- His relative weakness forced him to accept the church's De Heretico Comburendo which persecuted the followers of John Wycliffe. The reign of this son of John of Gaunt began when he usurped the crown and began the Lancastrian line. He was troubled throughout his reign by threats of rebellion from Owen Glyndwr and the Percy family. For 10 points--name this English monarch, born Henry Bolingbroke, who overthrew the last Plantagenet, Richard II.
answer: Henry IV (accept Henry Bolingbroke early)
- They may grow to nearly 9 feet in length and are always grooved with a left-handed spiral. Every so often a male will have two, but most have but one and females none at all. They serve no known function and are thought to have been developed by sexual selection. For 10 points--name these objects, once mistaken for unicorns' horns, found on small whales of species Monodon monoceros in the Arctic.
answer: narwhal tusk(s) or narwhal horn(s)
- It's a fine something that all people need, being a shirt and a sock and a glove and a hat. You can use it for carpets, for pillows, for sheets, or curtains, or covers for bicycle seats. Unfortunately, it can only be produced with the tufts of the Truffula trees and the Once-ler's family destroys the entire forest to meet demand for this product. For 10 points--name this utterly unnecessary product, the centerpiece of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax.
answer: thneed
- A chance meeting in a World War II internment camp brought Austrian refugees Peter Schidlof, Nobert Brainin, and Siegmund Nissel together. Dame Myra Hess and Ralph Vaughan Williams helped ensure their release, after which Schidlof took up the viola since Brainin was the more accomplished violinist. For 10 points--name the long-lasting quartet which these men founded with Martin Lovett in 1948 which was named for both the "love of God" and Mozart.
answer: Amadeus Quartet
- In the early 18th century a farmer from this country was threshing his wheat when he discovered a tiny man, no more than one-tenth his height. He brought him home for his daughter, Glumdalclitch, to play with, but soon began to sell tickets to see him to the other giants. For 10 points--name this land near India from which Lemuel Gulliver escaped after a bird carried his cage away.
answer: Brobdingnag
- He claimed to have lost his glasses while birdwatching near the culvert. He also claimed to own a Hammond typewriter when an Underwood typewriter was pulled out of Jackson Park Harbor. He claimed to have been in his car with some girls when Bobby Franks was killed, but his chauffeur had been repairing the car that day. For 10 points--name this man who, despite his high opinion of himself and his homosexual lover, utterly failed to pull off the perfect murder in 1924.
answer: Nathan F. "Babe" Leopold
- The character of Sarastro, high priest of Isis and Osiris, is a testament to the beliefs and morals of the Freemasons, an organization popular in the Austrian government in the 1790s. It turns out that he did kidnap Pamina, but only to protect her from her mother, the evil Queen of the Night. For 10 points--name this 1791 Singspiel [ZING-shpeel] named for musical instrument of Tamino and not the magic bells of Papageno.
answer: The Magic Flute or Die Zauberflöte
- His publications between 1951 and 1975 referenced linguistics, line noise, cosmology, turbulence, finance, game theory, meteorology, and physics, all fields that he sought to tie together with a new mathematical discipline devoted to self-similar figures like his namesake construction in the complex plane. For 10 points--name this French mathematician who coined the term "fractal" for his sophisticated objects.
answer: Benoit Mandelbrot
- "The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding a blank blank; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula for that particular emotion; such that, when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked." For 10 points--fill in the missing words in this quotation from T.S. Eliot's Hamlet and His Problems setting forth his personal theory of poetry.
answer: objective correlative
- The mother hates the father because he wouldn't pay for a real doctor when she gave birth. The father hates the older son for his terrible taste in literature. The older son hates the younger son because he stole his father's love and may succeed in literature where he failed. The younger son is furious with the mother because of her morphine habit. For 10 points--name this 1956 play about James, Mary, Edmund, and Jamie, a disturbing and autobiographical work of Eugene O'Neill.
answer: Long Day's Journey Into Night
- He started only a single year at Division I-AA Northern Iowa, then played three years for the Iowa Barnstormers in the Arena Football League, and then spent 1998 with the Amsterdam franchise of NFL Europe. NFL scouts saw no future in this history and were as surprised as anyone when he had 14 touchdown passes, a rating of 136, and four wins after four games. For 10 points--name this quarterback who came out of nowhere to make the St. Louis Rams the only NFL team to start 1999 with four straight wins.
answer: Kurt Warner
- Its variance with applied electric fields is called the Kerr or Pockels effect depending on the magnitude. It is equal to the square root of 1 plus the ratio of the medium's specific susceptibility, giving a value of 1.52 to 1.66 for glass, 2.42 for diamond, 1.33 for water, and 1.0002 for air. For 10 points--name this characteristic of a material, the ratio of the speed of light in a vacuum to the speed of light within it.
answer: refractive index or index of refraction
- His autobiographical Arrow in the Blue describes him as a "typical case history of the Central European member of the educated middle class, born in the first years of this century." As an active communist, he was imprisoned by the French and English--and almost executed by Spanish fascists--only to break with Communism with such works as The God that Failed. For 10 points--name this man who produced a scathing indictment of Communist tyranny with his tale of an old-guard Bolshevik, Darkness at Noon.
answer: Arthur Koestler
- The apples of Idun stolen by Loki, the offer made to Odysseus by Calypso, the plant sought by Gilgamesh, the peach of p'an-t'ao, and the food offered to Adapa all conferred what characteristic, which--for 10 points-- was famously granted to Tithonus without the parallel promise of eternal youth?
answer: immortality (accept equivalents)
- It originated as the Raleigh Travelers' Club in 1827 but assumed its present name in 1830. During the 19th century it supported the work of Sir Robert Schomburgk, John Hanning Speke, James Augustus Grant, and Sir John Franklin, while the 20th century saw it support Robert Falcon Scott, Sir Ernest Shackleton, and Sir Edmund Hillary, all of whom won its coveted gold medal. For 10 points--name this English organization devoted to exploration, maps, and surveying, often abbreviated RGS.
answer: Royal Geographical Society (accept RGS before "abbreviated")
- During the Vietnam War, Air America served as a front for the CIA that ran the war out of Laos. Its elite Shadow Company of trained killers and mercenaries was responsible for destroying the heroin trade of the Viet Cong. Under the direction of General Peter McAllister and his henchman Joshua, Shadow Company regrouped after the war and took over the drug business. For 10 points--name the 1987 movie documenting the destruction of this drug ring by two L.A. policemen, Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh.
answer: Lethal Weapon
- The famous Eliza computer program interacted with a user by asking a series of non-directed questions that only loosely related to the user's responses; it depended on the user to drive the conversation. Eliza was originally modeled on the psychological theories of this man who replaced the term "patient" with "client" to emphasize the person-to-person relationship of treatment. For 10 points--name this author of Client-Centered Therapy and Becoming a Person, one of the founders of the humanist school.
answer: Carl (Ransom) Rogers
- He considered his victim to be "an enemy of the good people, the good working people," in his final statement before execution. He had refused to talk to his lawyers Loran Lewis and Robert Titus leaving them to argue that no sane man would assassinate in such a public and blatant manner. For 10 points--name this anarchist convicted after a token deliberation of the murder of President William McKinley.
answer: Leon Czolgosz [CHOL-gahsh]
- The last major one was known as the Würm in Europe and the Wisconsin in the United States and its recession brought an end to the Pleistocene epoch. The so-called Little one lasted from 1500 until 1850 during which time storm belts shifted to the south and mean solar activity was reduced. For 10 points--name these periods of encroaching glaciers and low temperatures.
answer: Ice Age (accept glaciations before "Little")
- It sports the earliest known examples of Composite columns and bears friezes depicting the looting and destruction of Solomon's temple and the AD 70 conquest of Jerusalem. It was constructed at the eastern end of the Forum by Domitian in honor of his brother's, and predecessor's, success in the war against the Jews. For 10 points--name this famous triumphal arch of ancient Rome, under which soldiers could march to cleanse themselves of the blood of their enemies.
answer: Arch of Titus
- One must be 18 handbreadths tall and possess 42 cups, knobs, and flowers, but may be made of any metal, though the original one was made of a single piece of beaten gold. The original had seven receptacles representing the days of creation, but most modern ones have eight representing the days of a festival. For 10 points--name this type of candelabrum often used as an iconic depiction of Judaism.
answer: menorah
- This principle gave rise to the notion of color when it was extended to all particles with half-integral spin. Color was an abstract quantum number that differentiated the quarks in a nucleon thereby allowing them to share an energy level and spin state. It was originally applied only to valence electrons and served to explain why they were not all found in the orbitals of lowest energy. For 10 points--name this principle which prohibits particles of certain types from being in the same state at the same time.
answer: Pauli Exclusion Principle
- St. Vladimir [vlah-DEE-meer] won the crown of this city in 977 after slaying his brother. After choosing Christianity for the beauty of its churches, Vladimir married a Byzantine princess and promised to support her father, the Emperor, in times of war, thereby tying Russia to the Eastern Orthodox faith. For 10 points--name this city, the center of Russian power from the 800s to 1237, which is today the capital of Ukraine.
answer: Kiev or Kyiv