Alexa Trivia Quiz

Answer: Long Johns

Long Johns are worn under normal trousers as an additional level of insulation. They may be made of differing materials, including those with enhanced thermal qualities.

It is thought that Long Johns were named after the American boxer John L. Sullivan (1858-1918). In his era, boxers wore long trousers rather than the shorts that were to become widely used.

Answer: Sam Browne

Sir Samuel James Browne VC began his military service in India in April 1849.

According to the Australian Army History Unit, Brown lost one arm in action in August 1858.

It notes: "The dress regulations for British Officers of the 2nd Punjabis required members to wear their waist belts under their tunics. Browne found this ungainly with his left arm missing, and devised an external belt, supported on the left-hand (sword) side by a shoulder strap. The belt had two shoulder pieces when a pistol was added."

While the Sam Browne was to be adopted by many military and police forces worldwide, it gradually fell out of favour.

Some military units continue to use the Sam Browne as part of their dress uniforms.

Answer: Rose

How the device attached to the electricity cables came to be called rose is obscure.

One school of thought is that it hails from a time in England when a depiction of a floral rose was carved into the ceilings of houses. The rose being the symbol of Tudor kings.

Even that has been extrapolated from the Latin phrase "sub rosa" - in confidence. It has also been speculated that in the Middles Ages hanging an actual rose over a meeting table was a sign that whatever was said would be treated with confidentiality.

Answer: John T. Thompson

The Tommy gun was not the first sub-machine-gun - the Germans had one before - but it was designed to be carried by troops in close range action.

The first prototypes were delivered to the Western Front just days before the war ended.

Initial guns were notoriously difficult to fire accurately as the recoil tended to make the barrel 'kick' high and wide.

Still, it was to be widely used by police forces in the US, and gangsters also loved it. The Tommy gun had a rate of fire of 800 rounds a minute - a pretty useless statistic in practical terms since the box magazine contained only 20 to 30 rounds and the drum version 50.

Constant developments during the 1920s and 1930s made it a popular choice as a "man-stopper" by troops in WW2. It had problems, though; it was heavy to carry and expensive to manufacture.

The gun continued in service with US forces in the Korean War. It was finally retired in 1971.

Answer: Lazy Susan

The Lazy Susan dates to the 18th Century, when they were known as "dumbwaiters". There have been claims that Thomas Edison invented the dumbwaiter.

However, in 2010, the "LA Times" quoted Sarah Coffin, of the Smithsonian Institution's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum as saying the earliest dumbwaiters hailed from England in the 1720s.

The website of Lazy Susan Furniture in the UK notes that: "General consensus is that the term 'Lazy Susan' first made a written appearance in a Vanity Fair advertisement for a 'Revolving Server or Lazy Susan' in 1917. manufactured by a company called Ovington, you could pick up their Lazy Susan for $8.50".

Contradicting that, though, is a claim that the term "Lazy Susan" was used in an article in the Christian Science Monitor in 1912.

And the Boston Journal in 1903 refers to a carpenter John B. Laurie, as "the resuscitator of Lazy Susan."

"Lazy Susan is a step toward solving the ever-vexing servant problem. She can be seen, but not heard, nor can she hear, she simply minds her business and carries out your orders in a jiffy."

Answer: Mae West

In 1928, the US inventor Peter Markus was granted a patent for an inflatable device that could be worn over clothing and used to support those who ended up in the water. Airmen and sailors were to be the primary users.

These were not the first buoyancy aids. For many years sailors and sea passengers had access to cork-filled devices. These were, however, considered to be cumbersome.

(Although the ill-fated RMS Titanic did not have enough lifeboats when she sank in 1912, she had over 3,500 cork-filled life jackets. While these prevented many people from drowning, they were no answer to the extreme cold of the North Atlantic. According to the medical magazine "The Lancet": "... the primary cause of death was immersion hypothermia with its attendant consequences...")

Markus designed a garment that, when not needed, lay flat on the body. It contained air-tight pockets that could be filled from a carbon dioxide cylinder.

When inflated, these gas-filled pockets were at the front of the garment. During World War Two, it began to be remarked that the inflated jackets gave wearers the appearance of the popular and rather buxom movie star Mae West.

Answer: Isaac Newton Lewis

Designed in 1911 by by a US Army colonel, the Lewis gun was a fed from a drum containing 47 rounds in ground use and 94 on aircraft.

The US Army did not want the gun, because, it has been claimed, of a clash in personalities between Lewis and US Army procurers.

The gun was mass-produced in Britain and from 1913 was arguably the first machine gun used by Allied aircraft during the Great War.

Because of its design, it was frequently mounted on the top wing of a biplane fighter to fire forwards over the arc of the revolving propeller.

After Germany invented interruption gear to allow machine guns to be fired forwards through the arc of the propeller (an idea the Allies copied), the Lewis Gun fell out of favour to be replaced by the belt-fed Vickers Gun.

The Lewis continued to be used to fire backwards by gunners on bombers. It remained in service with land forces and as an anti-aircraft gun on ships until the 1950s.

Answer: Leslie Hore-Belisha

The Belisha Beacon was named after Leslie Hore-Belisha, Minister of Transport in the United Kingdom.

With the number of vehicles on the roads in towns and cities increasing, so too was the number of pedestrian casualties. People were too often crossing the road willy-nilly at any point they liked.

In the UK in 1934 it was decreed that specific pedestrian crossing points were to be constructed, each identified with flashing amber/yellow light. It became the law that motor vehicles approaching the crossing had to stop and give way to pedestrians using them.

Later, black and white stripes were painted on the road surface to more clearly identify the crossings. The name "zebra crossing" is attributed to the British Minister Jim Callaghan, who saw an early design in about 1948.

Think of the famous photograph of the four Beatles striding across a London Street as an example.

These crossings do not require pedestrians to do anything to control traffic. Drivers must stop immediately.

Later designs of panda and pelican crossings required pedestrians to press a button to turn green traffic lights to red for drivers. This often came after a delay.

In the USA, meanwhile, crossing lights for pedestrians were added to existing traffic signals, probably in the 1920s.

If you ask the US Department of Transportation when and where the first walk/don't walk crossing was installed they will tell you: "we've never been able to find the answer." Their best guess is the 1930s.

Answer: Brannock

The "Brannock Device" was invented and patented in about 1927 by Charles Brannock, an American who came from a shoe-making family.

It measures the length and width of the human foot accurately and consistently. More than one million have been sold by the Brannock Co. since the late 1920s. Source: Company website.

Answer: Jack

An early use of the word 'jack' for a device that lifts heavy weights appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1679.

As well as being a diminutive of the English language name John, many inanimate objects have the name 'jack': For example: jack knife, headphone jack, target ball in lawn and indoor bowls, a picture card in card games, a flag flown from the prow of a ship, and jackhammer.

Answer: William Lawrence Murphy

William Lawrence Murphy did not invent the drop-down bed, but he improved it.

The company he founded claims that at the turn of the 19th/20th Centuries, Murphy was living in an apartment in San Francisco that was so small his bed took up most of the space.

(There is an alternative story that Murphy wanted to entertain a young lady and came up with the fold-down bed as it was not considered polite to have a young woman you were not married to in your bedroom.)

With the development of sofa beds - mattresses that can be folded into other furniture for day time use - the Murphy Bed became less popular.

Answer: Samuel Plimsoll

If a ship is overloaded, it will sink. Before Samuel Plimsoll invented the measuring line that bears his name, many did.

The principle is simple. A series of lines is painted on the side of the ship. These indicate where the level at which it is safe to sail. If a certain line is not visible above the water, the ship is too heavy.

The lines take account of a number of factors, including the temperature and salinity of the sea on intended routes.

Samuel Plimsoll was a 19th Century trader who became a Member of Parliament in the UK. Plimsoll was horrified at the number of British sailors who died on overladen ships.

He campaigned for the introduction of The Merchant Shipping Act of 1875. By 1930, more than 50 countries were enforcing what became known by then as the international load line rule.

Answer: Anna Pavlova

Okay, Aussies in one corner, Kiwis in another, when the bell rings, come out and start fighting fairly. That's the only way to settle who invented the Pavlova pudding.

Anna Pavlova was a great Russian dancer in the early part of the 20th Century. When she toured the antipodes in the 1920s she wowed audiences and, depending on who you ask, a special dessert was created for her in Australia - or was it New Zealand?

The classic pavlova is a dish made using a meringue shell topped with whipped cream and fruit. New Zealanders claim it was created for Anna Pavlova in a hotel in Wellington. Australians claim it was created for her in a hotel in Perth. And do you know what? They both may be wrong.

Writing in a Food52 blog in 2016, Marguerite Preston reported research that indicated the dish was created in Austria in the 18th Century and was taken by settlers to America.

Answer: William Henry Hoover

William Henry Hoover was not the first to produce a vacuum cleaner, that was Ives W. McGaffey in Chicago in 1868.

Several other developers tried to clean up in his tracks, but convenience was not their best point.

In 1906, James Murray Spangler created what was beginning to look like the vacuum cleaners we know of today. He sold his idea to William Henry Hoover.

Hoover and his company became successful and so synonymous with these machines it became common place to refer to "hoovering" the carpet and his name became a verb.

Answer: William Bowler

William Bowler introduced the rounded hat that bears his name in 1850. This had been a commission from an aristocrat who wanted something to protect the heads of gamekeepers while riding under low branches.

The bowler was, initially, a hat for the lower classes. It was later to be adopted by the middle class, among them civil servants and bankers.

According to historyofhats.net, the bowler became popular in the American west - even more so than 10-gallon hats or sombreros. Butch Cassidy and Billy The Kid were among outlaws who favoured them.

And, of course, on the silver screen, bowlers were synonymous with comedians like Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy.

The heyday of the bowler in the UK ended with the 1960s. After that it became increasingly rare to see them worn on a day-to-day-basis by worker.

Incidently, the bowler became a big hit in Bolivia. They were taken there in the 1920s for use by railway workers, but women liked them so much they quickly adopted the fashion.