Bits And Pieces Of Things And Stuff Quiz

Answer: Diamond

With few exceptions sound will travel more slowly through a spongy material and faster through a stiffer material. Sound moves through rubber at a sedate 40 to 150 meters per second, air at about 330 m/s, water 1480 m/s and through steel at 5100 m/s. Sound really zips through a diamond at 12,000 m/s.

Answer: True

In 1742, Anders Celsius devised the Celsius scale dividing the range between the freezing and boiling points of water into 100 segments. For unknown reasons, he placed freezing at 100 degrees and boiling at zero. In 1744, Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus had a thermometer made marked with the Celsius scale, but reversed, and this eventually became standard.

The scale devised by Celsius was known as "Centigrade" until finally renamed for its creator in 1948.

Answer: Abraham Lincoln

Robert Lincoln was buying train tickets from the conductor when he slipped and fell between the train and the edge of the platform just as the train began moving. Renowned actor Edwin Booth grabbed Lincoln's collar and pulled him out of danger. A few months later, Booth's younger brother John shot and killed Robert's father.

Incredibly, the younger Lincoln (who was at the White House, just blocks from his father's assassination) was an eyewitness when Garfield was shot by Charles Guiteau in 1881 and was in the building in 1898 when McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz.

Answer: Brigitte Bardot

Brigitte Bardot, French actress, model and animal rights activist was born in 1934. Dick Clark, American TV producer and host, Anne Frank, Dutch diarist and Holocaust victim and Martin Luther King, Jr., an American civil rights leader, were all born in 1929.

Answer: Penny and Nickel

The Dollar coin costs 18.03 cents to produce. The Quarter 11.14 cents, the Dime 5.65 cents. All of them are bargains compared to the Nickel which costs 11.18 cents and the Penny 2.41 cents. In 2010, the net cost to the government to produce pennies was $58 million.

Answer: True

The Aztec Empire was an alliance of three major city-states, Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan and smaller cities dominated by them. It existed briefly from 1428 to 1521 A.D. The exact date of the founding of Oxford is unknown, but records indicate teaching going on as early as 1096 A.D.

Answer: 10% to 15%

Statistics on the size and content of the Worldwide Web are a little hard to pin down as different sources count things differently. And no one has indexed very much of the internet's content. Sources agree, though, that porn is not quite as intrusive as you might think based on the number of pop-up ads you can get when you click an unfamiliar website.

In 2013, there were over 14 trillion pages on the web. Google has indexed 48 billion of them, a few thousandths of a per cent.

Answer: Bat Bombs

A bomb casing contained several Mexican Free-tailed Bats with small incendiary bombs attached. Dropped at dawn, the bats would roost under the eaves of the many wood-framed houses in Japanese cities. Timers would ignite the incendiary devices causing huge firestorms.
Bat Bombs were the idea of a dentist friend of Eleanor Roosevelt. When it became obvious that the war would end before the bombs could be made operational, the plug was pulled on the project. But not, unfortunately, before several armed bats escaped and ignited a number of buildings at Carlsbad Army Air Base.

Answer: Yes

This phenomenon actually happened to English actor Gary Oldman. After living in the United States for twenty years Oldman returned to Britain for a role as George Smiley in the movie "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy". He found that he couldn't lose a noticeable trace of "American" in his speech and had to visit a speech therapist in order to regain his native English accent.

Answer: 3

When surgeons perform a kidney transplant, they usually leave the malfunctioning kidney in place. The transplanted kidney is placed in the patient's abdomen, connected to the bladder and to available blood vessels.