Around Quizzyland - 20 Orphaned Questions

Answer: Yes

The donkey was given the binomial designation Equus asinus by Carolus Linnaeus in 1759. Linnaeus, a botanist by inclination, established the convention by which organisms are categorized, initially by Kingdom, then into phylum, then so on down the line until the most specific categories are reached: Genus (in this case Equus) and species (asinus - which inevitably elicits a giggle for those like me whose sense of humour reached full refinement in seventh grade.) These classifications are largely based on reproduction; for example, the Genus Equus is shared by the horse, and horses and donkeys can indeed interbreed, the offspring being mules.

However, since the horse and donkey are different species, mules are almost always infertile, the only exceptions being freak genetic anomalies. For more (and much better) information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linnaean_taxonomy.

Answer: n

This is a list of the first letters of the prime numbers less than 20: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, and finally 19, which begins with the letter "n". Hey, what can I say, you've got to love prime numbers.

Answer: Steve Irwin

Though Steve Irwin was a giant in the fields of wildlife conservation and education (and a personal hero of mine), an honest appraisal of his life, including a quiz on this fine man, should confront the more controversial issues of his work, including his dismissal of Australia's ominous problems of overgrazing and salinization. Perhaps I'll one day have the courage to write such a quiz - or perhaps you will!

Answer: Hulk Hogan

Angle is a legitimate Olympic gold medalist. Race and Thesz both trained as "hook" wrestlers, augmenting their amateur backgrounds with a variety of submission holds. Though most of these holds are common knowledge today given the growth of mixed martial arts, they were not widely mastered during Thesz and Race's heydays of the 1940s through the 1970s. This allowed both men to have long careers as NWA champions in the territorial era where promoters were wary of regional wrestlers who might try to steal the title in a double-cross.

Hogan, on the other hand, started out in the entertainment field as a bass guitar player and, though he did learn the rudiments of legitimate wrestling from Hiro Matsuda, was sincerely afraid for his title when Harley Race came to his promotion. Thankfully for the Hulkster, Race played along.

Answer: Encyclopedia Brown

Written by Donald Sobol, the Encyclopedia Brown books often feature the eponymous hero (son of the local police chief) outwitting the thuggish Bugs Meany. Each book usually contains about twelve "cases". Though it pains me to say it, Encyclopedia Brown and his friend Sally Kimball are probably better role models than Walter the Farting Dog.

Answer: Duke Kahanamoku

Kate Fox was the most accomplished of the Fox Sisters, the Hydesville, NY family who popularized the séance and other means of communicating with the spirit world in the nineteenth century. Ford and Palladino were also "mediums"; Ford would, for a time, convince Harry Houdini's widow that he had communicated with the notoriously skeptical magician, while Palladino was one of the first mediums to allow her work to be examined scientifically - a maneuver she later regretted, since most of her tricks were remarkably transparent. Duke Kahanamoku was a pioneering Hawaiian swimmer and surfer, and is best known today for originating the title "The Big Kahuna".

Answer: Romania

When "Dracula" was published in 1897, Transylvania (which means "land beyond the forest") was part of the Hapsburg Empire centered in Austria and Hungary. The other Romanian lands, Walachia and Moldavia, were united into a Romanian state after centuries of subservience to the Turkish Ottoman Empire and, periodically, the Russian Empire. All three Romanian lands were united into the modern Romanian nation-state after World War I.

Answer: George Washington's Birthday

By the end of the year, Louis Philippe had abdicated in favor of France's Second Republic, Switzerland had enacted its seminal Federal Constitution, feudalism was on its way out in Austria and Prussia, the parties that would eventually unify Italy were established, and there had been massive uprisings in Poland against Prussian occupation. Politically, 1848 must be seen as a watershed for most of Europe (with the exception of authoritarian Russia, where opposition had been stifled to such an extent that revolt was unthinkable, and Great Britain, where liberal reforms of the preceding twenty years had effectively preempted revolution). Socially, however, most historians feel that the revolutions were a failure, as they did not seem to substantially increase the standard of living, and wealth continued to be concentrated in the upper classes.

Answer: Egg nog

This festive drink originated in Great Britain as an aristocratic delicacy, but it became much more popular in her former North American colonies where, due to the agrarian culture of the region, dairy products, eggs, and rum were plentiful and affordable for more people. Though the drink can be served without alcohol, the etymology of "egg nog" (from "noggin", a variety of strong ale) suggests that this has been uncommon through the drink's history.

Answer: Karl Bodmer

Bodmer was a Swiss artist who travelled up the Missouri River in the 1830s paining both natural and human subjects. Monet was perhaps the foremost painter of the French Impressionist movement and is today one of the best-respected and most studied painters of all time. Bouguereau was an academic painter of the late nineteenth century best known for his almost photo-realist technique and for his romantic depiction of the female form; during his lifetime he was one of the most collected artists in the world, though his stock slipped considerably as the art world began to move toward increasing abstraction in the tradition of Monet. El Greco was a late Renaissance painter and one of the greatest painters of Venetian Mannerism. All of these painters are prominently featured at the Joslyn.

Answer: Heart of Darkness

"Heart of Darkness" also inspired Francis Ford Coppola's film "Apocalypse Now".

Answer: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

"Nosferatu" was directly inspired by "Caligari", as were hundreds of later films, notably "Frankenstein", "Citizen Kane", "The Maltese Falcon", and "Mulholland Drive". Too obscure for it's own quiz? So many topics, so little time.

Answer: Big band icons Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman

Ellington and Goodman's careers, American sagas in their own right, predated Davis' by many years. Though Miles Davis was a seminal figure in bebop, cool jazz, jazz-rock fusion, and smooth jazz, he came too late to impact the big band era.

Answer: Creating the standard nomenclature for naming of animal species

As noted before, Carolus Linnaeus established the widely accepted convention for naming species. Faraday, a chemist by inclination, became convinced early on that electromagnetic forces were the basis of most chemical processes, leading him into his highly productive research into electrical effects. Faraday's work can, without exaggeration, be said to have established the base principles for how we use electricity today.

This does not even take into account his monumental contributions to chemistry and theoretical physics - he was the first to propose the "unified field theory" that remains the holy grail of physics today.

Heck, I still might do a quiz on the guy.

Answer: Elie Wiesel

In "Night", Elie Wiesel's central character finally ends up studying Cabala with Moshe the Beadle, an outcast in the Jewish community who is later the first person in the book to sound the alarm about the Holocaust. In his later writings, Wiesel admits that he first desired to learn Cabala because he felt its mystical power would be able to hold back the ravages of the World War II genocides.

If you would like to read reputable, responsible works on these texts of Jewish mysticism, I wholeheartedly recommend the authors Gershom Scholem and Moshe Idel.

Answer: False

Most psychotherapists and reputable massage therapists agree that their respective disciplines are outside each others' scope of practice and that the same person should not try to do both things with the same client for ethical as well as pragmatic reasons. (I do know one fellow who has moved from a massage therapy practice to being a qualified psychotherapist with some success, but he does not do both specialties with individual clients.)

Answer: Royce Gracie

Brazilian Jiu-jitsu (BJJ) artist Royce Gracie was the most successful fighter in the first four UFC shows of the 1990s, mostly because his opponents were unfamiliar with his discipline's very effective on-the-mat defense and plethora of submission techniques.

In the years since, however, fighters like Hughes, Liddell, and St. Pierre have made of thorough study of BJJ, cross-training in that discipline along with others like wrestling, boxing, muay thai, judo, and Kyokushin karate. Gracie has had a few fights in different promotions since 2000, but lost his only UFC bout of the decade to Matt Hughes in 2006.

Answer: Captain Tuttle

Among the truly trivial facts on the specious surgeon that are manna for "M*A*S*H" maniacs are Tuttle's height (six feet, four inches), hair color (auburn), eye color (hazel), medical school (Berlin Polytechnic), parents' names (Harry and Frieda), and putative replacement (Major Murdock). Doggone it, I want to write this thing! Whether or not anyone would want to take it, however, is another matter.

Answer: Dracula in London

Written by Steve Jones in 1989, this game allowed the player(s) to assume the roles of Jonathan Harker, Mina Harker, Dr. Van Helsing, Arthur Holmwood, Quincy Morris, and Dr. Seward as they strove to destroy Dracula using both sacred weapons like the consecrated host and more mundane weapons like turpentine. Delightful low-tech fun!

Answer: Freakonomics

Probably the most enduringly controversial chapter of "Freakonomics" (co-written by noted economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner) asserted that the drop in crime in the early 1990s (after years of steady growth) was not caused by economic prosperity or creative police work, but rather by the nationwide legalization of abortion by the US Supreme Court in 1972. For details of this incendiary theory, as well as a generally enhanced view of how your world works, I highly recommend this book.