Patchwork Quilt 3 Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Latin word for each metal seal was bulla

A Papal bull is a "decree, letters patent, or charter" (Wikipedia) issued from the sitting Pope of each period via the Roman Catholic headquarters of the Vatican. Decrees of this nature have been issued by Popes since the 6th century, but they weren't called as such until the 13th century (unofficially) and the 15th century (officially). There were two types of bulls and these were broken down into greater or lesser moment.

By the 12th century, quite a few of these bulls had been forged. Because of the lack of instant telecommunications, this could take months or even years to be discovered, and great damage to the church could be done during the interim. In an attempt to stop this happening, the reigning Pope took to sealing each issued bull with his individual and very unique ring. Each one of these was created for a new Pope upon his ascension to the position, and destroyed upon his decease, so that no documents could be forged in his name immediately after his death. Each seal was formed by the Pope pressing that ring into a melted piece of lead at the end of a decree or bull. Sometimes, for very special decrees, a piece of melted gold was used instead, but each melted piece of metal, whether lead or gold, was known, in the Latin language, as a "bulla".

Answer: A youth subculture

Bodgies and widgies in Australia and New Zealand were the youth subculture of the 1950s. In England, similar groups were called rockers and in the United States, they were known as greasers. Canada possibly called them either rockers or greasers, but may have had their own unique name for these groups as well. Bodgies and widgies dressed very much like the characters portrayed in the 1978 film "Grease" starring Olivia Newton John and John Travolta. It was set in a senior high school in the late 1950s for the most part. Widgies in Australia commonly dressed the same as the Pink Ladies in that film - flared skirts, rope petticoats, and sweetheart tops, while their bodgie counterparts slicked their hair back with grease and wore tight jeans, leather jackets, white t-shirts or black mesh tops, and boots.

A beat up but workable car was also part of the scene and the current girl of the moment sat so close to her boyfriend in the front seat that they appeared to be as one. Possessing a motor-bike was an additional bonus. A bodgie with one of those was bound to always have a widgie clinging tightly behind him as they roared defiantly down the main street. The attitude of course was sheer rebellion and a challenging of any authority. Then there were the street gang brawls. These weren't as notable in Australia as they were overseas, but they did occur once in a while. In anticipation of this happening, the bodgie almost always carried a flick knife, for show if nothing else. One of my older brothers was a classic case. We have photos of him from that era, slicked back hair laden with oil, black leather jacket, tight jeans, tattoos and all - sitting on a very large and shining motorbike - and with just the right amount of curl to his lip as he stared contemptuously at the camera. It was probably taken just before Mum made him go and do the washing up.

Answer: Yes

This was not in the far distant past though. As recently as 2014, a herd of approximately 40 hippos was reported roaming in the wild in the department of Antioquia in Colombia (Colombia is broken down into 32 of these departments). There's nothing supernatural about this however or that the animals are the descendants of a species left behind when the continents began to drift apart millions of years ago. Instead, they're descended from four hippos that were kept in a private menagerie by Colombian drug lord, Pablo Escobar, in the 1980s. After he was shot and killed in a shootout with Colombian police in 1993, the authorities, as authorities do, decided the hippos were too difficult to move, and left the poor things roaming the untended property to survive as best as they could. There, their numbers began to increase.

In 2009, three hippos (including one rather comically named Pepe) escaped from the property and made their way to another department in Colombia, where poor old Pepe was shot by the authorities. Of the ones left behind in Antioquia, their numbers increased to forty by 2014. Hopefully they won't be slaughtered as well. In the meantime though, and in a kind of weird tribute to Pablo Escobar, the National Geographic, in 2013, made a documentary about these poor creatures whose fate is very uncertain, and called it "Cocaine Hippos".

Answer: Stone of Scone

The Stone of Scone, which is also known as the Coronation Stone, was used for centuries during the coronations of Irish and Scottish monarchs, and then, following on from this, for the monarchs of Great Britain. The stone is a block of red sandstone which was hollowed out at its centre in order for royal bottoms to sit upon during their coronations. Various legends surround it. It is said, for example, to be the stone on which the biblical Jacob rested his head at Bethel (Genesis 28:18). From there his sons were said to have taken it to Egypt, after which it eventually made its way to Spain. When the Spanish invaded Ireland around 700 BC (I didn't know they had) during the many Celtic excursions into that country, it was carried there by Simon Brech, the son of the Spanish king. It remained there for some centuries and was used for the coronations of the various regional Irish kings. That's where the groaning legends arose. If however a claimant to the throne was not of Irish blood, the stone was said to remain silent.

Fergus, the son of the first Scottish king crowned in Scotland - who was also of royal Irish blood - took the Stone of Scone with him to that country, and it was eventually deposited at the monastery of Perth in Perthshire. Scottish kings, up to John Balliol, utilised this much travelled stone for their coronations right up to 1291, after which it was kidnapped by King Edward I of England and taken to Westminster, England. Spare a thought for the horse that lugged it all the way there. The stone weighed 336 lbs. In 1950 it was stolen by Scottish Nationalists and retrieved by England the following year. Then, in 1996, the British Prime Minister at that time handed the stone around everyone's neck back to Scotland, where the Scots say they will lend it back to the English for future coronations. The comical thing about all this is that it possibly isn't the original Stone at all. There are at least two other claimants to that. We have a saying in Australia when things leave us scratching our heads or rolling our eyes. All this bother over a big rock - "Stone the crows, mate".

Answer: Syrup

Easton's Syrup was one of those "remedies" from the 19th century recommended by doctors as a cure-all for just about every illness under the sun. It contained strychnine of all things - which was a noted stimulant (if it didn't kill you); iron phosphate, which, at the time had nothing to do with boosting the body's iron levels but was listed as brain food instead; and quinine.

The last ingredient was described as stimulating the appetite and as an all purpose health booster. Easton's Syrup was named after its creator, British physician, Doctor J.A.E. Easton.

Answer: A hospital for the needy

The Savoy Hotel has regally held that position since 1889, but its site started out life as a palace built by Peter, the first Earl of Richmond (1203-1268) who was given that title and the land in 1246 by King Henry III. Henry's wife, Eleanor of Provence, was Peter's niece. It later passed down to the Dukes of Lancaster who lived there for over 100 years, and whose descendants merged with the English crown as Henry IV and V. After the palace was all but destroyed during the Peasants Revolt of 1381, the site remained unused until the much later reign of Henry VII (lived 1457-1509, ruled 1485-1509) who left enough funds in his will to built the Savoy Hospital there for the poor and needy. That opened in 1512. It was huge, the most impressive hospital of the era, and also the first to cater for a permanent medical team.

1642 saw it taken over as a military hospital, and in 1679, it was converted into a barracks for the military. One hundred years later, while housing a military hospital once again, a military prison and a recruitment centre, much of the huge building burned down in a large blaze, with just the chapel remaining. The site remained unused then for another hundred years until impresario Richard O'Dyly Carte (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame) purchased it in and built the famous Savoy Theatre on the site. That opened in 1881. He added the Savoy Hotel to the structure in 1889. It was the first hotel in the United King to be lit entirely with electricity and has hosted an extraordinary number of famous guests ever since. And just to take it right back to its roots, the first time the future Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom was seen publicly with her future husband, Prince Philip the Duke of Edinburgh, was at a wedding reception at this grand old Hotel.

Answer: It has huge biceps

A member of the Carabid family of beetles, the Agra schwarzeneggeri beetle, was not described in science until 2002. Discovered in Costa Rica, this small creature was given its star quality name because its middle legs jutting out from the centre section of its body can only be described as having rather large biceps - much like those of the famous Arnold Schwarzenegger himself, particularly in his body-building days. No doubt the star of the "Terminator" series of movies was amused and flattered by the acknowledgement, and probably just as relieved to know there was no other resemblance between himself and his namesake.

Did you know that the famous British writer, Charles Darwin, was an avid beetle collector in his early twenties? That was during a beetle collecting craze that gripped England in the mid 1800s. He remarked in a letter to a friend that "No poet ever felt more delight at seeing his first poem published than I did at seeing in Stephen's Illustrations of British Insects the magic words, "captured by C. Darwin, Esq"."

Answer: North Africa to Turkey to Europe to South America

Coffee was first "discovered" in North Africa by the Arabians, centuries before it was introduced into Europe. This long delay was because the Arabian Sultans closely guarded the coffee plant and the method by which coffee was prepared. Finally though, in the 17th century, coffee was introduced into Europe by Turkey, in its trading with Venice. By 1650, the first of many coffee houses began to appear in Italy and from there this popular, if bitter, drink made its way into the rest of Europe where it was grown in greenhouses there.

It wasn't until 1683 that sugar began to be used in the drink. How it ever became popular without that and milk is beyond the imagination of my taste buds. It would be the French who then introduced coffee into the Island of Martinique - and from lovely part of the world, it spread into the rest of the Caribbean and then into South America.

Answer: The paws resemble those of a housecat

Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square in London was constructed by several sculptors between 1840 and 1843 as a tribute to British naval hero, Admiral Horatio Nelson. The statue of Nelson at the top of the monument was sculpted by Edward Baily, while the four lions around the base of the column were made by Edwin Landseer, and added to the monument in 1867.

The comical thing about those lions - well, black comedy anyhow - is that Landseer asked to be supplied with the body of a Barbary lion that had recently died at the London Zoo, in order to make sketches of its body to refer to while sculpting. However, he took so long doing the drawings that the lion began to decompose, and Landseer had to improvise with the parts that were no longer...er...solid. As a result, it is said that the feet of the lions on Nelson's Column strongly resemble that of a family cat instead.

Answer: Sneezing

Oh how disgusting. A sneeze can shoot out some 40,000 drops of moisture. Way to kill the mood to be covered in that. Health professionals used to advise that we put our hand across our nose and mouth during an "Achoo!" to reduce the percentage of droplets spreading out into the wider environment from the sneeze. However they now advise that those infected carrying droplets we sneeze onto our hand are then spread around anyhow when we touch everyday objects or shake hands - unless we wash our hands after every sneeze. So the latest advice is that we hold our forearm or the inside of our elbow across our nose and mouth as we sneeze instead. Surely they can't be serious? Holding the inside of the elbow across your nose and mouth is physically impossible. You'd dislocate your neck.

Sneezing during the initial stages of the mating process is thought to occur because of crossed connections in the autonomic nervous system of the brain. If a male, for example, becomes aroused, and his genital organs more or less wake up, this also wakes up that part of the brain that controls sneezing as well, because, believe it or not, the nose also contains erectile tissue. Astonishing, isn't it? Let's hope this doesn't work in reverse however, because, if a poor fellow ever has an attack of hay fever in public, he'll probably get arrested.