General Quiz

Pantheon 2013

Question 1

Answer

Question 2

• He was born in 1963 in Bhopal to a Tamil IFS officer. He is an alumnus of DPS RK Puram, IIT- D and IIM A. He was the chief economic adviser to India's Ministry of Finance during last year and chief economist at the International Monetary Fund from 2003 to 2007. He is also a member of the elite Group of Thirty, an international body of leading financiers and academics which aims to deepen understanding of economic and financial issues and their consequences.

• To attend to his current duties as the new ____ ________ of India, he is on leave of absence as a professor of finance at the Booth School of Business, Univ of Chicago.

• Who is he ?

Answer

• Raghuram Rajan, RBI Governer

Question 3• X Minus X is a webcomic created by Dan Walsh, a technology

manager from Dublin. Each strip consists of a reprint of a past episode from the comic strip X, from which all the characters except Y have been removed through photo manipulation. The resulting strips thus consist mostly of Y interacting with himself, rather than with X. The strip's website characterizes this result as "a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.“

• X creator Jim Davis has commented on the webcomic, stating that he is an occasional reader and finds it "fascinating“ and an "inspired thing to do“.

• Who is X ?

Answer

• X = Garfield• Y = Jon

*Question 4• The citation for the Param Vir Chakra awarded to him reads:• Lance Naik X was in the left forward company of a battalion of the Brigade of Guards during their

attack on the enemy defences at Gangasagar on the Eastern front. This was a well-fortified position held in strength by the enemy. The assaulting troops were subjected to intense shelling and heavy small-arms fire, but they charged onto the objective and were locked in bitter hand-to-hand combat. Lance Naik X noticed an enemy light machine-gun (LMG) inflicting heavy casualties on his company. With complete disregard for his personal safety, he charged the enemy bunker, bayoneted two enemy soldiers and silenced the LMG. Though seriously wounded in this encounter, he continued to fight alongside his comrades through the mile deep objective, clearing bunker after bunker with undaunted courage. Towards the northern end of the objective one enemy medium machine-gun (MMG) opened up from the second storey of a well-fortified building inflicting heavy casualties and holding up the attack. Once again this gallant soldier, without a thought for his personal safety, despite his serious injury and the heavy volume of enemy fire, crawled forward till he reached the building and lobbed a grenade into the bunker killing one enemy soldier and injuring the other. The MMG however continued to fire. With outstanding courage and determination Lance Naik X scaled a side wall and entering the bunker, bayoneted the enemy soldier who was still firing and thus silenced the machine-gun, saving further casualties to his company and ensuring the success of the attack. In this process however, he received serious injuries and succumbed to them after the capture of the objective.

• In this action, Lance Naik X displayed the most conspicuous valour and determination and made the supreme sacrifice in the best traditions of the Army.

Answer

• Albert Ekka

Question 5

• ____ is a type of steamed/fried bun with or without fillings, and is usually served with a dipping sauce normally consisting of tomatoes as the base ingredient, from which numerous variations can be made. It has become a traditional delicacy in Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim,Darjeeling district and Ladakh and has recently become one of the most popular fast foods in many regions of India, specially those that have a significant population of people of Tibetan, Nepali or other Himalayan origins.

• FITB

Answer

Question 6

• ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’ is a German phrase which roughly translates to "Advancement through technology" .

• Since 1971, it has been the main advertising slogan and company ethos for a prominent German car manufacturer.

• Which company ?

Answer

Question 7

____ was a Roman Emperor who was known for his tyranny. According to legend, when the Great Fire of Rome started in 64 AD, he spent his time playing lyre and singing while the entire city was burning.A widely used computer software has an obvious pun on this incident. In its initial version, while the software ran, it did not allow the user to execute any other operation on the computer. Name the emperor and you will also know the name of the software.

Answer

Nero Burning ROM!

(Nero is a German company and the pun is even more obvious as Rom is the German word for Rome).

*Question 8Black then white are all I see in my infancy.Red and yellow then came to be, reaching out to me,lets me see.There is, so ,much,more and beckons meto look though to these, infinite possibilities.As below so above and beyond I imagine,drawn outside the lines of reason.Push the envelope.Watch it bend.

Song : LateralusArtist : ToolAlbum : LateralusYear : 2002

What is the big deal about these lyrics ?

Answer• The syllables during the verses form the first few Fibonacci numbers, ascending and

descending:• (1) Black,• (1) then,• (2) white are,• (3) all I see,• (5) in my in·fan·cy,• (8) red and yel·low then came to be,• (5) rea·ching out to me,• (3) lets me see.• (2) There is,• (1) so,• (1) much,• (2) more and• (3) beck·ons me,• (5) to look through to these,• (8) in·fi·nite pos·si·bil·i·ties.• (13) As be·low so a·bove and be·yond I im·ag·ine,• (8) drawn be-yond the lines of rea·son.• (5) Push the en·ve·lope.• (3) Watch it bend

Question 9

• From 1901 to 2012, Nobel Prizes have been awarded to over 800 individuals, of whom at least 20% were ____, although ____ comprise less than 0.2% of the world's population.

• FITB.

Answer

• Jews

Question 10

• Satyajit Ray, the genius filmmaker, was also a prolific writer and is well known for his contributions to Bengali literature. One of his short stories ‘Patol Babu, Film-Star’; which was about a failed actor struggling to make a living after his father’s death, was recently adapted for the silver screen as a part of a movie.

• Name the movie.

Answer

• Bombay Talkies• The Dibakar Banerjee directed short ‘Star’• Nawazuddin Siddiqui played the protagonist.

Question 11

• Rubāʿī is a style of Persian poetry, where each Rubai is a quatrain (4 lines) and a rubāʿiyāt is used to describe a collection of such quatrains. The rhyme scheme is such that all the rubaai end in the same word, which is usually the title of the rubāʿiyāt.

• Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is one of the most famous examples of this type of poetry. A famous Indian poet was very much inspired by Omar Khayyam’s work and translated it into Hindi. Later, he wrote his own trilogy of poems based on the Rubāʿī style. The first part of the trilogy became so famous that it completely overshadowed the other two parts, and common people very rarely know that this work also has 2 other parts.

• Which literary work are we talking about ?

Answer

• Madhushala (1935)• Madhubala (1936) • Madhukalash (1937)

*Question 12

• Saint Syrus of Pavia was the first bishop of Pavia during the 1st century. His legend, according to the 14th century De laudibus Papiæ (In the Praise of Pavia), states that Syrus was the boy with the five loaves who appears in the Gospels. Syrus is said to have followed Saint Peter to Rome and from there he was sent to the Po valley to preach and convert the people to the Christian faith. He preached in all of the major cities of northern Italy.

• How is he remembered in the world of football ?

Answer

• San Siro, the home ground of both AC Milan and Inter Milan, is named after him.

Question 13

• Proposed map of what ?

Answer

• Khalistan, an independent country for the Sikhs.

Question 14• She is a Pakistani school pupil and education activist from

Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. She is known for her education and women's rights activism in the Swat Valley, where the Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school. In early 2009, she wrote a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC detailing her life under Taliban rule, their attempts to take control of the valley, and her views on promoting education for girls.

• On 9 October 2012, she was shot in the head and neck in an assassination attempt by Taliban gunmen while returning home on a school bus.

• She received treatment in the UK and eventually recovered.• Her story garnered lots of international interest and she became "the most

famous teenager in the world“. She was nominated for the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize and on 12 July 2013, she spoke at the UN to call for worldwide access to education

• Who is she ?

Answer

• Malala Yousafzai

Question 15

• ________ came to India with the British Army; end of World War I saw Indian soldiers of British Indian Army bringing it back with them as a diet supplement. A lot of well-to-do Indian families took to drinking ________ in early 1940s and 1950s and it became a sort of status symbol in upper middle class and the rich classes.

• It is currently the most widely consumed packaged beverage in India, after bottled water.

• William ________, the patent holder of the drink, has a mountain range in Antarctica named after him because not only did he support the expeditions financially, but his product also provided a non-perishable source of nutrition to the explorers.

• FITB

Answer

*Question 16• The name “AB" was coined by the Finns during the Winter War. The

name is an insulting reference to Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav A, who was responsible for the partitioning of Finland with Nazi Germany under the A - Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939, which secretly stated the Soviet intention to invade Finland in November 1939, and included his declaration on Soviet state radio that bombing missions over Finland were actually airborne humanitarian food deliveries for their starving neighbours. The Finns, far from starving and engaged in a bitter war for national survival with the Soviet forces, sarcastically dubbed the Soviet cluster bombs “A bread baskets" in reference to A’s propaganda broadcasts. The AB was developed to attack Soviet tanks, and the Finns called it the “AB" as "a drink to go with the food". A himself despised the name, and the term became ubiquitous.

• AB = ?

Answer

• AB = Molotov Cocktail

Question 17• X is a fictional character, an antihero appearing in comic

books published by DC Comics. X is a working-class magician, occult detective, and con man stationed in London. He is known for his endless cynicism, deadpan snarking, ruthless cunning, and constant chain smoking. X is also a passionate humanist driven by a heartfelt desire to do some good in his life.

• Pop artist Sting served as visual inspiration for the character. Empire Magazine ranked X third in their 50 Greatest Comic Characters of All Time, while IGN ranked him #29 in their Top 100 Comic Book Heroes, and the character ranked #10 in Wizard Magazine's Top 200 Comic Book Characters of All Time.

• Who is X ?

Answer

• John Constantine

Question 18

• Arunabh Kumar, an IIT-Kharagpur graduate, quit his job in the US Air-force and worked with Red Chillies Entertainment as an assistant director for Om Shanti Om. He then made a couple of short films, music videos and freelanced with various ad agencies. After pitching ideas to big media conglomerates, he realised that they had a ‘pigeon-hold’ idea about ‘what would work’ and they weren’t willing to let go of the formula.

• Frustated, he decided to work on his own and started his own website that featured short films, sketches, parodies and web series. The website became an instant rage across colleges in India. Which website are we talking about ?

Answer

• The Viral Fever

Question 19• ‘‘Lewis took five years to chronicle Narnia Tolkien had twelve years, and Rowling took ten Lucas spent nearly three decades on Star Wars And we all know how that one turned out in the end • You’re not our bi*ch and you’re not a machine And we don’t mean to dictate how you spend your days But please, bear in mind, in the time that you’ve had Shakespeare churned out thirty-five friggin’ plays’’

Lyrics of a song titled ‘Write like the wind’ by Paul and Storm.Who is the subject of this song ?

Answer

• George R. R. Martin

*Question 20

• “___ ____ ___” is a phrase spoken by the character Leonard McCoy in the original Star Trek series, to declare someone or something deceased and is considered his catchphrase.

• The line has entered popular culture as a general metaphor, with uses as diverse as describing an unresponsive electronic circuit to describing an opponent’s destruction in an action game. Most famously, Google Chrome uses the phrase as an error message if a tab gets terminated unexpectedly.

• What is the phrase ?

Answer

Question 21

• Yen Sid Retlaw is the name of a powerful wizard in the sequence ‘Sorceror’s Apprentice’ from ‘Fantasia’

• Mickey Mouse is a student of Yen sid in the show.

• Who was the inspiration behind the name and facial characteristics of Yen Sid Retlaw ?

Answer

• Walter Disney spelled backwards is Yensid Retlaw.

Question 22• Approximately 1.6

million people formed a 480-kilometre human chain on 11 September 2013. The event was widely covered by the international media and received support from all over. What was the cause ?

Answer

• Demand for Catalonian independence from Spain.