Out of Left Field Trivia Quiz

Answer: Brexit

In 2016, the United Kingdom held a referendum to decide whether the country should continue to be a part of the European Union. The margin was slim with 51.9% voting for the country to leave the EU. The term 'Brexit' was coined to describe this event by combining the words Britain and exit.

Answer: Ukraine

Flight 17 was operated by Malaysia Airlines and was scheduled to go from Amsterdam, Netherlands to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The flight took off on the 17th of July, 2014 when it was unexpectedly shot down by Ukrainian rebels near Hrabove in the Donetsk Oblast of Ukraine.

The rebels were part of a separatist group that wanted Ukraine to become part of Russia. Based on the loss of life, this was the deadliest airline shootdown at the time of occurrence.

Answer: Black September

The Munich massacre, as it is known, was carried out by a Palestinian terrorist organization called the Black September. During the 1972 Summer Olympic games held at Munich in Germany, the terrorists took eleven members from the Israeli contingent hostage and demanded the release of over 200 prisoners in Israel as well as the founders of the group who were imprisoned in Germany.

The incident ended in tragedy with all eleven team members comprising five athletes and six coaches being killed.

Answer: Coelacanth

The coelacanth was believed to have become extinct over 60 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous period. Unexpectedly the fish was rediscovered in the 1930s along the coast of South Africa. It is one of the best known examples of a Lazarus taxon, a species that disappears from fossil records for a long period and reappears later.

Answer: Malaysia Airlines

On 8th March 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 took off from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The plane never reached its destination having lost contact with air traffic control over the South China Sea. The flight was carrying 227 passengers from 15 different countries and 12 crew members. Search operations carried out for over three years after the incident were unable to recover wreckage of the plane and neither was the cause of the disappearance known with certainty, though pilot suicide was widely speculated.

Answer: Barack Obama

In 2008, Barack Obama was elected as the 44th US President becoming the first African-American to hold this position. He is trained as a lawyer and previously served as a U.S. Senator from the state of Illinois. Obama was re-elected in 2012 and ended up serving two terms as the President.

Answer: Japan

On 11th March 2011, a deep sea earthquake off the coast of Japan spawned a tsunami that struck certain parts of the country. Nuclear power stations in the affected parts were immediately shut down as part of safety processes, however, the emergency generators which handled the backup cooling processes post the shut down were destroyed by the tsunami waves leading to meltdowns at the power plant at Fukushima. Residents were evacuated and the government declared a state of emergency as it worked to control the fall-out.

This incident also cash a shadow on the adoption of nuclear technology by other countries.

Answer: 9/11

9/11 refers to terrorist attacks carried out in the United States of America on the 11th of September, 2001. Terrorists belonging to the al-Qaeda hijacked four different passenger airplanes in the north eastern part of the USA. Two of these were flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City while one was crashed into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense in Virginia. Passengers of the fourth plane attempted to takeover the plane from the terrorists, crashing it into a field in Pennsylvania.

The scale of the attack was unprecedented and it had far reaching effects on airline travel.

Answer: Nepal

On the 1st of June, 2001, ten members of the Nepalese royal family were shot dead during a dinner party in one of the deadliest massacres in the country. The victims included the ruling king and queen. It was later reported that Crown Prince Dipendra had shot killed members of his family in an alcohol fueled rage. Less than ten years later, in May 2008, Nepal abolished the monarchy and adopted democracy.

Answer: Joseph Ratzinger

Following the death of Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected as the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church in 2005. In 2013, he took the unexpected step of resigning from this position. While he was not the first Pope to resign, the last such resignation had taken place hundreds of years ago when Pope Gregory XII resigned in 1415.