With Love ,RITHWIK

1.

This pastry gets its name from the French word for “lightning”, although that has absolutely no significance. Funnily enough, most of us in India think of something completely different when someone names it. Identify.

ECLAIR

2. “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing

you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them.” Which celebrated and controversial novel starts thus?

3.

It was proposed by the Calabrian doctor Aloysius Lilius and was named after a Pope who decreed it by papal bull Inter gravissimas on 24 February, 1582. What am I talking about ?

Gregorian calendar

4. 9.Anna Maria Grosholtz was born in

Strasbourg, France. At the age of 17, she became art tutor to King Louis XVI’s sister at the Palace Of Versailles and then, during the French Revolution, was hastily forced to prove her allegiance to the feudalistic nobles by making the death masks of executed aristocrats. For this, she searched through corpses to find the decapitated heads of executed citizens.

How do we better know her ?

5.He was a Suryavanshi king who wished to ascend

to heaven in his mortal body. When Vishwamithra tried to send him to heaven as a mortal the Gods were alarmed by this and under the leadership of Indra decided to not let the king enter through the gates of heaven in this mortal self. Indra using his powers caused the king to fall back to earth.

Vishwamithra could not accept defeat and used his powers to arrest the fall. Thus the king was suspended mid-air in a state of unstable equilibrium.

What is the name of the king ?

Trishanku :- Commonly referred to through the

phrase "Trishanku's heaven"

6.A conical mountain  which

is well-known for the Sri Pada "sacred footprint", a 1.8 m rock formation near the summit, in Buddhist tradition held to be the footprint of the Buddha, in Hindu tradition that of Shiva and in Muslim tradition that of X.

What is its name ?

Adam’s Peak In

Sri Lanka

7.

One Hindu legend says that once Lord Shiva became so compassionate after seeing the sufferings of mankind that He could not help but shed a tear from his eye. This single tear from Shiva’s eye grew into this evergreen tree.

Which tree ?

Rudraksha

8. Sir Walter Raleigh described what was possibly

a tepuy (table top mountain), and he is sometimes said to have discovered it, but these claims are considered "far-fetched" . They were spotted in 1912 by the explorer Ernesto Sanchez La Cruz, but he did not publicize his discovery. They were not known to the outside world until American aviator …….. …………flew over them on 16 November 1933 on a flight while he was searching for a valuable ore bed.

What did he discover ?

Angel Falls,world’s highest waterfall,in Venezuela,named after

Jimmie Angel.

9 .Auguste Antoine Piccard (28 January 1884 – 24 March 1962) was a  Swiss physicist, inventor and explorer. Born in Basel, Switzerland. He became a professor of physics in Brussels at the Free University of Brussels in 1922. He had interest in ballooning.

Once X said about him: “Y is a reduced scale Piccard, as

the real chap was very tall. He had an interminable neck that sprouted from a collar that was much too large... I made Y a mini-Piccard“.

Solve for X and Y

X- Herge Y- Prof.Calculus

Auguste Piccard was the inspiration for Professor Cuthbert Calculus

10.

She was born on 1st January 1914 in Moscow, Russia. She was the great great great granddaughter of Tipu Sultan and has written a book – Twenty Jataka Tales. Later during World War II she became a British Special Agent and was assigned to spy in France. Who ?

Noor Inayat Khan

11. The first citation of this phrase can be dated

back to Sir William Hope’s “The Compleat Fencing-Master” in 1692, where he says “What he doth, he doth by ___ __ ____”. Interesting origins associate this phrase to wood workers using ____ to measure lengths, while a more interesting origin is linked to Sir Francis Buller, who (in)famously stated “A man is permitted to beat his wife if he used a stick not wider than a ___. “ The phrase has found its way to scientific circles since then.

Which phrase?

Rule of Thumb

12. . It is claimed to be the world’s oldest republic,

having been founded in 301 A.D. It was technically at war with Switzerland for almost 350 years, from 1648 to 1996 when a peace agreement was formally signed. An interesting aspect of its economy is the sale of its postage stamps to collectors, which forms a significant part of its annual income. A famous annual sporting event was named after this country, though it was conducted elsewhere, the country being too small to accommodate the event.

WHICH COUNTRY /EVENT ?

San Marino / San Marino Grand Prix

13.

The closest land is Fais Island (one of the outer islands of Yap), 289 km (180 mi) southwest, and Guam, 306 km (190 mi) to the northeast. The point is named after the British Royal Navy survey ship HMS ............... of 1872–76. Only three descents have ever been achieved; Trieste in 1960, Kaikō in 1995 and Nereus in 2009.

What geographical feature ?

Challenger Deep

14. The Victim:Samuel Edward Ratchett. The Suspects:Hector Willard MacQueen, Edward

Henry Masterman, Pierre Michel, Mary Hermione Debenham, Colonel Arbuthnot, Princess Natalia Dragomiroff, Hildegarde Schmidt, Count Rudolph Andrenyi, Countess Elena Andrenyi, Greta Ohlsson, Mrs. Caroline Martha Hubbard, Antonio Foscarelli, Cyrus Bethman Hardman,

The Investigators: The Detective - The Director - Monsieur Bouc The Doctor - Dr. Stavros Constantine. The case, please.

15.

This Indian practice is ancient, going back to around 400 to 750 BC. The actual mention appears in the Ayodhya Kanda, (the second book of the Ramayana), in Sarga (section) 103. Bharata has gone to ask the exiled Rama to come back and rule the kingdom. Bharata tries many arguments, none of which work, at which point he decides to do a -----.

What practice ?

Hunger strike

16. When the Tsar gave X the lowest court title, the

poet became enraged: he felt this occurred not only so that his wife, who had many admirers—including the Tsar himself—could properly attend court balls, but also to humiliate him. In 1837, falling into greater and greater debt amidst rumors that his wife had started conducting a scandalous affair, X challenged her alleged lover, his brother in-law Georges d'Anthès, to a duel which left both men injured, X mortally. He died two days later. Name X ?

Alexander Pushkin

17.

Derived from the French word for “juniper”, this global city is a worldwide centre for diplomacy and the most important international co-operation centre along with New York . The city is referred to as the world's most compact metropolis and the "Peace Capital“ of the world.

Which city?

GENEVA

18.

In the early 1900’s, a ten year-old boy, Wilbur Chapman, impressed by a traveling missionary’s sermon about lepers, decided to raise money to help a boy suffering from the disease. Raising a pig named Pete, Wilbur sold the pig, donating the $25.00 from the sale to the boy with leprosy. His compassion caught the imagination of the public and started a movement to help lepers .

What did this give rise to?

What else ? A Piggy Bank !

19.

The name of which Raga in Indian classical music is derived by the combination of two words , which means he who wears serpents like garlands—the god Shiva. The raga is believed to have been created by goddess Parvati to calm Shiva, when the lord Shiva was outraged and was not calming down after Tandav in rage of Sati's sacrifice.

Malkoush

20. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic,

systemic inflammatory disorder that may affect many tissues and organs, but principally attacks synovial joints. The process produces an inflammatory response of the synovium (synovitis) secondary to hyperplasia of synovial cells, excess synovial fluid, and the development of pannus in the synovium.

Who is the most famous sufferer of this from the world of sports ?

Billy Bowden

21. When ten year old ---------- Tennyson, his cousin Gwen, and

their grandfather Max are on their summer camping trip, ----------- finds an alien pod on the ground. When he examines it, he finds a mysterious, watch-like device called the Omnitrix. The device attaches itself permanently to his wrist and gives him the ability to transform into a variety of alien life-forms, each with its own unique powers. Although ------------- soon realizes that he has a responsibility to help others with these new abilities at his disposal, he is not above a little super-powered mischief every now and then. Along with Gwen and Grandpa Max, ---------------- embarks on a summer-long adventure to fight evil, both extraterrestrial and earthly. Whose legend ?

22. In one version of the Ramayana he asks

Manthara to convince Kaikeyi to ask Dasharatha to exile Rama, because only when Rama is exiled will he face Ravana and kill him. Although Manthara agrees to do his bidding, she curses him that, for the wrong he made to Rama, he would never be prayed to by any Hindu family. This is claimed to be the reason why he is never worshipped in any temple or family.

Who is he ?

INDRA

23.1989 List .What’s missing ?

24. Louis Réard was an engineer, he was running his

mother's shoe shop Les Folies Bergères in Paris by 1946.Reard and Jacques Heim, his rival designer, were competing to produce the world's smallest …………….. He ended up hiring Micheline Bernardini, a dancer from the Casino de Paris as his model . His business soared, and in advertisements he kept the ----------- mystique alive by declaring that a -----------wasn't a genuine ------------"unless it could be pulled through a wedding ring.

What did he invent ?

25. X was born to Parsi parents in Zanzibar in 1946 and

got educated at St. Peter’s School, in Panchgani (near Bombay), and St. Mary’s in Mazagon. His family left for Britain in 1964 after the Zanzibar Revolution . After graduating, X joined a series of bands, all of which failed, before he formed one named Ibex, which had a certain degree of stability.

Identify X, who was blacklisted by the UN for breaking the cultural boycott of South Africa during the Apartheid, and was often criticised for keeping his ethnicity a secret from the public for many years.

Freddie Mercury

26. He is credited with creating and building the world's first

liquid-fueled rocket,which he successfully launched on March 16, 1926. He and his team launched 34 rockets. As both theorist and engineer, Goddard's work anticipated many of the developments that made spaceflight possible.Two of his 214 patents — one for a multi-stage rocket design , and another for a liquid-fuel rocket design— are regarded as important milestones toward spaceflight. His 1919 monograph, A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, is considered one of the classic texts of 20th century rocket science. He successfully applied three-axis control, gyroscopes and steerable thrust to rockets, all of which allow rockets to be controlled effectively in flight.

Who is this rocket man ?

Robert H. Goddard

27. The stone tablet containing the ______ __

____________was discovered in 1901 by the Egyptologist Gustav Jéquier, a member of the expedition headed by Jacques de Morgan.

The stele was discovered in what is now Khuzestan, Iran where it had been taken as plunder by the Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte in the 12th century BC.It is currently on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris. Analysis shows it was created around 1760 BC At the top of the stele is a bas-relief image of a Babylonian god while the bottom is covered with text in Akkadian language . The text has been broken down by translators into 282 laws governing all aspects of life. Fill in the blanks

Code of Hammurabi

28.The common Basilisk is a lizard found in Central &South American rain forests.It is also known as ____ ____ lizard for the fact that for its ability that it can run on surface of water. Fill in the blanks

Jesus Christ Lizard

29.

One theory is this word is derived from an alcoholic drink used as a stimulant in ceremonial dances in 18th century Southern Africa. The 2nd theory is that it comes from the Dutch word for plant Datura stramonium whose seeds were mixed with tobacco and used by robbers to stupefy victims.

WHICH WORD?

Dope/Doping

30. The worm originated in the Philippines on 4 May

2000 and spread across the world in one day, moving on to Hong Kong and then to Europe and the US,causing an estimated $5.5 billion in damage.By 13 May 2000, 50 million infections had been reported.Most of the damage cited was the time and effort spent getting rid of the worm. In order to free themselves, The Pentagon, CIA, and the British Parliament had to shut down their mail systems; as did most large corporations.

What is this virus called ?

I LOVE YOU VIRUS

31.This disorder is

characterized by multiple, symmetric, circumferential skin creases, or bands, on the forearms, lower legs, and often the neck that are present at birth. The creases disappear later in life. What are these type of babies known as?

32. He is the author of ‘Birds of the

West Indies’, which is a book containing exhaustive coverage of the 400+ species of birds found in the Caribbean Sea. However, we remember him more for something else. Who is he?

His name is James Bond after whom Ian Fleming named the most popular

character in the world .

33.

She is the daughter of Mrs Savita Chibber and Colonel Chibber, and has a degree in History from Lady Sriram College, Delhi University. She used to host a weekly Hindi music countdown show, Oye, for a music channel in the 1990s. She met her future husband in 1984, during her graduation days, who was also doing his BA in Economics from D.U., and married him in 1991. Who is her famous husband?

Gauri Khan & hence the King Khan would be her husband.

34. In 2004 he was the recipient of the Paul

Harrison award for a lifetime of service to the rural poor. This award is given annually by the Christian Medical College in Vellore, India, to its alumni. In 2007 he was awarded the R.R. Keithan Gold Medal by The Indian Academy of Social Sciences (ISSA) on 31 December 2007. The citation describes him as "one of the most eminent scientists" of India.WHO ?

(bit current affairs)

Dr. Binayak Sen Who was found guilty of helping the

Naxalites

35. Mahmood Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman

Professor of Government in the Departments of Anthropology and Political Science at Columbia University. He is also the Director of Columbia's Institute of African Studies and the current President of the Council for Development of Social Research in Africa.

However, in India, it is his wife who is better known due to her prominence in the film world.

Who?

Mira Nair

36.Why was this firm in news recently ?

It's a PR firm headed by Niira Radia .

37. Born on the same day as Rabindranath Tagore,

he was brought up by his lawyer elder brother as his father died a couple of months before his birth. He changed his stream in college after 1st year as he was not sure to pass in the exam. He however stood first in his new discipline and excelled in his profession so much so that he used to be counted among the richest professionals in the country. His first three children did not survive, but the fourth reached the pinnacle in his career. Who am I talking about ?

Motilal Nehru

38.

It is a 1988 Indian adventure comedy B movie produced by Ashok Amritraj and Sunanda Murali Manohar, directed by Dwight Little and written by Nico Mastorakis; starring Brett Stimely, Anna Nicholas and X. It was filmed in southern India, the story revolving around a mythical ruby called the ------------------.

Which movie ? Who is X ?

Only hollywood pic of Rajni Kant

39.About what icon? “ Alexander Sawchuk estimates that it was in June or July of 1973

when he, then an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California Signal and Image Processing Institute (SIPI), along with a graduate student and the SIPI lab manager, was hurriedly searching the lab for a good image to scan for a colleague's conference paper. They got tired of their stock of usual test images, dull stuff dating back to television standards work in the early 1960s. They wanted something glossy to ensure good output dynamic range, and they wanted a human face. Just then, somebody happened to walk in with a recent issue of Playboy. The engineers tore away the top third of the centerfold so they could wrap it around the drum of their Muirhead wirephoto scanner, which they had outfitted with analog-to-digital converters (one each for the red, green, and blue channels) and a Hewlett Packard 2100 minicomputer. The Muirhead had a fixed resolution of 100 lines per inch and the engineers wanted a 512 × 512 image, so they limited the scan to the top 5.12 inches of the picture, effectively cropping it at the subject's shoulders.”

Lenna

40. To raise money he began writing gags for the

agent David O. Alber, who sold them to newspaper columnists. According to him, his first published joke read: “-------------- says he ate at a restaurant that had O.P.S. prices – over people’s salaries.

He began to call himself -----------. He was an extremely talented young comedian and would later joke that when he was young he was often sent to inter-faith summer camps, where he “was savagely beaten by children of all races and creeds.

Who is this who went on do much laughy things ?

Woody Allen

41.What ‘s the good word ? The earliest known references to X are in the sports pages of

various West Coast newspapers covering the Pacific Coast League, a baseball minor league. The earliest example, found by New York University librarian George A. Thompson, Jr. in 2003, is from the Los Angeles Times on April 2, 1912, referring to Portland Beavers pitcher Ben Henderson: BEN'S X CURVE. "I got a new curve this year," softly murmured Henderson yesterday, "and I'm goin' to pitch one or two of them tomorrow. I call it the X ball because it wobbles and you simply can't do anything with it." As prize fighters who invent new punches are always the first to get their's Ben will probably be lucky if some guy don't hit that new X ball a mile today. It is to be hoped that some unintelligent compositor does not spell that the Jag ball. That's what it must be at that if it wobbles.

JAZZ

42. There is an old tradition in the German or

Scandinavian countries to use "patience" as a guide to what the near future has to offer, a kind of "luck" meter. This belief assumes that a person’s "luck" will vary from time to time and important matters should not be initiated or conducted when the cards are not favourable. If there are no winnings in the game for a number of tries it spells caution in what you do. If you win at the first try times are good and “luck” smiles at you, thus the immediate future can be used for important decisions. Timing the game is a further indicator of the strength of the outcome.

How do we better know this ?

43. Mohan Meakin is a large group of companies started

with Asia's first brewery incorporated in 1855 (but established much earlier) by Edward X at Kasauli in the Himalayan Mountains in India under the name X Breweries. he Kasauli brewery launched India's and indeed Asia's first beer, Lion, which was in great demand by the thirsty British administrators and troops stationed in the sweltering heat of India. Lion was much appreciated as a beer, and one famous poster featured a satisfied British Tommy declaring, "as good as back home!“Even though Edward did quiet good for alcoholics , his son was rather much infamous . Who ?

Edward Dyer , good man and his son is none other than Reginald Dyer of the infamous Jallian Walabagh Massacre

44. In the early 1980s, he became editor of a game

and puzzle journal called ...És játék ("...and games"), then became self-employed in 1983, founding the X Stúdió, where he designed furniture and games. In 1987 he became professor with full tenure; in 1990 he became the president of the Hungarian Engineering Academy (Magyar Mérnöki Akadémia). At the Academy, he created the International X Foundation to support especially talented young engineers and industrial designers.

What ‘s his name ?

Ernő Rubik : Creator of the world’s most selling toy .

45.

She was also involved in relationships with Alok Nath and Sharang Dev.On 15 July 2008, she married New Delhi-based Vivek Mehra, a chartered accountant and Partner with PwC India in a secret marriage in the United States.Who was her most famous partner (their union resulted a daughter) ?

Neena Gupta & Vivian Richards

46. The first of its kind was formed when attorney

Paul P. Harris called together a meeting of three business acquaintances in downtown Chicago, at Harris' friend Sylvester Schiele's office in the Unity Building on Dearborn Street on February 23, 1905. In August 1912, the ------------- of London received its charter from the Association, marking the first acknowledged -----------outside North America. During World War I , ----------- in Britain increased from 9 to 22 ,and they were introduced in Cuba in 1916 and India in 1920 .

What am I talking about ?

47. He was born in 1954. He learned to draw near the age of

two, beginning when zoologist Desmond Morris offered him a pencil.Morris said, "He took the pencil and I placed a piece of card in front of him. This is how I recorded it at the time, 'Something strange was coming out of the end of the pencil. He soon began painting; the patterns he made were never distinguished, pictorial images, but usually of a vague "radiating fan pattern" in the abstract impressionism style.Between the ages of two and four, he produced about 400 drawings and paintings. American collector Howard Hong purchased three of his works for over US$26,000.

WHO ?

Congo the CHIMP

48.

Francisco Tárrega played in the Opera Theatre in Lyon and then the Paris Odeon, in the bicentenary of the death of Pedro Calderón de la Barca. He also played in London, but he liked neither the language nor the weather.

But tell me why he is claimed to be the world’s most heard composer .

He composed the NOKIA TUNE

49.

He was born in January 2008 in Wermouth, England. He also goes by the surname der Krake. Various explanations have been offered, saying that brightness as well as an object's size, shape, and orientation create a potential bias in his controversial ability.

Who ?

Paul the Octopus

50. A frequently circulated story claims that

Fleischer's choice of Y to give X strength was based on faulty calculations of its iron content. In the story, German scientist Dr. E. von Wolf misplaced a decimal point in an 1870 measurement of Y's iron content, leading to an iron value ten times higher than it should have been. The popularity of X helped boost sales of Y. Y consumption increased a whopping 33 percent in the United States between 1931 and 1936 as X gained popularity, saving the Y industry in the 1930s. Identify X and Y.

51. Early devices for X include an 1885 invention

of Cesare Lombroso used to measure changes in blood pressure, a 1904 device by Vittorio Benussi used to measure breathing, and an abandoned project by American William Marston which used blood pressure and galvanic skin response. Further a device recording both blood pressure and galvanic skin response was invented in 1921 by Dr. John A. Larson of the University of California .

What did this device became in later years ?

52.

This feat was first achieved in 1875 and was not repeated till 48 years later. It is often described as a battle of brain and brawn against tide and temperature. Statistics released by the CSA, the governing body, reveal that only about 7% of those who attempt this feat are able to complete it. What feat are we talking of ?

Swimming the English Channel

53. This $423 million colossus is the world's

largest steel structure. The design was awarded to a submission from the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron in April 2003, after a bidding process that included 13 final submissions. The design, which originated from the study of Chinese ceramics, implemented steel beams in order to hide supports for the retractable roof; giving the structure the appearance of a ________.

Which one ?

Beijing National Stadium aka Bird’s Nest

54.

While recovering from World War I wounds, army sergeant DeWitt Wallace read scores of magazines and articles to while away the time. It was then that he realized that some articles had far more enduring appeal and interest than others, and that even these could be improved by vigorously condensing them and focusing on the essentials. Keeping this In mind, What did he create?

55. Wireless energy transfer or wireless power transmission (also known as the _____ Effect) is

the process that takes place in any system where electrical energy is transmitted from a

power source to an electrical load, without interconnecting wires in an electrical grid.

Wireless transmission is ideal in cases where instantaneous or continuous energy transfer is

needed, but interconnecting wires are inconvenient, hazardous, or impossible.

Fill in the Blank.

Tesla Effect

56.

There are two forms of the disease: wet, which affects the heart and is sometimes fatal, and dry, which causes partial paralysis resulting from damage to the peripheral nerves. Its generic symptoms may include weight loss, emotional disturbances, impaired sensory perception, weakness and pain in the limbs, and periods of irregular heartbeat. It’s name translates to “I cannot, I cannot”.

Which disease ?

Beri Beri

57.

The Prince of Wallachia was a three-time voivode of Wallachia, ruling mainly from 1456 to 1462. He is best known for his resistance against the Ottoman Empire and its expansion and for the cruel punishments he imposed on his enemies. Of his cruelty it was said, “Satan himself will deny him entry into hell”. By what name do we better know him?

Vlad the Impaler aka

58. Otto Rohwedder. Though you’ve never heard of him, his

1928 invention is still hailed as a milestone in human progress. Rohwedder, an itinerant Iowa jeweler, devised a 10-foot machine that combined a revolutionary cutting process with automatic wrapping of the resultant product in wax paper, and the world has been unable to contain itself since. FTP, Rohwedder thus made economically feasible the selling of this product, to which virtually every subsequent advancement has been compared. The phrase "the greatest thing since _______" (and variations thereof) is a commonly used hyperbolic means of praising an invention or development.

Which product?

Sliced Breads

59.

Konrad Block and Feodor Lynen shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for their work on this compound, formula C27H46O, which was discovered in 1812. It is found in gallstones, and therefore was named from the Greek for "bile-solid". A component of all cell membranes, it is converted from acetic acid in a process involving 36 distinct chemical transformations. What is it?

Cholestrol

60.

Harry Graham, John Hampshire, _______, Andrew Strauss, Matthew Prior. Who is missing? What is the connection?

Sourav Ganguly.. Only 5 to have scored centuries on test debut at

Lord’s