Frank Sinatra and Donna Reed both won acting Oscars, and Fred Zinnemann was named Best Director, for which 1953 adaptation of a novel by James Jones?
34. What was the name of the primeval supercontinent believed to have existed some 250 million years ago, and which split into the two land masses known as Gondwanaland and Laurasia?
35. Which country made Jonas Furrer its first President in 1848, and has changed its President on an annual basis ever since?
36. The title of a 1966 Jerry Herman Broadway musical, and that of a Jane Austen novel first published in 1815, are anagrams of one another. Can you name them both?
37. Who was the widow of the Roman tributary, King Prasutagus?
38. The Revolution and the New Power Generation were names given to backing bands of which musician at different stages of his career?
39. Koplik’s Spots, occurring in the mouth as bluish-white specks on the inner side of the cheeks, are an early symptom of which viral disease?
40. What was the name of the successor to Mohammed, known as al-Siddiq or ‘the Upright’, who became the first caliph of the Muslim world in the year 632?
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1. Alexei Leonev was the first man, and Edward H. White the first American, to do what?
2. Which two actors played the Likely Lads, Terry and Bob, in the BBC television sitcoms of the 1960s and 70s?
3. Only one whole square number under 100 is the sum of the preceding two square numbers. Which number?
4. Which small tool, used for boring holes, shares its name with a cocktail containing lime juice and either gin or vodka?
5. In Scandinavian mythology, Urd, Verdandi and Skuld were three giant goddesses who presided over the fates of both men and gods. How were they known collectively?
6. Although usually known for her roles in musical extravaganzas, which actress won her only Best Actress Oscar for her dramatic role in the film Kitty Foyle in 1940?
7. The art movement exemplified by 20th century Dutch artists such as Piet Mondrian, Gerrit Rietveld and Theo van Doesburg, is often known by what Dutch name?
8. Firzan, meaning ‘counsellor’, was the original Arabic name for which chess piece?
9. In October 2008, the first UN-sanctioned auction for nearly ten years took place in Southern Africa – of which substance?
10. The serial killer Patrick Bateman is the narrator of which controversial and globally-successful novel of 1991?
11. Which soft felt hat, with a low crown and wide brim, supposedly derives its name, in a punning way, from the fact that it doesn’t have a ‘nap’?
12. Including the innermost, how many rings are there in a standard archery target?
13. In the 1975 ITV dramatisation of The Naked Civil Servant, which actor played Quentin Crisp?
14. The ‘Big Three’ meeting at Yalta in the Crimea in February 1945, between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, was the second conference between these three wartime leaders. Which Middle Eastern city hosted the first of their meetings in 1943?
15. The former John Street, in Hampstead in London, was renamed to reflect the street’s association with which major poet who lived there between 1818 and 1820?
16. Blaisdon Red, Early Laxton, and Rivers’ Early Prolific are varieties of which fruit?
17. What did the initials of the writer P. G. Wodehouse stand for?
18. Which Scottish border town gives its name to a regiment first mustered in 1650, which is the oldest Corps by continuous existence in the British Army?
19. To which great French cinema director did Steven Spielberg give a bit-part as a UFO expert, in the 1977 science-fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind?
20. Which English noun can mean both conscientious and industrious attention to a task, and a type of stagecoach?
21. In towns up and down the British Isles there are thoroughfares and squares with the street name ‘The Butts’. Traditionally, this indicates that which activity once went on there?
22. In the opening chapters of which of Charles Dickens’ novels is the corpse of a man named John Harmon found floating in the Thames, ‘in an advanced state of decay, and much injured’?
23. Can you name the method of music education developed in the early 20th century by Emile Jacques Dalcroze, which uses movement to help the appreciation of music, and which gave its name to a pop group many decades later?
24. In botany, what defines a leaf, flower or fruit described as ‘sessile’?
25. The so-called Black Box, the unit containing an aeroplane’s flight and voice recorders, is usually painted what colour?
26. What’s the family relationship between the writer of the screenplay of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and the writer of the recipe book Voluptuous Delights – The Art of Eating a Little of What You Fancy, published in 2008?
27. The Great White Hope, a 1970 film which starred James Earl Jones as a black boxer hounded for his relationship with a white woman, was based on the life of which real heavyweight champion?
28. What’s the design on the jersey worn in the Tour de France cycle race by the rider designated ‘King of the Mountains’?
29. Which state of the USA is the setting for Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird?
30. What’s the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet?
31. Reclaimed by India, by military force, fifty years ago in December 1961, the state of Goa was previously an enclave governed by which European country?
32. Which cocktail – made with white rum, lime juice and sugar syrup – takes its
