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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 31 December 2010
Answers to last week's questions on 2011:
1. At 11 seconds after 11.11am on 11 November 2011, a digital clock will read 111111111111. We will have to wait 12 hours before something like that appears again, at 11.11pm..
2. Kings Cross drug identity Bill Bayeh is due to be released from jail in 2011. The other significance that 2011 has for Kings Cross and Bill Bayeh is that the Kings Cross postcode is 2011.
3. The first marathon was run in 490BC, but as there was no year 0, the 2500th anniversary should be run in 2011, not the 2010 marathon as it was officially.
4. In 2011 Christmas Day is on a Sunday. So will the official Christmas Day holiday in Australia be (a) on the Sunday, (b) on the Boxing Day Monday and the Boxing Day holiday moved to Tuesday, or (c) on the Tuesday, and the Boxing Day holiday retained on Monday? It will be (a) nationally, (b) in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia, and (c) in Victoria and Tasmania (State Super diary)
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 24 December 2010
Answers to last week's questions on Christmas:
1. A 20-year-old Peruvian woman, Virgen Mary, gave birth to a baby boy on Christmas Day 2008. She and the baby's father were going to name him after a famous soccer player, but decided on the name Jesus.
2. Christmas is not mentioned in the Bible.
3. In Sydney's Darling Harbour suburb on 8 January 2008 nine party goers were arrested when guests turned on police while another 500 looked on. They were Serbians celebrating their Christmas, which falls in January.
4. 'Trims cash' is an anagram for Christmas.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 17 December 2010
Answers to last week's questions on the Commonwealth of Nations:
1. The Commonwealth of Nations was previously called the British Commonwealth.
2. Rwanda (since November last year) and Mozambique are the only countries to become members of the Commonwealth of Nations without a British colonial past or constitutional ties to the UK.
3. More than 50 countries are members of the Commonwealth of Nations. That's a quarter of all countries.
4. Members of the Commonwealth of Nations are Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, Botswana, Brunei, Cameroon, Canada, Cyprus, Dominica, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Malta, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, New Zealand, Nigeria (suspended 1995), Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda (2009), St Christopher and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Tanzania, The Gambia, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uganda, United Kingdom, Vanuatu, Western Samoa, Zambia, Zimbabwe (suspended). There are also 14 British dependent territories: Anguilla, Bermuda, British Antarctic Territory, British Indian Ocean Territory, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat, Pitcairn Island, Saint Helena, Saint Helena Dependencies (Ascension, Tristan da Cunha), South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Turks and Caicos lslands.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 10 December 2010
Answers to last week's questions on golf:
1. Colin Blake drove a golf ball across America from coast to coast.
2. The total prize money for the 1996 South Australian Open golf championship was $300,000. Greg Norman was paid $300,000 just for appearing.
3. The largest ever TV audience for a game of golf was on 6 February 1971, yet there was only one spectator at the event. This game was played on the moon. Alan Shepherd was the golfer.
4. Honey is an ingredient in golf balls.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 3 December 2010
Answers to last week's questions on Prince William:
1. England's Prince William, three consecutive US presidents (Ronald Reagan, George Bush Senior and Bill Clinton), Kermit the Frog and polar bears are all left-handed.
2. If Prince William had married a Catholic he would have been banned from becoming king.
3. Prince William will spend Christmas Day this year working a voluntary shift as an RAF rescue pilot so that married pilots can have Christmas with their families.
4. Prince William's aunt, Princess Anne, has a conviction for not restraining her dog when it attacked two children. (Telegraph)
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 26 November 2010
Answers to last week's questions on Qantas:
1. The name Qantas comes from the initials of the airline's original name, Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services.
2. Many people are scared of flying and of bad luck from the number 13. The phone number for Qantas reservations is 131313.
3. Qantas hasn't lost any passengers in air crashes in the jet era.
4. Qantas had 29 refuelling stops on its tri-weekly service to London in 1938.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 19 November 2010
Answers to last week's questions on Burma:
1. Burma this month had its first election for 20 years.
2. The alternative name for Burma is Myanmar.
3. The stress in the name Myanmar can be on the first, second or third syllable. (BBC News)
4. Burma, Libera and USA are the only countries that retain the Imperial system of measurement.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 12 November 2010
Answers to last week's questions on Mars:
1. NASA is asking for volunteers to go to Mars in about 2030. They will stay there for the rest of their lives as It would be too costly to bring them back – five times as much as getting them there.
4. Veteran Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov said that only men aged over 60 should be included on a manned space mission to Mars because prolonged exposure to radiation, calcium deficit and muscular atrophy would cause irreversible sterility. (Sydney Morning Herald)
3. Journalists almost always say 'the red planet' when reporting on Mars.
4. Mars is yellowish brown (National Geographic)
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 5 November 2010
Answers to last week's questions on the Melbourne Cup:
1. The Melbourne Cup was run on the first Tuesday in November in 1875 and every year since.
2. The NSW Government chose to release its controversial 30 000-page contract with the builders of the Cross City Tunnel at just after 3pm on 1 November 2005 as the Melbourne Cup was being run, so that criticism would be swamped.
3. The former champion jockey and Melbourne Cup winner Darren Beadman headed the 1998 promotion for G-line, the addicted gamblers' telephone counselling service.
4. After its sale by the NSW Council of Churches in 1995, Sydney radio station 2CH broadcast the Melbourne Cup and advertisements for alcoholic drinks for the first time in its 70 year history.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 29 October 2010
Answers to last week's questions on mining:
1.There were 2000 media people covering the Chile mine rescue.
2. More were lifted from the mine than those originally trapped because rescuers and paramedics were lowered into it and hauled back.
3. The trapped miners endured a continuous temperature of 34C (93F).
4. Tom Price is a mining town in Western Australia. It was named after the man who surveyed this mining area
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 22 October 2010
Answers to last week's questions on saints:
1. Mary MacKillop became Australia's first Catholic saint on October 17.
2. Every May since the 12th century, people of Gubbio in northern Italy have staged a race to commemorate St Ubaldo, believed to have saved the town from invasion. Three statues—of Saints Ubaldo, George and Anthony—are raced up the narrow track of Mt Ingino, with that of St Ubaldo starting in pole position. In the 800-plus races Ubaldo has never been beaten. All of the track is too narrow for overtaking, and St Ubaldo starts first. (Readers' Digest Book of Facts)
3. St Valentine was the saint of bee-keeping.
4. The Universal Life Church of Modesto, California, will make you one of its saints and send you a 'Certificate of Sainthood' for a nominal sum.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 15 October 2010
Answers to last week's questions on India:
1. Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated. Her son, Rajiv, another prime minister of India, also died by assassination.
2. The main feature of the Indian flag is a wheel.
3. Playing cards in India are round.
4. After the 1998 floods in India, 30 million were homeless.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 8 October 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on the Commonwealth Games:
1. Australia’s Rachael Grinham won the silver medal for squash at the 2006 Commonwealth Games, being beaten for the gold medal by her sister Natalie.
2. On the same day, 20 March 2006, Natalie Saville won the silver medal for the 20km walk, being beaten for the gold medal by her sister Jane.
3. In the 2006 Commonwealth Games, 14 of the 22-member Sierra Leone team disappeared and their visas expired.
4. Before this year’s Commonwealth Games, concerns were raised about all of dengue fever, terrorist attacks, falling bridges, falling roofs, dirty handbasins, bedclothing with dog paw marks and snakes.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 1 October 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on Vietnam:
1. Hanoi celebrates its 1000th anniversary on 10 October 2010.
2. The Vietnamese name for the Vietnam War is the American War.
3. Up to a decade ago, Vietnam was the largest exporter of scrap metal. (Sunday Telegraph)
4. One dollar is worth about 15,000 dong.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 24 September 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on Sydney radio ratings:
1. On 30 March 2010, 2GB evening personality Brian Wilshire won his 66th consecutive survey in the Sydney radio ratings. It was also his 66th birthday.
2. Most of those who hear 2SM’s breakfast announcer, Grant Goldman, each morning are train travellers. Hundreds of thousands hear him say “Doors closing. Please stand clear” every time a Sydney train is about to leave a station.
3. ‘Aunt Margaret’, Margaret Herd,.who had a life-long contract with 2CH to broadcast the children’s program Fairy Godmother from 5 to 5.35pm each Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon, was still broadcasting when she was in her 80s. According to the McNair Anderson radio surveys, most of her listeners belonged to the over 55 age group.
4. Gary O’Callaghan was Sydney’s top-rating breakfast personality for nearly 50 years.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 17 September 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on queues:
1. The waiting time in queues for the China, Saudi Arabia, Japan and South Korea pavilions at Shanghai’s World Expo, which has been attracting more than 400,000 people a day and runs until the end of next month, has been more than five hours. (Sydney Morning Herald)
2. Why was a queue formed by 54 people in difficult conditions in Nepal on 16 May 2002? They were on an area the size of half a tennis court waiting their turn to stand on the summit of Mt Everest. Even that was not the record for one day. On 23 May 2001 89 summitted.
3. The only English-language word that is pronounced the same way with or without its last four letters is queue.
4. The English word with five consecutive vowels is queueing (sometimes spelt queuing). Other words with lots of vowels are equipoise, leukaemia, Louisiana, audaciously, aqueous, obsequious and ideologue.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 10 September 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on the US Open tennis:
1. . In the 2008 US Open, Ivo Karlovic served 42 aces. His opponent, Florent Serra, didn’t serve any. (Sydney Morning Herald)
2. John Isner, the conqueror of fifth seed Andy Roddick in 2009, didn’t raise his hand like other players to shake with the umpire after the match because he didn’t need to raise it. He’s 6 feet 9 inches tall.
3. The first unseeded woman to win the US singles, which has been played since 1887, was Kim Clijsters, in 2009.
4. Of the last 14 women’s singles finals in the US Open, none have gone to three sets.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 3 September 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on the Sydney Harbour Bridge:
1. Last month was the 60th anniversary of the joining of the two halves of the Sydney Harbour Bridge arch.
2. Capt de Groot, an interloper on horseback, cut the ribbon at the official opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
3. Famous Australian actor Paul Hogan worked as a rigger on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
4. BridgeClimb pays more than $2 million annually to the Sydney Harbour Bridge owners, the NSW Government.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 27 August 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on Azaria Chamberlain.
1. In the trial of Azaria’s mother, Lindy Chamberlain, it was claimed that Azaria had been murdered in the family car because scientific evidence showed that blood found under the dashboard was baby’s blood. It was actually sound deadener, found in all vehicles of that model.
2. An English professor testified that red marks on the baby's clothing were bloodstains from the hand of a small lady. The ‘bloodstains’ were later found to be red dust.
3. Lindy Chamberlain said that a dingo had taken her baby, but the discovered clothes were reported to have been ‘neatly folded’. The ranger who found the clothes stated that he folded them before reporting the matter.
4. Azaleal, not Azaria, means ‘sacrifice in the desert’.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 20 August 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on Australian prime minister Julia Gillard:
1. Julia Gillard was born in the area of a village in southern Wales with a name that has only one vowel and six consonants precede the vowel. It is Cwmgwrach.
2. Before Julia Gillard, the last Australian prime minister to be born overseas was Billy Hughes (1915-23). (crikey.com.au)
3. Australian prime ministers Curtin, Gorton, Whitlam, Hawke and Gillard professed or profess no religion.
4. Francis Forde was prime minister of Australia for the shortest time, from 6 July 1945 to 13 July 1945.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 13 August 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on Australian elections:
1. The only election debate between prime minister Julia Gillard and opposition leader (now Prime Minister) Tony Abbott was changed to a different time slot by channels 2, 7 and 9 on 25 July 2010 because of a cooking show on channel 10.
2. The most popular month for holding federal and state elections in Australia is March, with 41.
3. The least popular month for holding federal and state elections in Australia is January with 0. The figures for federal and state elections since 1950 are March 41, February 31, May 24, November 20, October 17, December 16, September 10, June 8, August 8, July 7, April 6, January 0.
4. All of the following people (surnames in italics) contested the 1998 Australian federal election: Justice Abolish Child Support and Family Court; Marcus Aussie-Stone, Prime Minister John Ipiss the Family, Paul-Ian Handsome Puppet, Pauline Pantsdown.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 6 August 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on Australian prime ministers’ quotes:
1. Who asked then opposition leader and later prime minister Kevin Rudd the most questions during the 2007 election campaign? Kevin Rudd himself did, as in ‘Do I have a tax policy? Yes, I do. Will I be releasing that policy during the campaign? Yes, I will. (Sydney Morning Herald)
2. The two-word expression that prime minister Julia Gillard used 37 times during her speech at the announcement of the 2010 election date was ‘moving forward’.
3. The Australian prime minister who said ‘life wasn’t meant to be easy’ was Malcolm Fraser.
4. The speech that contained the line ‘life wasn’t meant to be easy’ was written by current broadcaster, Alan Jones.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 30 July 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on cycling:
1. The 1996 Tour de France started in The Netherlands.
2. The 2007 Tour de France started in London.
3. The winning time in the 1964 Olympics semi-final of the 1km cycling sprint between Giovanni Pettenella and Pierre Trentin was over 22 minutes. They spent most of that time standing still, neither wishing to relinquish his preferred tactical position. (ABC-2UE Atlanta Olympic Games Guide)
4. Which sport is the answer to this cryptic crossword clue? Candy stick sport (7). The answer is cycling. Candy = C and Y, and a word for stick is cling. (Sydney Morning Herald)
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 23 July 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on the World Cup:
1. New Zealand’s team was the only one not to lose a match in the 2010 World Cup. The matches that they drew were not sufficient to get them past the first round.
2. Paul the octopus was recognized worldwide as the best at picking which teams would win. He successfully ‘predicted’ eight consecutive results.
3. This was Spain’s first win of a World Cup.
4. The only countries with a one-syllable name are Chad, France, Greece, Laos and Spain.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 16 July 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on North Korea’s World Cup:
1. This year North Korea scored their first goal in the World Cup for 44 years, and did so as bottom team against the top favourite.
2. North Koreans who wanted to travel to South Africa for the World Cup could only get permission from their government by gaining selection in their country’s team.
3. According to ESPN, the 30-40 fans supporting the North Korean team were paid Chinese actors.
4. North Korea’s ‘Dear Leader’, Kim Jong-il, was credited with devising the football team’s strategies. (Sydney Morning Herald)
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 9 July 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on Wimbledon:
One match overshadowed all others in the 2010 Wimbledon men’s singles, breaking a large number of tennis records. John Isher and Nicolas Mahut not only broke these records, but annihilated them:
1. Most games in a match (previously 112): Broken by 71 games (183)
2. Longest match (previously 6 hours 33 minutes): Broken by 4 hours 32 minutes (11 hours 5 minutes)
3. Longest fifth set (previously 40 games): Broken by 98 games (138)
4. Most aces in a match (previously 96): Broken by 119 aces (215)
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 2 July 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on female prime ministers:
1. Julia Gillard was honoured on 24 June 2010 as Australia’s first female prime minister. Why is Francis Forde, who was prime minister of Australia for eight days in 1945, not given this accolade? Because to be a female prime minister, you have to be a female.
2. In the month before challenging for prime minister, Julia Gillard said that she would more likely play full forward for the Western Bulldogs, travel to Mars and star in a Hollywood movie with Brad Pitt than mount such a challenge.
3. Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher charged $2000 a minute for after-dinner speeches.
4. Margaret Thatcher sacked conservative MP Winston Churchill, grandson of the wartime leader, Sir Winston Churchill. (Sydney Morning Herald)
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 25 June 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on marriage:
1. Former Western Australian premier Sir Charles Court was 85 when he married Judith Butt (Telegraph)
2. Can a male member of the Australian Dieri tribe legally marry his mother’s mother’s brother’s daughter’s daughter or his mother’s father’s sister’s daughter’s daughter? Yes. The tribe’s law includes those descriptions. (Absolute Trivia)
3. Adolf Hitler was married for less than 24 hours. He married Eva Braun the evening before his suicide on 30 April 1945.
4. A woman who lived in Sydney married 10 men. None of them died and there were no divorces, yet she didn’t break the law. How could this be? She was a marriage celebrant.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 18 June 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on death:
1. The world’s oldest person, Portugal’s Maria de Jesus, died in 2009 at 115. She never went to school and never learned to read or write.
2. The 456BC death of Greek playwright Aeschylus was caused by an eagle, a tortoise and his bald head. An eagle dropped a tortoise on his bald head, mistaking it for a stone. (Sydney Morning Herald)
3. The former function of Canberra’s National Film and Sound Archive building was the city morgue.
4. The only Australian to be buried in Westminster Abbey is the unknown soldier. (Cassowary Crossing)
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 11 June 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on the World Cup:
1. Before 2006, Australia had only scored one goal in the World Cup. That was an own goal in 1974.
2. Football was so-named because it was a game played on foot rather than on horseback. (Lyle Brown’s Sports Quiz)
3. Is the first name of footballer Hiddink, manager of Chelsea in 2009, spelt GWS? Yes if you’re talking, no if you’re writing. His first name is Guus.
4. The player in the 2006 World Cup final with the initials ZZ was Zinedine Zidane.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 4 June 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on Mount Everest:
1. When 13-year-old Jordan Romero last week became the youngest person to reach the summit of Mount Everest, he took the record from a 16-year-old.
2. Australia’s Sir Edmund Hillary and Nepal’s Tenzing Norkay had 350 porters for their first successful Mt Everest climb.
3. On Australian Tim McCartney-Snape's first climb to the summit of Everest, he and his two mates were caught in a blizzard and wondered if they would survive. They agreed the night would pass more quickly if they did not look at their watches until they were confident that it was at least 5am. When they did check their watches, it was only 7.45pm.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 28 May 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on Jessica Watson:
1. Jessica Watson crashed into a cargo boat on her way to the start of her round-the-world sail.
2. Although she was able to circumnavigate the world solo and unassisted, Jessica Watson was legally unable to drive a car, drink alcohol or vote.
3. Jessica Watson is 17, having completed her voyage three days before her birthday.
4. The last time that all three Australian free-to-air commercial networks showed the same event live was 15 May 2010¾the finish of Jessica Watson’s round-the-world sail at Sydney.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 21 May 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on British prime ministers:
1. David Cameron is the youngest British prime minister for nearly 200 years.
2. The British prime minister lives at Number 10 Downing Street; the Chancellor of the Exchequer is at Number 11 and the office of the Chief Whip at Number 12. They are the only remaining numbers.
3. Margaret Thatcher’s popularity soared to its highest level during the Falklands War.
4. British Prime Minister Lord Home pronounced his name as though it were spelt ‘Hume’.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 14 May 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on snooker:
1. When Australian Neil Robertson won the world snooker championship on 4 May 2010, it was the first win of the title by someone from outside Britain for 30 years.
2. It is possible to get a higher break in snooker than the usually quoted maximum of 147: Your opponent misses his red ball and leaves himself in a foul snooker. You can then nominate any ball, which counts as a red. Sink that, then a colour (black for the highest score), then do the normal maximum break. Total: 155.
3. If two reds are touching and lined up with the pocket, the red nearer the pocket will always go in no matter what the angle at which the cue ball hits the further ball.
4. If two snooker balls are touching each other and also touching the cushion, and one other ball is sent along the cushion into them, one of the original balls will go out from the opposite end. If two balls are sent down together, the two original balls will be propelled along the cushion while the two new ones will remain. If three balls are sent into the stationary two, the stationary two plus the first of the sent balls are projected along the cushion while the last two stay. If two are sent from the right-hand end and one is sent from the left, two balls will go out to the left and one ball to the right. The same experiment can be performed with hanging (swinging) balls.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 7 May 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on sailing:
1. For the last six months, 16-year-old Jessica Watson has been at sea, becoming the youngest person to have sailed around the world solo and unassisted. She is back in Australian waters and due to finish in Sydney in early May.
2. Sir Francis Chichester was the first person to sail solo and unassisted around the world.
3. The sailing term that has two apostrophes is foc’s’le (forecastle).
4. Quadriplegic Hilary Lister, who can only move her head, controlled her sailing boat in her 2008 attempt to sail solo around the British Isles with her breath, blowing into tubes.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 30 April 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on Iceland:
1. Iceland and Ireland have identical names except for one letter.
2. None of Iceland is north of the Arctic Circle.
3. Iceland’s capital, with the unusual consecutive letters ykj, is Reykjavik.
4. The surname of the Iceland prime minister ends in dottir, which means daughter. Patronymics is an Icelandic custom.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 23 April 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on volcanoes:
1. Montserrat’s capital, Plymouth, had no residents during 1996. It was abandoned for the whole year because of eruptions from the island’s volcano.
2. Lava flowed into the centre of Montserrat’s capital, Plymouth, in 1996. (Sydney Morning Herald)
3. The only continent without an active volcano is Australia, although Australian territories have active volcanoes.
4. Scientology teaches that the galactic emperor called Xenu brought billions of his people to Earth 75 million years ago and buried them in volcanoes.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 16 April 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on rowing:
1. In March, Shaun Quincey became the first person to row across the Tasman from Australia to New Zealand. The first person to row from New Zealand to Australia was his father, Colin.
2. A repechage is a contest in which runners-up in the eliminating contests compete for a place in the final.
3. Both boats sank in the 1932 Oxford-Cambridge boat race. (Book of Heroic Failures)
4. Rowing gave Australia its first world champion.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 9 April 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on World War II survivors:
1. Andree Peel (also known as Agent Rose), a French resistance heroine who saved more than 100 Allied lives, was about to be shot in 1945 at Buchenwald, Germany, when the execution squad fled from approaching US forces. Instead of having seconds to live, she survived until last month, aged 105.
2. Irena Sendler saved 2500 Jewish children by smuggling them from the Warsaw Ghetto. She was discovered and tortured in 1943, but saved on her way to execution by a friend’s bribing German guards. Al Gore beat her 2007 Nobel Prize nomination.
3. Australian Nancy Wake led an underground escape line for allied soldiers in Hitler’s Germany and became the war’s most-decorated heroine. She is still alive, at 97, in a nursing home in London.
4. Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda and Private Teruo Nakamura kept fighting World War II in the Philippines for 21 years after it ended. They did not believe the war was over. (Book of Heroic Failures and Third Degree of Trivia)
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 2 April 2010
Answers to last week's questions on Easter:
1. Two days before Easter 2008, Philippine health officials warned people taking part in Easter crucifixions and self-flagellation rituals that it can be bad for their health.
2. Easter Island is in the South Pacific. It's the island with the weird-looking, giant statues.
3. Queen Elizabeth II never had a birthday on Good Friday before 2000. The previous Good Friday on 21 April was in 1916. (Sydney Morning Herald)
4. For most of its existence Sydney's Royal Easter Show has been officially opened at about the half-way mark. In 2008, for example, the show was from Thursday 20 March to Wednesday 2 April and it was officially opened on Wednesday 26 March.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 26 March 2010
1. Jon Venables was 10 when he murdered two-year-old James Bulger in Britain in 1993. He was released in 2001 and was returned to custody in March 2010. By what name is he known now? If you answered that question correctly, that’s very impressive, as he was given a new, secret identity. But whatever name you might have given in your answer, you couldn’t be proved wrong, could you?
2. The two who were charged with the murder and sexual assault of Ryan Harris in 1998 passed the time in court during the first day of their New York trial by colouring-in. They were aged seven and eight. (Sydney Morning Herald)
3. When a seven-year-old boy shot dead a six-year-old girl classmate near Detroit, Michigan, a decade ago this month, the boy’s father and grandfather were in jail at the time of the shooting, for gun-related offences (Sydney Morning Herald)
4. Is the small Canadian city Medicine Hat best known for the country’s youngest murderer? No, but it is known for the country’s youngest multiple murderer, a 12-year-old who killed three family members.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 19 March 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on Winston Churchill:
1. British prime minister Margaret Thatcher sacked conservative member Winston Churchill, who died this month. He was the grandson of wartime prime minister Sir Winston Churchill.
2. Sir Winston Churchill was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
3. Who said “If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour’”? No, probably not Sir Winston Churchill, but rather actor Norman Shelly, who used to do Churchill’s voice when he was unable to do his speeches. (Sun-Herald)
4. The statue of Sir Winston Churchill in Parliament Square, London, is heated from the inside to stop pigeons’ droppings from sticking.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 12 March 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on Australian cricket statistics:
1. The fastest ball ever bowled by Australia’s Brett Lee was 99.9mph.
2. Don Bradman’s batting average was 99.94.
3. Wahroonga’s 12-year-old Nicky Wheeler’s record for earliest hat-trick in a career can never be beaten because on each of the first three balls she bowled in a match, on 18-10-03, she bowled the batter out. (Sydney Morning Herald)
4. On the day after Australian captain Steve Waugh announced his retirement from cricket, Sydney’s Telegraph devoted 15 pages to him.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 5 March 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on traffic offences:
1. North Sydney Court banned a 55-year-old man from approaching within 20 metres of parking metres in February 2010 because he had been charged with putting Superglue in 16 parking metres.
2. It is illegal for a driver to be blindfolded while operating a vehicle in Alabama.
3. Red cars are most likely to get pulled over for speeding.
4. Former Formula One racing champion Nigel Mansell appeared in a British court for speeding. He was disqualified from driving for six months. (Telegraph)
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 26 February 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on February dates:
1. Six seconds after five minutes past 4am on the third of February 2001 could be written as 06/05/04/03/02/01.
2. A 12-digit palindromic time and date occurred at 8.02pm on 20 February 2002 (200220022002). The previous 12-digit palindromic time and date was at 7.51pm on 11 November 1591 (195111111591).
3. The date 2/2/2000 was the first for 1111 years with only even numbers. The next year with only odd numbers will be another 1111 years from then, ie 1/1/3111
4. Grandmother said she was born on 29 February 1900. How old is she now? She could not have been born on 29 February 1900 as years ending in 00 are only leap years if divisible by 400.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 19 February 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on Winter and Ancient Olympics:
1. The most fondly remembered 1988 winter Olympics competitor was British skier Eddie the Eagle (Michael Edwards).
2. No contestants have been killed in Winter Olympics competition history, but five have been killed in training accidents.
3. Jockeys wore nothing in the ancient Olympics. (National Geographic)
4. Women were forbidden, on pain of death, from watching the ancient Olympics. (Trivial Pursuit)
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 12 February 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on Pakistan:
1. Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari’s wife was twice Pakistan's prime minister and head of the Pakistan People's Party - a position Mr Zardari inherited upon her death in December 2007. (BBC)
2. The ‘stan’ in ‘Pakistan’ means land.
3. The most candidates to stand in a national election for a single constituency was 107, in Pakistan in 1997. The candidates were listed by symbols because of illiteracy. (Guinness World Records)
4. Pakistani wrestler Akram Bholoo ate an entire roast goat each week. (Book of Sports Lists)
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 5 February 2010
The answers to all last week’s questions on the Australian Open tennis were Na Li:
1. Na Li’s name appears in the Mona Lisa.
2. Na Li shakes her hand in front of her chest after each point.
3. Na Li has a prominent tattoo.
4. Na Li’s first and surname appear more often in the reverse order to that shown on the Australian Open’s web site, and in both orders at different times in items in The Sydney Morning Herald.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 29 January 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on disasters.
1. Like the Richter Scale, the Kantimori Scale measures earthquakes. It was developed to measure earthquake vibrations that exceed the Richter Scale’s maximum reading.
2. Papua New Guinea’s Lamington volcano erupted on in 1951 when Papua New Guinea was Australian territory. (Sydney Morning Herald)
3. The type of natural disaster that kills most people in the United States is lightning - an average of 400 deaths annually (Book of Facts)
4. Dubai’s worst road accident, in March 2008, involved 200 cars and 300 people.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 22 January 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on tall buildings:
1. The building that was the tallest in a city famous for tall buildings, lost its title, then regained it in 2001, was the Empire State Building, New York.
2. The French built the Statue of Liberty.
3. The Tower of London has been a fortress, palace and prison.
4. The London skyline 250 years ago was dominated by churches.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 15 January 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on first names:
1. William was the most popular name for newborn boys in New South Wales in 2009. Was that more or less than the number of Williams in 2008? No. It was exactly the same – 660.
2. Two male first names starting with double L are Lleyton and Lloyd.
3. Trig and Track are two of Sarah Palin’s children.
4. Midnight Chardonnay, Number 16 Bus Shelter, Fat Boy, Hitler, Yeah Detroit, Spial Cicada, Violence and (for twins) Benson and Hedges and Fish and Chips are first names of New Zealand children.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 8 January 2010
Answers to last week’s jokes questions:
1. The British Association for the Advancement of Science conducted what it described as the largest-ever scientific study of humour. It found this to be the world’s funniest joke: Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn’t seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other man pulls out his phone and calls emergency services. He gasps to the operator: ‘My friend is dead! What can I do?’ The operator, in a clam, soothing voice, replies: ‘Take it easy. I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.’ There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the hunter says, ‘OK, now what?’
2. The most frequently submitted joke to the British Association for the Advancement of Science humour study was: ‘What’s brown and sticky?’ The answer was: ‘a stick’.
3. The dinosaur crossed the road because chickens hadn’t been invented.
4. On which side of the cup do you put the handle? The outside.
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Free Trivia Answers to Questions
for week ending 1 January 2010
Answers to last week’s questions on mammals:
1. A jackrabbit is not a rabbit. It is a hare, which is like a rabbit but not a rabbit. (Absolute Trivia)
2. The hyrax, which is about the size of a rabbit, is most closely related to the elephant.
3. The only mammal that can’t jump is the elephant
4. The collective noun for ferrets is a business.
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