You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going,
because you might not get there.
Yogi Berra
Category Archives: memes
January Quiz Questions
Each month we’re posing six pub quiz style questions, with a different subject each month.
As always, they’re designed to be tricky but not impossible, so it’s unlikely everyone will know all the answers – just have a bit of fun.
General Knowledge
- The numbers on the opposite sides of a six-sided die always add up to what number?
- What was the name of the world’s first artificial satellite?
- In what year did cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin reach space?
- Where did backgammon originate?
- What is England’s official national sport?
- Since the 1970s in which country has it been a tradition to eat fried chicken from KFC on Christmas Day?
Answers will be posted in 2 weeks time.
December Quiz Answers
Here are the answers to this month’s six quiz questions. If in doubt, all should be able to be easily verified online.
British History
- In what year was the Battle of Culloden? 1746
- How many monarchs reigned during the 19th century? 4 – George III, George IV, William IV, Victoria
- Who, in 1835, produced durable silver chloride camera negatives on paper and conceived the two-step negative-positive procedure used in most non-electronic photography up to the present? Henry Fox Talbot
- Charles Dodgson is remembered as an early photographer, but what else is he famous for? The Alice in Wonderland books (as Lewis Carroll)
- In what year was slavery abolished in the British empire? 1838
- What links playing cards in 1588; windows in 1696; candles in 1709; wallpaper in 1712? All were taxed starting in those years
Answers were correct when questions were compiled in late 2024.
This Month’s Poem
Halsway Carol
Iain Frisk
Lo for the tiding of the long night moon
Let the sunrise call about the morning soon
Short is the biding of the fading light
Sing for the coming of the longest night
North wind tell us what we need to know
When the stars are shining on the midnight snow
All of the branches will be turned to white
Sing for the coming of the longest night
A winter day, the summer grass turned hay
Frost in the field ’til the dawn of May
A summer’s light never shone as clear or as bright
So dance in the shadows of a winter’s night
Lo for the tiding of the long night moon
May the harvest last until the springtime bloom
Home is our comfort at the winter’s height
Sing for the coming of the longest night
All of the colours of the sunrise sky
Shine a light upon us, as the day goes by
Sun-setting shadows fading out of sight
Sing for the coming of the longest night
A winter day, the summer grass turned hay
Frost in the field ’til the dawn of May
A summer’s light never shone as clear or as bright
So dance in the shadows of a winter’s night
Find this poem online at Town Common Songs
Ten Things
This year our Ten Things column each month is alternating between composers and artists a century at a time from pre-1500 to 20th century. As always, there’s no guarantee you will have heard of them all!
Ten Artists Born in 20th Century
- David Hockney
David Hockney; Nude, 17th June 1984
- Ed Burra
- Adrian Daintrey
- Tracey Emin
- Andy Warhol
- Jackson Pollock
- Eric Ravilious
- Alberto Giacometti
- Graham Clarke
- Damian Hirst
This Month’s Quote
Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.
Bill Nye
December Quiz Questions
Each month we’re posing six pub quiz style questions, with a different subject each month. As always, they’re designed to be difficult, but it is unlikely everyone will know all the answers – so have a bit of fun.
British History
- In what year was the Battle of Culloden?
- How many monarchs reigned during the 19th century?
- Who, in 1835, produced durable silver chloride camera negatives on paper and conceived the two-step negative-positive procedure used in most non-electronic photography up to the present?
- Charles Dodgson is remembered as an early photographer, but what else is he famous for?
- In what year was slavery abolished in the British empire?
- What links playing cards in 1588; windows in 1696; candles in 1709; wallpaper in 1712?
Answers will be posted in 2 weeks time.
November Quiz Answers
Here are the answers to this month’s six quiz questions. If in doubt, all should be able to be easily verified online.
Physical Science & Mathematics
- What are the three states of matter? Solid, liquid and gas
- Who was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize? Marie Curie
- Who discovered that the earth revolves around the sun? Nicolaus Copernicus
- Which is the largest planet in the solar system? Jupiter
- In mathematics, what is the mathematical constant approximately equal to 3.14159 known as? Pi
- What subatomic particle has its name taken from James Joyce’s work Finnegans Wake? Quark
Answers were correct when questions were compiled in late 2024.
This Month’s Poem
Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat (opening)
TS Eliot
There’s a whisper down the line at 11.39
When the Night Mail’s ready to depart,
Saying “Skimble where is Skimble has he gone to hunt the thimble?
We must find him or the train can’t start.”
All the guards and all the porters and the stationmaster’s daughters
They are searching high and low,
Saying “Skimble where is Skimble for unless he’s very nimble
Then the Night Mail just can’t go.”
At 11.42 then the signal’s nearly due
And the passengers are frantic to a man –
Then Skimble will appear and he’ll saunter to the rear:
He’s been busy in the luggage van!
He gives one flash of his glass-green eyes
And the signal goes “All Clear!”
And we’re off at last for the northern part
Of the Northern Hemisphere!
Find this poem online at Famous Poets and Poems
Ten Things
This year our Ten Things column each month is alternating between composers and artists a century at a time from pre-1500 to 20th century. As always, there’s no guarantee you will have heard of them all!
Ten Composers Born in 20th Century
- Philip Glass
- John Cage
- Olivier Messian
Olivier Messian
- György Ligeti
- John Rutter
- Judith Weir
- Constant Lambert
- Benjamin Britten
- Dmitri Shostakovich
- Luciano Berio
