Hard Quizzes with Answers

Quiz I

1. What gas were British World War Two barrage balloons filled with?
2. Who was the United States Ambassador to Czechoslovakia between 1989 and 1992?
3. Name the main character in cartoonist Chic Young's long-running comic strip Blondie?






4. Who bought Dodington Park, in Gloucestershire, in 2003 for a price believed to be £20 million?
5. What is a clerihew?
6. Which monarch knighted artist Sir Joshua Reynolds?
7. Which famous 19th century book's title comes from the name of a stop along the pilgrim's route in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress?
8. If you're unfortunate to have a furuncle, what do you have?
9. Which poem, written by Alexander Pope, is the source of the famous quotations "To err is human, to forgive divine," and "A little learning is a dang'rous thing"?
10. The Rapa Nui are specifically inhabitants of which part of the world?
11. Which actress provided the voice for Duchess in the 1970 American animated film The Aristocats?
12. Which war, thought between 1665 and 1667 for control over trade routes, was given an eyewitness account in Samuel Pepys' diaries?
13. During the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony in London, which actress played the Queen on board the helicopter in the short James Bond segment?
14. Which play features assistant bank manager, Peter Hunter, who lives in a flat above his bank with his new bride Frances?
15. What was the name of Amy Johnson's plane in which she flew solo to Australia in 1930?
16. In which year was the death of Queen Elizabeth I?
17. Which film roles have been done by boxer Billy Wells and wrestler Ken Richmond?
18. Edible varieties of which fruit can be divided into three main types: purple ones, yellow ones and giant granadilla?
19. The 1992 Winter Olympics were held in Albertville, France; the next Winter Olympics were held in Lillehammer, Norway, but in which year?
20. Can you name the fictional Welsh fishing village that features in the play Under Milk Wood?

Answers:

1. Hydrogen (which was highly explosive so detered any attacks on the balloons themselves, plus the safer Helium was in rare supply!)
2. Shirley Temple (former child actress)
3. Dagwood Bumstead
4. James Dyson (British inventor and businessman)
5. A poem - four-line biographical poem invented by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. (e.g. Sir Humphry Davy, Abominated gravy. He lived in the odium, Of having discovered sodium.)
6. George III (in 1769)
7. Vanity Fair
8. A boil
9. An Essay on Criticism
10. Easter Island
11. Eva Gabor
12. Second Anglo-Dutch War
13. Julia McKenzie
14. No Sex Please, We're British
15. Jason
16. 1603
17. The man banging the gong introducing Rank Films
18. Passion fruit
19. 1994 (the Winter Olympics were held in the same year as the Summer, but it was decided to change this to every two years after in the early nineties)
20. Llareggub (which is "bugger all" backwards!)