at that period in history, your average man or woman of the street did not know how to read or write.

Question by player Creedy

Answer: hanged

"Hanged" is the correct word to use as it is the past tense and past participle form for the word used to denote an execution. "Hung" would be the correct word to use to denote the past tense or past participle form of placing something on a vertical surface, such as "Bob hung the painting on the wall." "Hang" is simply present tense and could not follow the auxiliary verb "was." "Hunged" is not a word at all.

Question by player alaspooryoric