Pick n' Mix: Part SIX Trivia Quiz

Answer: Thanatos

After Sisyphus had greatly displeased Zeus, Zeus ordered Thanatos, the god of death, to bind Sisyphus in Tartarus, an abyss used for the prison and punishment of the wicked, and jail of of the Titans. Sisyphus pretended to be greatly impressed with Thanatos' chains, and asked to see how they worked. Stunned by this unusual reaction, Thanatos obliged, and Sisyphus then used the chains to bind the god with his own chains.

Because of this, while Thanatos was tied up nobody on Earth died. Ares, (the god of war) was particularly furious as this had taken all the fun out of any battles he was involved in. Other gods were annoyed at sacrifices now being impossible for mortals to perform. Ares eventually found Thanatos and freed him.

In some versions of the tale, it is Hades who is bound by the chains. Sisyphus' punishment was to be made to push a boulder up a hill for all eternity, only for it to roll back down the hill for him to start pushing it again. This has let to the word "Sisyphean" being used to describe an unending and pointless job.

Answer: Japan

The scientific name for the firefly squid is "watasenia scintillans," and although it spends most of its time in deep water between 700 and 1,300 feet (200-400m) down, this small squid is found along the coast of Japan in the Spring time. Scientists still have yet to determine for certain the purpose of their bioluminescent properties. Towards the end of their lifespan, the females migrate to the shore, release all of their eggs, then die.

When the squids are due in the area, many tourists travel to see the water lit up with the blue lights the squids give off.

Answer: Billy Redden

Billy Redden was discovered as a teenager by a casting agent, and although he could not play the banjo, nor was albino as requested, he was cast as Lonnie. Because Redden did not play the banjo, a banjo player was hidden underneath a specially made shirt behind him during the film's legendary "dueling banjos" scene. Forty years after the film's release, Redden was interviewed in 2012, and stated that he never benefited from any financial security as a result of the film:

"I'd like to have all the money I thought I'd make from this movie. I wouldn't be working at Walmart right now. And I'm struggling really hard to make ends meet"

Answer: Banana

Panama disease is caused by the fungal pathogen of plants, Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. cubense, which is highly resistant to fungicides, and is notorious for being the bane of banana growers throughout the tropics. The pathogen invades through the roots, often through open wounds and within months the entire plant will wilt and collapse. The fungus thrives in the soil even when the plant is dead, preventing banana trees from growing in the same spot again.

In the 1950s through to the 1960s, Panama disease wiped out the world's dominant type of banana, the Gros Michel dessert variety. They were richer and sweeter than the modern dominant variety, the Cavendish banana. Most bananas are sterile, grown via cloned technology; this makes them susceptible to disease, and growers cannot breed them to have resistance. This led the banana growers of the 1960s to abandon the Gros Michel breed for the more resilient Cavendish, all of which are cloned. A new strain of Panama disease, Tropical Race 4, has been spotted in Colombia, the fourth-largest producer of bananas in the world. Cavendish cannot be bred into having resistance, and there is no easy replacement for it should the disease claim it. This, for some time at least, could spell the end of the banana.

Answer: Soma

Soma is located in the Aegean region of Turkey, and it is known for its lignite coal mining. Because of its low heating value and high moisture content, ignite is classed as the lowest rank of coal. Its high moisture content also makes it more likely to spontaneously combust.

On 13 May 2014, there was an explosion in the Eynez coal mine, Soma, Manisa Province, western Turkey. This caused an underground fire which burned for 2 days, killing 301 miners. Mine accidents have been known to happen in Turkey, but the Soma mine's owners had tried to reduce the cost of coal production, and in doing so even more safety regulations were compromised. The CEO of Soma bragged that he had managed to reduce costs from $140 a tonne to less than $24 a tonne. Ventilation was not safe, and gas masks did not work. The equipment they used was no longer imported, but bought locally, one of which pieces of equipment exploded and caused the fire.

Then Prime Minister of Turkey (who would later become the country's 12th President), Recep Tayyip Erdoðan, caused great anger amongst the locals of Soma when he visited the site. He told grieving relatives that death and mining accidents were "part of the job" of being a miner, and even went as far as to coldly give examples of 19th Century accidents of industrial England. This escalated into Erdoðan fleeing enraged protesters into a local shop to hide. One of his aides was photographed kicking an upset demonstrator.

Answer: Naples

In the early 1930s, Lucky Luciano (born Salvatore Lucania) was one of the most powerful organised crime bosses of America. Born in 1896, he had immigrated to the U.S.A with his family in 1906, and was involved with crime in the form of mugging, extortion and theft at the young age of ten. Upon being released from prison in 1916 after being caught selling heroin, he joined gangsters Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello. He got his nickname from his skill at evading arrest, and his proficiency for gambling. His nickname would prove apt again in 1929, when after being bundled into a car and stabbed with an ice pick to be left for dead on Staten Island Beach, like Rasputin, Lucky Luciano did not die. He never named the people who tried to kill him.

After working his way to the top of the crime world (and having crime boss, Joe Masseria, whom he had worked for and got close to, assassinated in 1931) Lucky Luciano was convicted of extortion in 1936. He was sentenced to prison, but had his sentence commuted to deportation in 1946. He tried to live in Cuba in 1947, but was deported from there too after public outcry. He moved to Naples where he continued to send drugs to the United States, as well as illegal immigrants. He died of a heart attack in 1962 in Naples' Capodichino Airport. His body was flown back to America, where it was buried in St. John's Cathedral Cemetery, Queens, New York.

Answer: Haemul Pajeon

In Korea, Haemul pajeon is usually matched with makgeolli (Korean rice wine). "Pa" means "scallion" (or green onion) and "jeon" means "battered pan-fried food." The seafood included is usually a mix of squid, mussels, clams, shrimp and oysters. It is one of the most popular savory pancakes of Korea, together with buchujeon (Garlic Chive Pancakes), Nokdujeon (mung bean pancake) and Kimchijeon (kimchi pancake).

Answer: Sun

The flag of Rwanda has been the country's official flag since 2001. The sun is included to symbolise enlightenment. The flag consists of three horizontal stripes, blue, yellow and green from top to bottom. The sun sits in the blue section at the top right hand corner.

The green in the flag symbolises prosperity, the yellow economic growth and the blue represents harmony and peace within the country.

Answer: Colossus of Rhodes

All surviving first-hand accounts of the Colossus of Rhodes are in literature, with artists such as Salvador Dalí using the descriptions to paint what they imagine the statue to have looked like. The Colossus of Rhodes stood for around 50 years before being destroyed during an earthquake in 226 BC. The statue was of the Greek god of the Sun, Helios. Chares of Lindos was the sculptor.

Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) was a Spanish surrealist artist, known for his work "The Persistence of Memory" (1931) depicting melting clocks.

Answer: Dimercaprol

Also referred to as "British anti-Lewisite," dimercaprol is a compound containing sulfhydryl, and has been in use since the Second World War, usually administered via intramuscular injection, but it has also been made available in pill form. It is not suitable medicine for those with an allergy to peanuts. The medicine works via chelation, that is, the medication binds metals in the person's blood stream. Once the drug is bound to the metals, the body removes them via urination.

The original intention for dimercaprol was cure soldiers of the effects of arsenic-containing gases, during World War II.

Answer: Split

Split is the second-largest city of Croatia, and the largest city to lie on Croatia's Adriatic coastline.

Emperor Diocletian was Roman Emperor from 284-305 AD, and was not of noble birth, eventually rising to power in Rome through the military, under Emperor Carus. When both Carus and his son, Numerian, died at war, Diocletian was established as Roman Emperor by the Roman military. After falling ill in his later years, he gave up the Roman throne voluntarily in order to retire to his palace, which had been constructed in Spalatum, the small town which would later become Split. Diocletian would later die at, and be buried at, the Diocletian Palace.

Answer: Tucson

The Santa Rita Mountains are located around halfway between Tucson and the U.S.A and Mexico's international border. The Madera Canyon is located in these mountains, a haven for wildlife, including lizards, snakes, birds, bears and puma. There have occasionally been jaguars sighting around these mountains, but this is a rarity, considered to have wandered too far from other areas.

The Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory sits atop of the summit of Mount Hopkins, at around an 8,585 foot (2,616 m) high. This mountain is located west of the highest mountain in the range, Mount Wrightson, standing around 9,455-foot (2,880 m) high. Both mountains are named after Americans who died in southern Arizona in the Battle of Fort Buchanan in 1865, William Wrightson and Gilbert W. Hopkins, who were killed by the arrow-fire of Apache fighters.

Tucson is the county seat of Pima County, Arizona. The city is surrounded by mountain ranges, the Santa Rita Mountains lying to the south-east, the Rincon Mountains lie east, the Tucson Mountains lie west and the Tortolita Mountains and the Santa Catalina Mountains lie north.

Answer: On Through the Night

"On Through the Night" was released in 1980, and although was well-received some fans had the opinion that the band were being to sycophantic towards the U.S.A, touring there more often than England and releasing a song like "Hello America." British fans expressed this displeasure through throwing bottles of urine and beer cans at the band when they performed at Reading Festival. Music magazines accused them of selling out for the American music industry.

Answer: George H.W. Bush

On July 26, 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law, guaranteeing equal opportunities in employment, transportation, state services and telecommunications to those with both physical and mental disabilities.

George H.W. Bush (1924-2018) was U.S President from 1989-1993. He was Vice President under Ronald Reagan from 1981-1989. The USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77), the 10th and last Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, is named after him.

Answer: Martinique

Martinique is located in the the Lesser Antilles area of the Caribbean Sea, and encompasses an area of around 435 square miles (1,130 km). It is the third-largest island of the Lesser Antilles by area, after Trinidad and Guadeloupe.

Mount Pelée is the highest point of Martinique at around 4,580 feet (1,400 m) high, and is located on the northern end of the island. Its most famous eruption happened in 1902, killing around 30,000 people and destroying the town of Saint-Pierre.

Answer: Vancouver

Dennis Oppenheim (1938-2011) was the sculptor who created "Engagement". The one on Sunset Beach, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada has stood there since 2005, other versions of the sculpture being displayed in museums across America, and even as far as Austria and Finland.

The sculpture is made from steel, aluminium and plexiglass. Dennis Oppenheim frequently refuses to explain the concept of his work, preferring to keep the meaning to himself. However, at the time of construction debates over same-sex marriage were a regular talking point in Vancouver.

Answer: Bizarre

Rufus Arthur Johnson was born in 1976, in Detroit, Michigan. He received his stage name from a teacher at school, who mistook him rapping as him talking to himself, and began calling him "Bizarre." He is most known for his group, D-12, also hailing from Detroit, and for working with Eminem.

Answer: Pope Julius II

Hailed as a major contributor to the Reformation, Pope Julius II born Giuliano Della Rovere in 1443, and was Head of the Catholic Church from 1503 until he died in 1513. His papal name was to honor Julius Caesar, and opposed to Pope Julius. He bribed many cardinals for the position of Pope. He formed the Holy League in around 1510, an alliance, during the Italian Wars, of several nations determined to expel the French and King Louis XII of France from Italy. Henry VIII of England, Ferdinand II of Aragón, and Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I were among the heads of states involved with the league, which fell apart when Julius II died in 1513. The league however manage to oust the French in Novara in 1513, with the Swiss contributing the majority of the fighters.

Julius II was also known as a patron of the arts, having hired (some accounts say bullied) Michelangelo to repaint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Answer: Moon

In the "Tale of the Bamboo Cutter" written in Japan around the 9th or 10th century, Princess Kaguya is found as a baby inside a bamboo plant. The old man cutting the bamboo takes the baby home to his wife, as they have no children of their own. For taking the mystical baby in, the bamboo cutter is rewarded with finding nuggets of gold within any bamboo plant he cuts down. His family grows rich, and the baby soon grows into an adult within three months. The beautiful Kaguya is not interested in those vying for her hand in marriage, and she creates impossible tasks for them to win her hand (find a cowry shell born of a swallow, or the jewel from a dragon's neck, etc.) with one suitor falling to his death in pursuit of swallow eggs. The Emperor of Japan is even rebuffed by her, although they become friends.

Kaguya eventually admits she is from the Moon, when the time for her to return to it draws near. The Emperor does not want her to go, but Kaguya's people blind his guards with a strange, bright light and take her to her real home. Some stories assert that the gold was payment for her upkeep during a celestial war, or when she was sent to Earth temporarily as punishment for some crime.

It is the oldest known surviving monogatari, a type of Japanese literature.

Answer: Newcastle

Greggs was established in 1939 by John Robson Gregg, and is one of the UK's largest bakery chains. John Gregg took part in the family baking business as a teenager, delivering yeast on a pushbike to nearby working class households, who were using the yeast to bake their own bread. During World War II, John Gregg was called to serve in the military, while his wife Elsie switched from push bikes to vans while he was away, which expanded the business. John Gregg died in 1964.

There are now thousands of Greggs bakeries spread throughout the U.K.