Patchwork Quilt 7 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Mule deer

"Bambi", the 1942 movie, was based on the book, "Bambi, A Life in the Woods", by Felix Salten, a rather grim story that had to be brightened considerably for the film. The movie itself took years of pre-production work before its release. Walt Disney had originally intended the hero in the story to be a roe deer.

This was altered in the lead up to the film production to make Bambi a mule deer instead, when Disney realised that roe deer weren't native to America, but that mule deer were. It's doubtful though whether the vast majority of young children worldwide who have watched this much loved movie ever since its first release would have known the difference.

Answer: A gas mask

With the ever increasing threat of international war looming on the horizon in the late 1930s, and with the memory of the agonies that gas victims had gone through in World War One still fresh in their minds, handbags for women were accordingly designed with safety in mind. Many of them came with an extra pouch large enough to carry a gas mask - just in case. Gas masks were more commonly known as respirators during this period in history.

Did you know that the invention of respirators dates back, astonishingly so, to the first century AD, where they were described in one of his works by the author and philosopher, Pliny the Elder. These were manufactured from animal bladders during the Roman age, and were worn by miners to protect themselves from red lead dust in the mines.

Answer: To prevent rigor mortis

If freshly slaughter animal meat is chilled immediately after skinning and slicing, cold shortening occurs in its flesh causing it to shrink to a third of its size. Rigor mortis, if allowed to take place in a slaughtered beast, can determine the meat's tenderness, but if meat isn't chilled soon after slaughtering, it can go off. So in this vicious circle of preserving meat before that happens, but to prevent cold shortening and its accompanying shrinkage, alternating currents are pumped through the flesh.

This causes the fibers in the meat to contract and then relax back to proper size. Anyone for a sausage?

Answer: England

The Thames Tunnel, built underneath that historic river between 1825 and 1843, is considered the world's first tunnel constructed under a navigable river. It connected the districts of Rotherhithe and Wapping in England's capital city of London. Measuring 35 feet wide by 20 feet high, the tunnel stretched a distance of 1,300 feet, at a depth of 75 feet below the surface of the river. Several attempts had been made prior to the construction of the Thames Tunnel to build under the river, but all had failed, leading the authorities to conclude that an underwater tunnel was just plain impractical. Impractical, that is, until the famous engineer, Marc Brunel, became interested in the project. He came up with the idea of the tunnelling shield, which is a type of temporary support tunnel while the real tunnel is being constructed around it. It is believed Brunel came up with this ingenious design when observing shipworms eating their way through wood that was submerged.

Originally constructed to allow horses and carriages to pass below the Thames, the completed project was never used for that purpose, but became a pedestrian through way only. In effect, it turned into an underwater arcade, with shops and bazaars, fortune-tellers, dancing monkeys even, and every kind of goods the curious passer-by could hope to find - along with a passing parade of prostitutes - and muggers waiting to pounce on the unwary. More than two million people passed through it every year, paying a penny a head for the privilege of doing so. At that rate it would have taken until 1918 to pay off the cost of the project, which, at its conclusion, had amounted to 634,000 English pounds. However, long before that distant future eventuated, the tunnel was purchased by the East London Railway Company in 1865. Following ongoing maintenance and upgrading over the years, the Thames Tunnel is still in use as a rail link well into the 21st century.

Answer: Rhubarb

Pieplant, aka rhubarb, is actually classed as a vegetable, but whose fleshy stalks have long been used in the making of desserts and pies usually associated with fruit and sugar. It is only its stalks that can be consumed by humans, however, and not the large leaves on the plant. Those leaves contain high doses of oxalic acid and are inedible. Rhubarb stalks can also be eaten raw and are said to have a taste similar to celery. A once common treat for children in the United Kingdom were the young tender stalks of the plant dipped in sugar (several Fun Trivia dentists have just fainted), while over in Chile, stalks were commonly sold flavoured with salt or chili pepper.

This versatile plant has been known to man for almost 3,000 years, so it has well and truly stood the test of time. Its most popular strands originated in Turkey, China and in Russia. The Russian one was the most sought after in the western world centuries ago, so much so that it cost several times the price of expensive spices such as cinnamon and saffron to purchase. It took Europeans many years before they were able to successfully grow pieplant in their own area of the world, and, once again, it was the Russian strand that took off there. Used for several millennia in folk medicine for its laxative purposes, this versatile plant can also be pickled, or used to make jams, made into a popular wine, or utilised to produce brown dye.

Answer: Turned their products into wine bricks

Prohibition, via the 18th Amendment, was introduced into the United States in 1920, and lasted until 1933. This Amendment made "the manufacture, sale, transport, import, or export of alcoholic beverages" illegal. The Volstead Act, enacted in this regard, saw thousands of vineyard owners facing the prospect of bankruptcy as a result. Some tore up their vineyards and planted orchards in their stead, facing a hand to mouth existence in the interim until the trees bore fruit. Others looked for loopholes in the Act, where, to their delight, this too bore fruit.

This Act stated that grapes could still be grown, but only if they were used for non-alcoholic purposes. It also stated that if anyone purchased grapes from the growers and turned them into wine, the vineyard owners, if they were aware of this, could be imprisoned. HOWEVER, if the owners warned buyers that their grape products weren't to be used in the manufacture of wine, and if those products passed through enough buyers to distant the growers from their end use, then they could justifiably claim their innocence. Oh how cunning they were. Vineyard owners subsequently began to create wine bricks from their grapes as a result of this ruling - products that were considered legal - and set about selling them down the line, each with a carefully worded warning that they mustn't be used to be turned into wine.

But the wording on those warnings? It stated, with all the feigned innocence in the world, that, if you dissolved a brick in a gallon of water, that would be fine, but that you mustn't leave that dissolved product "in a cool cupboard for 21 days - or it would turn into wine".

Answer: A superstition regarding the number 111

Sportsmen can be a superstitious lot, with many of them having all kinds of little quirks and beliefs they think will enable them to play well - or otherwise. In the game of cricket, 111 is called a Nelson, and any batsmen, if he is sitting on that number of runs scored in any game, tends to get a bit leery because he is fearful of being bowled out. This number refers to the famous British naval officer, Horatio Nelson, who lost his eye and most of his right arm during the course of his many naval encounters with the enemies of Great Britain.

The 111 refers to the mistaken belief that Nelson also lost another body part as well, with one famous cricket historian referring to it as Nelson having lost "one eye, one arm and one etcetera". Another famous English cricketer, David Shepherd (1940-2009), was so superstitious about this number that whenever that score was reached during a game, he would stand on one leg for a time. What he thought this would achieve was anybody's guess, but once the spectators at matches caught on to this quirk, they would cheer loudly until the next run was reached.

Answer: Quince

Native to areas across Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, the quince is a rather hard and tart tasting fruit when eaten raw, but shows up at its best if softened first by frost bletting, or if manufactured into jams and jellies. What it loses it taste though, it more than makes up in perfume and the lovely flowers it produces before the fruit develops. The hardy quince has been known to man for thousands of years and can grow in almost all climates, including in areas stricken by drought. It had made their way into Europe by the 13th century, becoming so popular there that King Edward I even had several trees planted at the Tower of London - some consolation, no doubt, for the doomed inmates therein.

In the Balkans whenever a child was born, it was once traditional to plant a quince tree to symbolise love, fertility and a long life. It was also once a law in Ancient Athens (according to Plutarch at any rate) that a newly married couple should be "shut into a chamber, and eat a quince together". One presumes that was to hasten along a happy event nine months later. Over in Turkey, "to eat the quince" meant that one had to face up to an unpleasant situation; but most interestingly of all, volume one of James Strong's "Cyclopaedia of Biblical, theological, and ecclesiastical literature" states that assorted ancient works suggest that the fruit that Eve was tempted to eat in the Garden of Eden was actually the delightfully perfumed quince. But oh, the bitter taste that followed.

Answer: Christmas disease

That'd be some present to be diagnosed with this condition - except that the Christmas disease is nothing to do with Santa. It is, instead, an inherited disease caused by a genetic mutation. Rarer than Haemophilia A disease, which is a deficiency in factor VIII, Haemophilia B is a deficiency in the clotting factor IX on the X chromosome. Only males are the victims of this illness. Symptoms are an increased propensity for haemorrhaging, vulnerability to bruising, nosebleeds, and bleeding in the urinary tract and joints.

This condition was named the Christmas disease in 1952 after its first diagnosed patient, British born Stephen Christmas (1947-1993). He was found to have the illness at a young age, and if his life wasn't hard enough dealing with all its symptoms and the multiple blood and plasma transfusions he had to endure thereafter, Stephen developed AIDS from one of those transfusions at a time when donations of blood were not routinely screened. He died as a result of that illness at the age of forty-six. Life can be really cruel sometimes.

Answer: Bulls

Don't worry, there is no bloodshed involved in this sport or I wouldn't have included the question. Togyu involves pitting two bulls against each other in an arena in events which draw thousands of spectators. Dating back to the 17th century where it began as a fun event between the bulls of two farmers, this sport ensures that the animals are evenly matched in weight, do not harm one another (a prime rule) and are immediately removed from the ring should one accidentally gore the other.

Instead, they are brought into the arena by their coaches (yes, the bulls have coaches), encouraged to lock horns, and then push each other back and forth attempting to gain the most ground. The match is over and the winner declared when one bull has had enough of this horseplay and withdraws in disgust. Also known as "Bull Sumo", that should put a delightful image in your mind. Fortunately though, the bulls do not have to wear those stiff mawashi belts that sumo wrestlers wear in their matches today, or one imagines each Togyu match would involve more than its share of high-pitched bellowing. And that's no bull.