This Quiz Weighs Ten Pounds Combined

Answer: Great Britain

Also called pound sterling, the monetary unit called the "pound" is most closely associated with Great Britain and several other British territories. Countries such as Syria and Egypt also call their main money unit the pound, but those are based on a different central banking system and have different values than the British version.

Answer: 454 grams

The weight equivalence of a pound in metric units is 454 grams. When buying items by weight, most people ask for a half kilo of whatever they're purchasing, because it is close to a pound and saves time on exact calculation. If you're like me, I still ask for things in pounds and ounces and leave the calculating to the clerks! According to the metric weights, 28 grams is equal to one ounce. Considering there are 16 ounces in a pound and 28 grams in an ounce, then the amount of 454 grams in a pound doesn't make sense because 28gms X 16oz. = 448 grams! (It's because an ounce is actually equal to 28.2 gms).

Answer: telephone

Also referred to as the "number key", the pound key (#) is found on touch pad telephones. The symbol # is the same symbol used for the word "number". So if the symbol # is among numbers on the telephone pad, then why do they call it the "pound key" rather than a "number key"? To tell you the truth, I don't know! It's probably because the "pound key" is used as a separator or as an ending when punching in numbers regarding personal information. You've heard the voice on the other end say, "When you've completed punching in the numbers, please press the pound key." If they said, "Please press the number key", then fools like me would get all confused as which number from 0 to 9 I should press. Boy, this world can be unnecessarily confusing, don't you think?

Answer: pound the pavement

Most of us, at some time in our lives, have had to "pound the pavement" in search of work. It basically means to walk and walk for miles, going to every business you see to apply for a job. It can be tiring and, like one of the answer choices, sometimes can make one want to pound the guys who won't hire you! When I went to Western Canada looking for a job, I was "pounding the pavement" for several hours in a completely strange city, and finally found a position at a garage. Exhausted but thankful, I asked my new boss if he could tell me how to get back to my home address.

Hearing my address, he said,"Oh that's easy. Go to the end of this street, take a right, and it's the first street on your left". If I had only gone THAT way in the first place!

Answer: Michael Spinks

Yep, "Iron" Mike Tyson surely did "pound" a lot of his opponents. He made a cool twenty million dollars for his 91 seconds of work in defeating Michael Spinks. If you break that down, it means he got paid $219,780.22 per second, which works out to the 'paltry' wage of $13,186,813.19 per minute. Of course, that comes out to an hourly wage of $791,208,791.21. How would you like to pick up your weekly paycheck and see that for a 'tough' forty hours, you only took in a little under $31.7 billion dollars? Just remember that the next time you're shoveling cow manure in a barn for $200 a week.

Answer: The Merchant of Venice

Will Smith announced that the idea behind the movie came from "The Merchant of Venice", in which a moneylender named Shylock makes the collateral for a loan a "pound of equal flesh". In the movie "Seven Pounds", Smith plays the part of a government employee who, through recklessness, causes a serious car accident which not only claims the life of seven people he did not know, but his wife's life also. So he quits his job, takes his brother's identity, and spends the next two years donating his organs to people he deems worthy, as atonement for his own carelessness. By doing this, he repays a "pound of equal flesh" as a way to pay off his debts to society.

Answer: twelve years in a mental institution

After being found mentally unstable, Ezra was committed to a mental institution in 1946, years before "I Love Lucy" even hit the airwaves. He was released in 1958 and immediately returned to Italy where he died in 1972. On a serious side, he was responsible for paving the way for newer poets to use poetic justice more freely, opening the door to a revitalized age in poetry, as well as being a brilliant editor for T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land".

Not too many know about Ezra Pound's escapades, so I had a little fun with this one's answer choices.

Answer: pound cake

Yummy! Pound cake is one of my favourite deserts, especially when it's warm and you add butter and/or maple syrup on it! Adding some optional items such as lemon or orange peel, chocolate chips, or caramel pieces can make it even yummier! Ummm...excuse me, but I'm taking a break from this quiz-writing because I made myself hungry!

Answer: all of them

An animal control officer usually takes the stray animals he catches to the pound. Tow truck operators often have to tow cars, which are repossessed, confiscated, abandoned, or illegally parked, to the car pound. Police officers who apprehend criminals and lawbreakers refer to their temporary holding cells as 'the pound'.

Answer: An ounce of prevention

According to Henry de Bracton's Latin translation from the 1240 AD book "De Legibus", "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". It still makes sense even centuries after its initial publication and is often used in a shortened form. The proverb means that it is easier to forestall a disaster than to deal with it.

For example, all minor league hockey players must wear helmets and face shields--that's what one could call "an ounce of prevention". And since they don't usually get injured when wearing those items, it makes the use of them "worth a pound of cure".