Needles Trivia Quiz

Answer: To tie poultry together for cooking

A trussing needle is a fairly thick needle, about eight inches long, that is used for tying up chicken, duck, turkey or other cooking birds prior to cooking. Its purpose is to hold the bird's shape, to keep it from falling apart during the cooking process, and to allow it to be cooked evenly. It's just as well the bird is deceased before this painful looking instrument is prodded into various parts of its body.

Did you know that needles made out of bone have been found in caves in South Africa? Scientists have dated these early sewing implements at 61,000 years old. How amazing is that?

Answer: False

While a sewing needle is long and thin, with a very sharp pointed tip used for pushing through thinner materials, an upholstery needle looks quite different. While it can also be straight, it is usually curved, and much thicker than a sewing needle. That enables it to be pulled through much thicker materials, with the curve enabling the user to get into difficult corners and sections of work that a straight needle can't reach.

American Indian people used to make both needle and thread from the agave plant found in abundance in their regions. The leaf of this ugly looking plant was soaked for a lengthy period of time until it began to fall apart. When that took place, it left long strings of fibre that could be used for thread, and, with the end of each terminating in a sharp tip, the needle section came built into each "thread". People through the ages are just so inventive and clever. We're an amazing race of people, capable of SO much more, if only we could stop killing one another.

Answer: Perfume

This plant, called a bush, even though it can grow up to twenty-six feet tall, has a relatively long life of some fifty years. It originated in Mexico and Central America but has spread to Fiji, Australia and Asia from there, and considered a real pest in those countries. Yet, one man's poison is another man's meat, for products utilised from the needle bush include the following:

Its floral extracts are used to make perfumes, tannin is made from its bark, flavouring for chutneys is made from the leaves, the pods can be roasted and used in various recipes, the foliage, which contains some twenty per cent protein, provides forage for animals, its flowers attract honey making bees, inks and material dyes are made from its bark and fruit, and it has been used in traditional medicines to treat malaria, diarrhea, and skin disease.

Answer: Paris

These three obelisks are from the era of ancient Egypt. There are actually four of them. The first two, in London and New York City, are a pair, as is the one in Paris. Its mate, however, remains in Luxor, Egypt. Why they were called Cleopatra's Needles is anybody's guess, as they have no connection at all with that fascinating woman (Cleopatra VII ie) from history. In fact, by the time she came along (69-30 BC), with her reign lasting from 51-30 BC, these monuments were already over one thousand years old.

The needle in London, located along the Victoria embankment close to the Golden Jubilee Bridge, was an 1819 gift to the UK from the ruler of Egypt and the Sudan at that time. His name, believe it or not, was Muhammad Ali. Though gifted in that year, it didn't actually arrive in that country until 1878. New York's needle, located in Central Park, was a gift to that country's consul general at Cairo from the Khedive of Egypt and the Sudan, in 1877. The Paris needle is located in the Place de la Concorde. It was gifted to France, again by Muhammad Ali, in 1826. Erected in 1833, its rather unfortunate location is at the spot where poor old Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had their heads removed in 1794.

Answer: England

Those three stacks of chalk look a little like a huge sea monster appearing out of the ocean. They are close to the western end of the Isle of Wight (four miles off the coast of England), and at one stage, there was another stack accompanying them. It was the taller and thinner of the four, and called Lot's Wife. Like Lot's unfortunate partner, it too met with an unfortunate end. No, no, it wasn't demolished by some heavenly blast, nor turned into a pillar of salt, but was the victim of a huge storm in 1874 instead, at which time it collapsed into its watery grave below. That was the only stack that resembled a needle in any way - the remaining three are shorter and stubbier - but the name associated with needles has remained ever since.

Today, The Needles are a huge tourist attraction. They feature a lighthouse at the outermost extremity, are the site of many famous yacht regattas, and were once the site of a large artillery battery for almost one hundred years. It finally closed in 1954. Nearby on the Isle of Wight is the site of a now closed British rocket testing site (intercontinental ballistic missiles), the site of the launching of a space satellite, and a nearby giant chairlift offering stunning views of The Needles. All these sites, normally open to the tourist trade, are closed whenever winds reach force eight on the Beaufort scale. Oh I say chaps, that's a bit alarming!

Answer: California

The needles are located in the Sequoia National Forest at the southern end of the Sierra Nevada mountains in that state. This area of the world is also know for those massive monuments to nature, the giant Sequoia trees, all set within their location of stunning landscapes initially carved out by glaciers, and huge granite spires.

The Needles are a series of those spires. They are located along a ridge above the Kern river, and are a magnificent sight. There is an almost eerie majesty to these stacks with their faces lifted to the heavens that is just a little overpowering at first sight.

It's as though you're in the presence of an ageless mysticism somehow, awesome and mysterious.

Answer: 1962 World Fair

The Space Needle in Seattle, Washington, a very tall observation tower that strikes its dramatic pose 605 feet above the ground, was built as an international icon to mark the 1962 World State Fair held in that city. It was once the tallest symbol for the entire western half of the United States for a time, but has been surpassed since. Looking so frail as it dwarves the people below, this tower is far stronger than its appearance suggests. It can, for example, "withstand winds of up to 200 miles per hour and earthquakes of up to 9.1 magnitude...". An elevator goes from the ground floor right to the top where an observation deck, restaurants and small gift shop are located. That elevator travels at some ten miles per hour, and takes almost a minute to reach the deck, but on windy days (gulp), it is slowed down to five miles per hour. Who in their right mind would want to ride in an elevator that has to be slowed down in windy weather?! The tower is very, very strong however.

Occasionally parachutists will test their skills by leaping off the observation tower, but special permission is needed for this. Those who attempt to do so without that permit are promptly arrested. My next question is who in their right mind would want to leap off it in the first place?! The Space Needle is a wonderful Seattle monument though, visible for miles, easily recognisable in photographs and film all over the world, and a real tribute to the architects, designers and builders who brought it to life. (Voluntarily jumping off a 605-foot tall structure with nothing but a flimsy piece of material between you and certain death below. Are they nuts?)

Answer: Christopher Wren

That's astonishing, isn't it? A hypodermic needle is one that is described as hollow, with the ability to either inject substances into, or withdrawn substances from, the body. Oh I feel faint. These implements can saves lives though, so rather than being perceived as a thing of terror (oh I feel dizzy) they should be looked upon as a mini miracle and the product of an extremely intelligent mind. The knowledge of the general design of a hollow instrument to inject substances into a body was known to man dating back to the days of ancient Greece, simply by their observations of how a snake bite works. Knowledge and putting that knowledge into practice are two different things however. It would be the fertile mind of the great English architect, Christopher Wren that, in 1656, saw those early ideas become a reality.

To test whether traditional medicines could be applied through the veins, he designed an early hypodermic by combining an animal bladder as the syringe and a goose quill as a needle, and tested its viability by injecting small amounts of opium into some very happy dogs. That is so clever, it almost makes one gasp with wonder. It wouldn't be for another two hundred years however (1851) that one Dr. Alexander Wood of Scotland invented the glass syringe and hollow needle, and that gentleman has gone down in history as the inventor of the hypodermic syringe we know today. This is little unfair. To achieve that, he stood, in the words of Isaac Newton, "upon the shoulder of giants". Credit must go where it is due, however. We could hardly have syringes today of animal bladders and goose quills, now could we. So just as Wren stood on the shoulders of the ancient Greeks, so Wood stood on his. We salute them all today - every time we see a doctor with evilly glinting eyes approaching some defenceless portion of our anatomy with a hypodermic needle in hand.

Answer: To play gramophones

Gramophones, or phonographs as the early machines were known, were devices that enabled mankind to record AND replay sound for the first time. America's Thomas Edison is credited as being the first person to come up with such a device in 1877, a most amazing invention you must agree. A machine at that time in history that could actually capture and play back recorded sound. A hundred years earlier would probably have seen Edison burned at the stake. Before Edison, there had been several early machines that could capture sound, but none capable of playing it back. He built upon those early ideas.

Edison's sound was recorded on to tinfoil coated cylinders. I've been lucky enough to hear recordings on those old cylinders, including one of Alfred Lord Tennyson reciting "The Charge of the Light Brigade". It was an incredible experience. From those very early beginnings, the phonograph and its cylinders evolved through the genius of others, into flat discs (early records) with spiral grooves that were played back by the use of a needle - a gramophone needle - miraculously reading the sounds engraved upon the discs. And mankind has endlessly developed and improved upon recording and playing devices ever since. It's those early steps that are so completely and utterly fascinating though. How did they even conceive of such an idea in the first place? Amazing, and, yes, very humbling.

Answer: Pins and needles sensation in the limbs

Paresthesia is the "sensation of tingling, tickling, pricking, or burning" of any part of a person's body. This condition can be either temporary, or in same cases, longer term. It's not painful, just vaguely unpleasant and unnatural feeling, totally at odd with how our sense of touch and sensation nerve receptors normally work. Nor does it appear to have any damaging effects when it occurs under normal circumstances. In the language of the every day person, this condition is usually referred to as having "pins and needles". Interestingly, for those of you who didn't study prefixes and suffixes at school, the word paresthesia is a Greek derivative, from "para" (meaning abnormal) and aesthesia (meaning sensation). I confess I didn't know the latter of the two.

Paresthesia is usually caused by a temporary interruption of the normal blood flow to the part of the body where the pins and needles sensation is experienced. Changing the body's position can alleviate this quite easily. Feeling the normal sense of touch return to the affected part is quite a nice sensation on its own, a little like the onset of life (if one wishes to be dramatic). However, there is a real danger if this condition occurs in people suffering from any permanent loss of feeling - such as that caused by spinal injuries in a major car accident. That can leave a person with permanent paralysis and loss of sensation to any lower part of their anatomy, depending on where the spinal damage has been done. In that case, if sensation cannot be experienced, and blood flood to any part of the body has been interrupted for any length of time, then a pressure sore, that most dreaded of conditions for the medical profession, can develop.