A Little Bit of Everything 3 Trivia Quiz

Answer: 1926

The first standardized Kiosk (K1) actually appeared in 1921. However it was white and had a totally different design than the one everybody knows. That one (the K2) was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, an architect renowned for his churches. He did however also design Battersea Power Station, still one of the most recognizable landmarks of London.

It has to be said however, that only very few K2s were actually made. It's really the K6, which Scott re-designed with an eye to mass production and which was introduced in 1936 that firmly embedded the design as a symbol of England. And it was not until 1968 that a totally new design was adopted.

Answer: 181 billion metric tons

For you Yanks out there, that would be 181 trillion metric tons. At that rate Earth would have disappeared after a measly 30 million years. Most of this is lost through radiation (yes, it's that Einstein formula) but about 25% is lost through the solar wind.

However, due to the great mass of the sun it will run out of fuel long before it runs out of mass. And even the effect on the planetary orbits is so minute, that we can only now begin to even detect it.

Answer: 1915

Although Coca-Cola itself was invented in 1886, it took another 30 years until the familiar bottle appeared. The story goes that the design was based on the shape of a Cocoa seed pod - because an employee had mistakenly sketched it, instead of the intended Kola seed pod.

The idea was to set the brand apart from its competitors, who all had more or less the same shape of bottle. And what a stroke of marketing genius it was - this is probably the best recognized packaging in the world.

Answer: 333

The Vasa sank on August 10 1628 on her maiden voyage before she even left the harbour. Because the water there is brackish, the shipworm left the wreck alone. However it wasn't until 1956 that the wreck was found. It took another five years to raise her.

She is now displayed in a magnificent museum in Stockholm. As to why she sank there were many factors involved. Mainly it was a problem of insufficient experience with building a ship with two gun decks and no scientific means to calculate the necessary dimensions.

Answer: 2763 BC

'Methuselah' is a Bristlecone Pine that was found in the White Mountains of California. It was discovered in 1953 by Edmund Schulman, a dendrochronologist at the University of Arizona. The climatic conditions in the area are extremely harsh, but there are several more trees of the same species around that are also well over 3000 years old.

There are other claims - for example for the Creosote Bush, found not far away in the Mojave Desert. But with these the original plant only survives up to 200 years and then creates genetically identical offspring. If identical genes were proof that it's the same organism, then identical twins would be one organism.

Answer: South Africa

The Vredefort Crater is about 300 km in diameter and roughly 2 billion years old. Most people have heard of the Chicxulub (Yucatan) Crater, because it received a lot of publicity as being responsible for the dinosaur's demise. But at 170 km it's actually only third on the list.

The Sudbury Crater in Canada is the second largest at 250 km. The fourth place goes to the Popigai Crater in Russia and another Canadian entry - the Manicouagan - at 100 km each. Fortunately the largest crater that is less than 1 million years old is only 4.5 km in diameter.

It's the Rio Cuarto Crater in Argentina.

Answer: 7.5 km/h

Even though it beats its wings with one of the highest frequencies (around 200 beats per second) of any insect, it is still far from being the fastest. What makes it so hard to swat, is its ability to take off without having to wait for 'slow' nerve signals.

As far as the fastest insect goes, there is lots of conflicting data out there. The most likely contender seems to be the Hawkmoth at over 50 km/h. Claims by entomologist C. H. T. Townsend in 1926 that he had seen a Deer Bot Fly moving at over 1.400 km/h have meanwhile been proven to be physically impossible.

Answer: 825 tons

At the time she was built, the Titanic was the largest ship in the world - in fact the largest man-made moveable object in the world. Her boilers were fired by 159 furnaces and generated around 50.000 SHP (shaft horse power). Since England was hit by a miners strike at the time she was to sail, coal actually had to be borrowed from other ships to allow her to sail at all.

Answer: 1706

It was William Jones in his 'Synopsis palmariorum matheseos'. The value for this ratio was first written down by the Babylonians around 2200 BC and it was quite accurate (3.14159265) which suggests that it had been pondered for some time before that. But it seems that not until the 17th century did anyone use symbols to represent it.

While Pi figured in some of the earlier notations - due to its association with peripheria or periphery for circumference - it was always combined with other symbols and letters. Even after Jones introduced it, his notation didn't come into general use immediately.

It was only when Leonhard Euler - who also gave us many other mathematical constants - used it in the 1730s that it became popular.

Answer: Sailor

Born Józef Teodor Nałęcz Konrad Korzeniowski, he was brought up by his uncle after being orphaned at the age of eleven. He left Poland to escape the oppressive regime and joined the French merchant navy. Some years later, he transferred to the British merchant navy and eventually earned his Master Mariners Certificate.

It was only after 20 years as a seaman that his first novel was published. Many of his novels and short stories drew on the experiences he had gained during his years at sea.