In the Year 1900 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Tosca

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) was an Italian composer with the ability to compose some of the most beautiful and haunting melodies ever created in the history of opera. His opera "Tosca" is a particular favour, leading me to name my car in its honour. The work features, as with many operas, a pair of star crossed lovers who, of course, both die at the end.

However, it's for the glorious arias in this opera that it is most well known, especially those sung by the hero Mario Cavaradossi. In particular his "Recondita armonia" sung at the opening of the opera is stupendous - as is his exquisite "E lucevan le stelle" at its close, an aria of such sheer beauty that it can bring tears to the eyes.

While music critics continue to pooh-pooh this opera, its popularity has continue undaunted in the eyes of the general public ever since it first premiered.

Answer: The Davis Cup

Did you ace the answer? The Davis Cup is a premier tennis competition for men, run by the International Tennis Federation. Players from various countries world wide compete for the right to be the current year's champions, and it is considered an honour to be able to play for one's country in this tournament. Intially started as a competition between Britain and the United States, it proved so popular, that by 2007, some 137 nations were playing in this tournament. The idea was conceived in 1899 by a Harvard University Tennis Team who wanted to challenge the Brits to an international game of tennis. The ball was set bouncing by Harvard player Dwight F. Davis who designed the tournament format and purchased a sterling silver trophy from his own funds. Jolly good of him, chaps. The first match was played in 1900, and during the history of the tournament since, the US has won 32 times. Australia, which initially began playing as Australasia, in combinating with the Kiwis in 1905, but then as a separate nation from 1915, has won 28 times.

Ladies, don't feel neglected, though. The women's equivalent is the Federation Cup (commenced in 1963), an excellent tournament in its own right. Mind you though, the women had to fight tooth and nail for forty years for the right to hold this tournament, which is decidedly unfair. Still, we're there now and serving up champions from all over the globe.

Answer: To find a suitable site to establish a Federal capital city

It then took the dills another quarter century to actually establish the Federal capital city. They couldn't decide on a suitable site until 1908. Nothing like having a tour of the country funded by the taxpayers for seven years. Then they argued for another five years on which would be the best design. Finally, construction commenced in 1913, based on the blueprints of Chicago architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin. All the other country representatives probably gave up in disgust. Today Canberra, which officially came into being in 1927 at the ceremonial opening of the provisional Parliament House, is indeed the Federal capital city of Australia. It is located inland between the state capitals of Sydney and Melbourne, and has a population of over 345,000 people, a great proportion of whom are - brace yourself - Australian public servants. It's a beautiful gracious city though, but horribly hot in summer and horribly cold in winter.

Another piece of fascinating historical information on Australia, nothing to do with Canberra though. In the year 1900, over 1,000 tonnes of waste of demolished houses were removed from Sydney, from areas that had been affected by the Bubonic Plague there. How interesting is that?! I didn't know that rats with plague carrying fleas had even reached Australia. Hardly anybody else knows where we're located.

Answer: The second Modern Olympic Games were opened

If only we could all learn from the inherent potential of the games for world unity and peace, what a wonderful world it would be. (Move over, Louis Armstrong, get your own pulpit). The games took place between May and October of 1900. They were actually part of the Paris World Exhibition to which they took a very back seat. Over a thousand sportsmen and sportswomen took part. Yes, it was the first time women played in the games as well. Trophies and cups were handed out instead of medals. There was no opening or closing ceremony, which would have suited me just fine. These ceremonies go on for hours today and cost a ridiculous amount of money to stage. Some of the more interesting events played for the first, and only time, in the history of the games included motorcycle racing, ballooning, cricket and croquet, Basque pelota, underwater swimming, and a swimming obstacle race. A swimming obstacle race? How interesting. Perhaps they had to dodge indignant little frogs whose legs had been consumed by the French.

Speaking of which, if you hop over to the amputated frog section, here's another interesting piece of information for you. Did you know that frog muscles don't undergo rigor mortis as quickly as the muscles of warm-blooded animals? That is why the heat involved in the cooking of frog legs causes them to twitch and jump around in the frying pan. True. To be sure though, I'd probably twitch and jump around a bit under similar circumstances. It's only if they begin to croak that you have to start worrying.

Answer: Demolish saloons

Carrie Nation was born Carrie Moore in 1846 into a family of people prone to mental illness, with her mother in particular falling prey to periodic delusions that she was Queen Victoria. In 1867, Carrie married a physician - who was also a chronic alcoholic - but the marriage lasted less than a year. She would attribute her later enthusiasm to fighting the demon drink to this failed marriage. After several more failed ventures, including an unsuccessful cotton plantation with her second husband David Nation, she helped run several respectable hotels, while her husband became a full time preacher.

It was during this period that Carrie started a local branch of the Christian Women's Temperance Union, campaigning for the ban on the sale of all liquor. (Could somebody please call an ambulance for that group of Australians who have just fainted). She didn't stop there however, but went on to become an outright nuisance by organising protests outside drinking establishments, serenading patrons with hymns, and making constant remarks to the thirsty gents along the lines of "Good morning, destroyer of men's souls." Then, in June 1899, saying she had received a vision from God telling her what to do, she set about smashing up as many saloons as she possibly could with a hatchet in one hand, and bible in the other. Carrie was six foot tall, weighed almost 180lbs, and was no beauty. She was indeed a terrifying sight when seen entering a bar with hatchet in hand, and patrons took off for their lives when they saw her coming. She described herself as "A bulldog running along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what he doesn't like." Her husband hurriedly divorced this bulldog in 1901. Mrs Nation then took her message further afield by giving talks in Vaudeville in the States and in music halls in Britain. She found her audiences there less than receptive, was given the name the "Anti-Souse Queen", and, after being pelted by an egg, gave up trying to save them in disgust and returned to America. There she sold photographs of herself signed "Carry A Nation, Your Loving Home Defender", collected fees for lecturing and sold - this is killingly funny - miniature souvenir hatchets.

Answer: The flight of the first zeppelin

Zeppelins were rigid, heavier than air vehicles, first built by the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin from designs he had conceived more than a quarter of a century earlier. They were kept aloft by balloons of hydrogen or helium filled gas located in the outer envelope of the zeppelin. These balloons were made from the intestines of cows and known as gasbags. Don't you love that? Forward thrust for the machines was provided by internal combustion engines, and steering was carried out by reversing the thrust or using rudder and elevator fins. The first official flight took place over Lake Constance at the beginning of July at the end of the 19th century.

By 1910, in spite of several rather disastrous setbacks, zeppelins were being used for pleasure cruises above the clouds. Then along came the First World War and the zeppelins were used for reconnaissance missions and as bombers instead, and quite efficiently so, except they were vulnerable to incendiary ammunition. People in London lived in fear of their lives from a zeppelin attack in the darkness of night. "The zeppelins are coming! The zeppelins are coming! They'll take half an hour to make it round the block, but run for your lives anyway!" After the war, zeppelins were used in transatlantic flights. It must have been an absolutely awesome sight to see the giant airships passing overhead and proceeding on their way, like sharks silently cruising the deep. Then came the Hindenburg disaster in 1937, and the onset of the Second World War in 1939 where all remaining airships were destroyed by Goering, and their construction materials used in other areas of the Nazi war machine. The age of the zeppelin and the airship had passed. It all seems a shame somehow and a little akin to the disappearance of the dinosaurs.

Answer: Winston Churchill

The great wartime leader of the United Kingdom, Sir Winston Churchill, not only served as Prime Minister of that nation on two separate occasions, he was also a fine orator, writer, artist and historian. He is the only Prime Minister as at 2011 to win the Nobel Prize for Literature for his writing, and was the first person to be made an honorary citizen of the United States.

Born into an aristocratic family, his father was Lord Randolph Churchill and his mother was the beautiful American socialite, Jenny Jerome. His inspirational speeches to the nation of Great Britain during the Second World War and his staunch, unyielding opposition to the onslaught of the Germany army, navy and airforce at times were the only things holding the desperately weakened country together. He led by example. Descended from a great soldier, the first Duke of Marlborough, and down through a line of fine men, who could expect anything less. Churchill was born in 1874 and died in 1965, a man who fought for his nation as a soldier in the wars, as a great leader on the floor of parliament, and as a mighty statesman on the world stage. He did indeed fight on the beaches, the landing grounds, in the fields and streets and hills - and he never, ever, surrendered.

Answer: The 1st manned, untethered flight in an unpowered craft

In that year, the Wright brothers designed their first glider, a lighter-than-air craft, capable of carrying a man. It was first flown as an unmanned kite early in October, 1900. Wilbur next flew in it as a pilot. Can you imagine how exciting that would have been? Men on the ground held the craft safe with tethered ropes however, but it was shortly after this that Wilbur then made a dozen untethered, and unbelievably brave, free flights on the one day. All of these were still unpowered from within though. (Now look here, you astronauts will be ejected if you don't stop fighting. Hot air balloons weren't involved at all. I did warn you to note the date. But does anybody ever listen to me? Oh no. They all think I'm full of hot air as well)

From this momentous day, the brothers began to work on the first manned, powered, and steerable, heavier-than-air craft which would be capable of flying various distances. Powered. Steerable. Untethered. Manned. Just think about that for a few moments and what it would go on to mean for the entire world, then, now, and into the future. This remarkable feat would take place two years later on 17 December 1903, in the Wright Flyer I, in the skies over Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.

And to think it all started with a blow by a hockey stick to Wilbur's face which knocked out his front teeth in the winter of 1885-65. This incident set off a chain of events which would lead to man taking to the skies. Wilbur did not attend Yale University as planned, but went into a form of depression instead. He stayed at home for the next few years, looking after his ill mother and reading everything he could from his father's large library. By 1889, he had shaken himself out of his depression and went into business with his brother Orville who had set up a printing business. From there, caught up in the enthusiasm of the new bicycling craze sweeping the country, the brothers went into a bicycle sales and repair shop, then grew interested in the possibility of designing a craft that was powered and could be flown by man - and you know the rest. The moral of this story is: If you suffer from air sickness, don't play hockey.

Answer: Oscar Wilde and Margaret Mitchell

Poor old Oscar Wilde was born in Ireland in 1854 and died in Paris on November 30, 1900. He was one of most popular playwrights in the late Victorian era and his works have experienced periodic renewals of popularity ever since, both on stage and in film. The only novel he ever penned was "The Picture of Dorian Gray" but his plays included "The Importance of Being Ernest" and "Lady Windermere's Fan" and "An Ideal Husband" and "A Woman of No Importance". He wrote short stories as well, newspaper articles, and essays and dialogues. His private life however was more fascinating that any of the characters he drew with his pen. Known for his flamboyant dress, biting wit, scintillating conversations, decadent and secret lifestyle, and his devotion to beauty, pleasure and high ideals - almost everything Wilde did in his life was a contradiction in terms. Perhaps the contradictory nature of the man can be summed up in two of his many memorable quotes. Once when he drawled in a languid affected voice to a visiting friend, "Do you know, Freddy, I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china." The other is found in two lines of his poem "Helas" where he states "To drift with every passion till my soul / Is a stringed lute on which all the winds can play". Oscar Wilde, a writer of great comedy, living a life of great tragedy.

Margaret Mitchell was born in Atlanta in 1900. She gave the world the great story of historical romance "Gone With the Wind", her only work, and for which she won a Pulitzer Prize. Sadly she was hit by a car driven by a drunken, off-duty taxi driver in his own vehicle in 1949, and died five days later in hospital. The film of the book, released in 1939, and starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, was the highest grossing film in Hollywood up until then and won an astonishing ten Academy Awards. Here's something interesting about Margaret Mitchell you may not know. Well I didn't, at any rate. She was a distant cousin of gunfighter and dentist Doc Holliday. ("Ya ornery critter, you haven't paid me for those extractions. Reach fer yer gun!"). It is believed Margaret Mitchell modelled her literary creation Ashley Wilkes on the good doctor. Mitchell was honoured by the US Postal Service on a one cent stamp as one of their series of Great Americans. For some reason that strikes me as somewhat incongruous. However, wherever she is right right now, I guess she herself probably doesn't give a damn either. (Now, have you all made sure you've booked your taxis to go home after this tour is completed?)

Answer: Tesla

Croatian born Serbian, Nikola Tesla came into the world in 1856 and died in 1943. He moved to America in 1884. The man was eccentric, and believed to have suffered from (the then unclassified) undiagnosed bi-polar illness. Yet he was quite possibly one of the most astonishing inventors and scientists of all time, with an ability to see far into the future with his startling conceptions, some of which are only today beginning to be discussed as possibilities. Other of his inventions have mysteriously disappeared into the files of high ranking government departments. Way ahead of his time, he worked in the areas of robotics and remote control, radar, computer science, and nuclear and theoretical physics. With a photographic memory and instantly visual thought, he sped through thousands of works without a backward glance and with his ideas, designed to the last detail, suddenly springing into his mind in what he could only describe as "visions".

Initially working for Edison, Tesla was able to solve some of the company's most difficult technical problems in an instant. On his wage of $18 a week, however, he was offered over a million of today's dollars to make improvements to other of Edison's designs. Yet, when he later asked for this amount, he was told, "You don't understand American humour" and left unpaid. He instantly resigned and left to work at digging ditches and other labouring work for two years, unable to find anyone willing to listen to his ideas for alternating current and the Tesla coil. That is, until meeting George Westinghouse - who believed in him. A list of his other conceptions and developments is absolutely staggering and can be found on Wikkipedia should you wish to read more. They're mind-boggling, in fact. Some of his wilder ideas included believing that the clicks he was picking up on his radio telescope were transmissions from Mars. He also came up with an idea for ion propelled aircraft, and the conception of a death ray weapon which involved charged particle beams. Wow, shades of Gene Roddenberry! And who's to say those wilder ideas won't be a reality one day. Mind you I don't have a clue what any of it means really because I'm still trying to figure out how candles work.