Serendipity Trivia Quiz

Answer: Sri Lanka

The name Serendip to describe Sri Lanka is believed to have been borrowed from India, as a corrupted form of a Sanskrit word, meaning 'Dwelling Place of Lions Island'.

Horace Walpole, the son of British Prime Minister Robert Walpole, coined the term 'serendipity' to describe something which happened repeatedly to the three princes in that fairy tale: accidentally discovering something good while searching for something else. The first written reference to the word appears in a letter written to a Horace Mann, an envoy of King George II, who was working in Italy in 1754. Interestingly, the example Walpole gave to describe what he meant by serendipity didn't truly match the definition he wrote!

Answer: Googly

Googly is a cricket term, used to describe a ball which is bowled in a particular way - it appears as though it will move one way after it bounces, but actually moves the other. As even describing it in English can be difficult, it may not be surprising that it appears on such a list.

Muffin is considered to be difficult to translate but this is more due to variations in diet. Entrepreneur is a word borrowed originally from French and fiddlestick is actually quite easy to translate as meaning the bow of a violin - its alternate use in English is also easily translated into an expression of exasperation.

As serendipity is considered hard to translate it has been 'borrowed', largely unchanged, from English, by other languages such as French, German, Spanish and even Swedish.

Answer: May

Whether or not your birth month really does affect your luck has yet to be shown, but psychologists Jayanti Chotai and Richard Wiseman conducted a study to determine whether season of birth affects how people feel about their level of luck. In it they found that those born in May feel the luckiest, with those born in November feeling least lucky. The researchers concluded that it is likely neurotransmitters which play a role in determining how lucky we feel. Different neurotransmitters are related to different personality traits, such as extroversion and novelty seeking and these traits in turn.

Season of birth is of particular interest to neuropsychologists due to the seasonal variations in different environmental effects, such as amount of daylight, temperature and even differences in the types of germs we are exposed to. These variations in turn affect behavioural patterns and both behaviour and environment may have physical effects on the brain, even during gestation.

Answer: Cecil G. Paine

Cecil George Paine was a pathologist working in Sheffield when he successfully cured a number of patients of eye infections using drops of penicillin. Paine's methods were rudimentary, using meat broth to culture the penicillin itself. Paine did not continue his research and in fact left the Royal Infirmary, where he conducted the trials, shortly after.

Howard Florey, an Australian scientist, and Ernst Chain, a German scientist, are credited with successfully developing penicillin for use as an anti-biotic. Albert Alexander was a police constable in Oxford and was the first patient that Howard Florey treated with penicillin. Although initial indications were good that it would cure Alexander, they ran out of the drug on the fourth day of treatment and the infection got worse until Alexander died a month later.

Answer: Pancreas

The pancreas is a gland in the which secretes both glucose and insulin directly into the blood. It has a further role in the digestion of food. Physicians Joseph von Mering and Oscar Minkowski were investigating the role of the pancreas in 1889 when they made the link between it and sugar regulation. After removing the pancreas of an otherwise healthy dog, they noticed that he was urinating frequently. When they tested the urine they found a very high level of sugar.

It was Dr. Frederick G. Banting and Professor John J.R. MacLeod, working at the University of Toronto, who took that discovery further; isolating insulin and developing it as a treatment for diabetes. They won a Nobel Prize for this work in 1923.

Answer: Toxicity

Richet was researching the toxicity of sea anemones when he discovered anaphylaxis. In his initial experiment a number of dogs were injected with the toxin. The dogs became ill and some eventually died. Those that recovered were used again but this time, some became immediately ill with symptoms different and far worse than they had had before, regardless of the dose being administered, and died quickly.

Prophylaxis, the building of immunity through exposure was already known, but anaphylaxis, its apparent opposite was not. Interestingly, there appeared to be a period of incubation for anaphylaxis to develop. If injected again shortly after (roughly, less than ten days) symptoms of anaphylaxis did not appear.

Answer: Aspartame

All of these artificial sweeteners were actually discovered by accident! Aspartame was discovered by James M. Schlatter when he accidentally licked his finger and found that it tasted sweet. Cyclamate, or more accurately sodium cyclamate, was accidentally discovered when university student Michael Sveda smoked a cigarette, which he had placed on a bench, noticing its sweet taste.

Karl Clauss and Harald Jensen were studying a compound when Clauss discovered its sweet taste in the same way as James Schlatter; he licked his finger to turn a page. They then worked to develop acesulfame potassium as a sweetener. Saccharin also was discovered by a researcher noticing a taste on his hand - in this case Constantin Fahlberg.

Answer: Heat resistant polymers

Harry Coover first 'discovered' cyanoacrylates in 1942 while he was trying to develop plastic gun sights, but the stickiness of it made it impracticable. In 1958, when he rediscovered it he was working on developing heat-resistant polymers for use in the canopies of jet planes. This time round, he recognised its value!

The use of cyanoacrylate as a tissue adhesive was credited with saving lives in the Vietnam war, where soldiers could be patched up until proper medical attention could be received. It is also used by forensic scientists to detect latent or unseen fingerprints, where it is heated to gaseous form and then binds to the oils in human fingerprints.

Answer: Post-it Notes

Indeed Post-it Notes were developed by Spencer Silver and Arthur Fry. Silver was attempting to create a very strong adhesive, but accidentally made what seemed to be a weak one. This discovery was useless until Fry, frustrated by bookmarks falling out of a hymnal, decided to see if it would work when applied as a permanent but removable bookmark that wouldn't damage his hymnal. It did and Post-it Notes were born!

The adhesive used works largely because it forms into tiny spheres, each of which is very sticky - but because of their spherical shape, they don't form a uniform bond and adhere the way other adhesives do, giving them their ability to be unstuck!

Answer: Can Opener

The humble can opener has had many evolutions in design but none have credited serendipity! Cornflakes were discovered by the Kellogg brothers, when some cooked wheat was left unattended. In attempting to salvage the wheat, they rolled it, creating flakes that were then toasted and served to residents in their health spa and with that, a whole new type of breakfast food came about!

The chocolate chip cookie was credited as the discovery of Ruth Wakefield, who along with her husband ran an inn named the Toll House Inn. After running out of bakers chocolate, Wakefield broke up regular semisweet chocolate and added it to the mix, inventing the chocolate chip cookie. A chef working at the inn disputes this story, claiming the addition of the chocolate itself was an accident.

Cling-film or plastic wrap was initially discovered by Ralph Wiley in 1933. While cleaning glass beakers, one would not clean no matter how he scrubbed. Dow Chemical, where Ralph worked developed this substance into a green film which was used on military fighter jets to prevent salt erosion. After World War II, it was further developed and approved for use in contact with food.