IBA Toss-Up Set 1

1. Born in Terre Haute, IN, this man was elected in 1884 to the Indiana legislature.  He helped establish and was president of the American Railway Union, and organized the Social Democratic Party of America.  FTP, identify this man who was imprisoned during the Pullman Strike in 1894 and for violating the Espionage Act in 1918, and who ran for president 5 times.

Answer: Eugene V. Debs

2. Among its organizers and contributors were Arthur Davies and John Sloan, and 250,000 people paid to see their first glimpse at the revolutionary work of such men as Matisse, Kandinsky, Brancusi, Mailol, Picasso, and Braque.  FTP, identify this 1913 exhibition of American and European modern art held in New York City.

Answer: Armory show

3. This National Monument's highest peak is Telescope Peak, in the Panamint range.  It was mined for gold, silver, and borax, and was named in 1849 by prospectors.  FTP, identify this large desert in E California, surrounded by the Panamint and Armagosa mountain ranges, which contains the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere.

Answer: Death Valley

4. As a writer, guitar player, hunter, woodsman, and war hero, he emulates the Renaissance Man in both his life and letters.   He is the author of such works as Helmets, Alnilam, The Strength of Fields, and The Zodiac.  FTP, identify this 20th century Southern author of The Central Motion, Buckdancer's Choice, and Deliverance.

Answer: James Dickey

5. This man extended his control over Damascus, and began to subdue local rulers throughout Syria and Palestine, then mounted a major campaign against the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, and won a signal victory at the Battle of Hattin before taking Jerusalem in 1187. FTP, identify this chivalrous Muslim sultan and military leader who opposed Richard the Lion-hearted in the Third Crusade.

Answer: Saladin

6. This man is credited with preparing nitrous oxide, calcium, and boron, discovering chlorine, and providing an explanation for chlorine's bleaching action.  He showed that diamonds are a form of carbon and that acidic properties are due to hydrogen.  FTP, identify this scientist who isolated potassium and sodium by the application of electrolysis to the decomposition of chemical compounds.

Answer: Sir Humphrey Davy

7. He grew up to become the first Arab, and his childhood story is often used to explain the bad feeling between the Jews and Arabs, since the father of the Jews cast him and his mother out in the wilderness to die.  FTP, identify this Biblical son of Abraham and Hagar.

Answer: Ishmael

8. In this opera, a court jester tries to shield his daughter from worldly corruption, but an old count puts a curse on him and the duke seduces his daughter, causing him to get revenge.  FTP, identify this opera based on Victor Hugo's Le Roi s'Amuse, composed by Giuseppe Verdi.

Answer: Rigoletto

9. This man married began a weekly paper, The Friend, in 1809, and developed an interest in German philosophy after a visit there. He married Sara Fricker, the sister-in-law of his friend Robert Southey.  FTP, identify this British poet of Christabel and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Answer: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

10. In apparent consideration of a $200,000 "loan," Harry F. Sinclair and Edward Doheny were each granted exclusive leased to oil fields by the Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall.  FTP, identify this 1922 scandal that rocked the Harding administration.

Answer: Teapot Dome

11. Pencil and paper may be necessary.  The area of a parallelogram is 24 and its perimeter is 20.  FTP, what are its dimensions?

Answer: 4 x 6 (4 by six)

12. A subplot of this novel concerns the happy marriage of Konstantin Levin and his young wife Kitty, and the idea for the book came to the author after he had viewed the body of a suicide victim. FTP, identify this novel of a tragic, adulterous love, featuring the character Aleksei Vronsky, written by Leo Tolstoy.

Answer: Anna Karenina

13. Expelled from school for being retarded, this man became a railroad newsboy who printed and published his own newspaper on the train.  He invented an electric vote recording machine, as well as the paper ticker-tape automatic repeater for stock exchange prices.  FTP, identify this famous American best known for inventing the light bulb.

Answer: Thomas Alva Edison

14. She accompanied her father in his wanderings after he had been driven out of Thebes, and after his death returns to the city, where in defiance of the order of King Creon she gives her dead brother Polynices the rites of burial.  FTP, identify this daughter of Oedipus, the subject of a tragedy by Sophocles.

Answer: Antigone

15. This is a defect of vision in which light entering the eye from distant objects is brought to a focus in front of the retina, making them appear blurred.  FTP, identify this condition, also known as near-sightedness.

Answer: myopia (accept near-sightedness on early buzz)

16. It lasted from 1960 to 1963 and all were launched by either the Redstone or Atlas carriers.  This US manned space program sent Leroy Cooper, Walter Schirra, Scott Carpenter, Virgil Grissom, John Glenn, and Alan Shepard into space.  FTP, identify this American space program which shares its name with the messenger of the gods in Roman mythology.

Answer: Mercury program