How Good is Your General Ignorance Again? Quiz

Answer: 5

Living in different parts of Africa and Asia, the five species of rhinoceros are the White, Black, Indian, Javan and Sumatran kinds. Both the White and the Black rhinoceros live in Africa and are actually greyish in colour. It may be that 'white' is from the Afrikaans word 'wyd', meaning wide - a reference to the shape of its mouth. The White rhinoceros also has a square upper lip while the Black rhinoceros has a hooked upper lip.

Answer: Thomas Edison

The word "hello" is believed to have been derived from an earlier similar word and was first used in other contexts, such as to express surprise. However, Thomas Edison was the first to use the word as a greeting when answering a telephone. According to a letter written by him in 1877, while he was working on improving Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone, Edison found that the word "hello" could be heard at some distance. Consequently he began using this word to start a telephone conversation and the practice was adopted by his co-workers.

It then spread to operators in telephone exchanges and became the standard greeting.

Answer: Spain

At one time Spain was in control of Cuba. In the 1890s they were trying to retain this control against opposition by the Cuban people and devised concentration camps in an attempt to 'concentrate' Cuban civilians into small areas so that they were easier to control. In fact, Spanish troops were eventually defeated despite these 'precautions' and they departed from the island in 1898.

Answer: Australia

Burringurrah, or Mount Augustus, is in a remote outback area of Western Australia. At 858 metres high and with a ridge of some 8 kilometres in length, it is much bigger than the better-known Uluru, or Ayers Rock. Its sandstone upper part is believed to have been part of a sea floor some 1,000 million years ago while the granite bedrock this sandstone lies on is thought to be at least half as old again.

Answer: It was a heavy gas

During prehistoric times the many volcanic eruptions threw out nitrogen and other gases and they rose some way into the atmosphere. As the heaviest gas, nitrogen stayed closer to the earth than other gases though. A supplementary reason is that nitrogen is unreactive, unlike others of the expelled gases, so remained in its original state. By about two hundred million years ago nitrogen made up some seventy-eight per cent of our atmosphere and it is believed this figure has remained a constant ever since.

Answer: Britain

The dish Chicken Tikka originated in the Indian subcontinent but food historians seem to agree that the curry dish Chicken Tikka Masala was invented in Britain. The dish was created when an unnamed chef who emigrated to Britain from Bangladesh added a curry based on tomatoes to the original dish.

It soon became very popular and a previous British foreign secretary, Robin Cook, even called it "a true British national dish" in a speech he gave in April 2001.

Answer: Algae

Although trees have been called 'the lungs of the world', algae actually produce a greater amount of oxygen. Scientists estimate that somewhere between fifty five and eighty percent of the oxygen produced comes from algae. These organisms live predominantly at or near the surface of oceans and range in size from tiny single-celled entities to multi-celled ones, such as kelp.

However, they all contain chlorophyll and photosynthesise, a process which generates oxygen as a byproduct that is then released. Most of the rest of the world's oxygen also comes from photosynthesis, not just by trees but by other land plants too. Cryogenic air separation and pressure swing adsorption are both industrial processes which produce relatively small amounts of oxygen.

Answer: Watermelon

Of the choices, only a watermelon meets the definition of a berry, which is a fruit that has a number of seeds inside it but no stone. Despite their names, strawberries and blackberries are actually aggregated drupes as one fruit is composed of many very small drupes - fruits with just one seed apiece. Like other fruits such as plums or olives, a peach has just one large stone inside it so is also a drupe. Watermelons though are actually large berries, as are fruits such as bananas and oranges, because they have many seeds inside.

Answer: Only ice

Cirrus clouds are composed entirely of ice and are formed when water vapour freezes at high altitudes. They are one of three different types of high-level clouds and the other two types, cirrocumulus and cirrostratus, are also composed of ice crystals.

The clouds are shaped differently though with cirrus clouds forming long thin streamers which can be hundreds of miles long. There are four different types of cirrus clouds: cirrus castellanus, fibratus, spissatus, and uncinuss and all have somewhat different shapes.

Answer: Ernest Duchesne

Ernest Duchesne was motivated by remarks from others to conduct scientific research into some moulds' possible anti-bacterial qualities. Among other things, he injected guinea pigs with bacterial diseases and with media containing penicillin glaucum and they survived.

His resulting 1896 doctoral thesis showed the anti-bacterial properties of certain moulds but was not given publicity. In 1928 Alexander Fleming independently discovered that a mould, penicillium notatum, killed bacteria around it and named the active part penicillin. Howard Florey and Ernst Chain built on Fleming's findings and in 1945 the three were jointly awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Duchesne's work was rediscovered later and he was posthumously honoured in 1949.