Armstrong State College - Toss-Ups

MLK Weekend Tournament - January 15-16, 1994

1. He was a great compiler of enemies lists and toward the end of his life drew up a paranoid table of thirteen men who had “conspired together. . . to thwart my progress in life.”  The list included Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster.  For 10 points--identify this New Englander who became president in 1825 despite such powerful opposition.

Answer:  John Quincy Adams

2. He died in 1142 on his way to Rome to answer a charge of heresy, charges brought largely by Bernard of Clairvaux.  By that time he was one of Europe’s foremost theologians and philosophers, famous for his compromise of the Realist-Nominalist controversy.  For 10 points--name this French scholar who was surely Europe’s most famous eunuch at the time of his death.

Answer:  Peter or Pierre Abelard

3. A German chemist named Johann Döbereiner probably developed the idea around 1829, when he invented Döbereiner’s triads.  In 1864, Englishman John Newlands laid the groundwork for its eventual discovery with his “law of octaves.”  And, though German Julius Meyer discovered the relationship at about the same time, a Russian competitor got credit for it.  For 10 points--name this chemistry necessity invented by Dmitri Mendeleyev.

Answer:   Periodic Table of Elements

4. It would be like the Baseball Hall of Fame refusing to induct Babe Ruth.  The French Academy, organized in 1630, chose the forty most distinguished men of French letters and somehow overlooked the author of such works as The Scatterbrain, The Amorous Vexation, The Forced Marriage, The School for Husbands, and The Imaginary Invalid.  For 10 points--identify this comedic genius.

Answer:   Molière (accept J.B. Poquelin)

5. Paul Revere was supposed to signal “one if by land, two if by sea.”  For 10 points--who was supposed to signal with white sails if successful and black sales if not in his quest to slay the Minotaur?

Answer:   Theseus

6. It was a little smaller than the battle of Gettysburg.  The winning side had 68,000 men and 156 guns, the losers 72,000 men and 246 guns.  It lasted from 11:25 AM to about 10:00 PM and was fought on a field of less than three square miles.  The date was June 18, 1815.  For 10 points--identify this fateful European battle.

Answer:   Waterloo

7. 14. “You can’t prove a negative” goes the old adage.  Well, in 1881 two scientists set out to do exactly that.   For 10 points--what was proven to NOT exist in the famous experiments of Michelson and Morley?

Answer:  the Ether

8. Anna Mirabilis is the title of a poem by John Dryden.  It is Latin for “year of wonders” and describes events such as the Dutch War and the London Fire, among others.  For 10 points--what actual year was Dryden’s Anna Mirabilis?

Answer:   1666

9. In painting, the works of Gustav Klimt; in architecture, the ornate Spanish buildings of Antonio Gaudi; the illustrations of Aubrey Beardsley and the ornate glassware of Louis Tiffany are all outstanding examples of what the Germans call Jugendstil.  For 10 points--by what name do we know this turn-of-the-century style?

Answer:   Art Nouveau (NOT Art Deco)  

10. Published eighty years after The Scarlet Letter, this novel features a woman who has an adulterous affair with a local preacher.  The child is named Jewel, not Pearl.  The locale is Mississippi, not New England, and the central character is not Hester Prynne, but the corpse of Addie Bundren.  For 10 points--name this William Faulkner novel.

Answer: As I Lay Dying

11. It was a one hundred acre wooded peninsula, almost surrounded by water and defended by a breastwork five to eight feet high, with a double row of firing holes.  American casualties assaulting it were only 47 whites and 27 friendlies though, compared to over 500 for the defenders.  It was, Andrew Jackson wrote, “well-formed by nature for defense and rendered more secure by art.”  For 10 points--identify this fort in Alabama where the Creek Indians were routed in 1814.

Answer: Horseshoe Bend

12. This play takes place on the single day July 4, 1906.  It is the light-hearted story of a middle-class American boy name Tommy Miller.  The author, Eugene O’Neill, said it was the story of “a boyhood I never had.”  For 10 points--identify this, O’Neill’s only comedy.

Answer: Ah, Wilderness!

13. Johann Hummel wrote the very first one for piano, his Opus 27, in 1808.  Carl Maria von Weber dashed off a series of six brilliant ones for Marie-Louise in 1812.  It was best performed at Vienna’s Moonlight Hall, the feat being to make a complete circuit eight times at top speed.  For 10 points--name this dance whose better known varieties include the Minute and the Blue Danube.

Answer:   Waltz

14. In the 1960’s feminists burned their bras .  Members of an earlier group of feminists were even more radical and burned off their right breast --so it would not get in the way of their bow arm.  For 10 points--identify this legendary tribe of fighting women.

Answer:   Amazons

15. Every morning before it was light, he set out for the banks of the Monongahela, with his paper and pencils, to make small but accurate sketches.  In 1825 he made a long solitary trip up the Hudson River.  The resulting Falls of the Kaaterskill was the most influential canvas ever produced in the U.S., caused a sensation in the New York art world, and led to the creation of the Hudson River School of painting.  For 10 points--name this English-born American painter.

Answer:  Thomas Cole

16. Commissioned to write an article for Fortune magazine, he spent time with several Alabama sharecropping families.  The result was not an article, but a book.  For 10 points--who collaborated with Walker Evans on Let Us Now Praise Famous Men ?

Answer:  James Agee

17. You would associate Carl Sandburg with Chicago.  With what city, for 10 points, would you associate Justine, Balthazar, Cleo, and Mountolive?

Answer:   Alexandria (Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet)

18. The modern one takes place in Bodego Bay in northern California around 1960, and is based on a screenplay by Daphne DuMaurier.  The ancient one  took place about 400 B.C. and is set in Cloudcuckooland.  For 10 points--what title is shared by the Hitchcock movie and the Aristophanes play?

Answer:  The Birds

19. Its written legal code dates from 1808.  In 1817 it declared itself a republic and organized a bicameral legislature, with an upper house of 13 members.  In 1820 it divided itself into eight congressional districts, each with its own police, courts, and authority to tax. In 1823 its Supreme Court met for the first time.  In 1827 it held a national convention to draw up a written constitution.  It was patterned on America’s, giving the right to vote to all free male citizens over the age of 18.  Its capital was established at New Echota, the same year the state of Georgia petitioned for their removal.  For 10 points--name this “nation” which ceased to exist by 1832.

Answer:   Cherokee Nation

20. A valve in the human heart still bears his name.  He also discovered the abducens nerve, the suprarenal bodies, and the thoracic duct, but this 16th century anatomist's fame rests on his tiny, inch-long canal which equalizes pressure during swallowing.  For 10 points--name this Italian or his tube.

Answer:  Bartolomeo Eustachio or Eustacchi (Eustachian Tube)

21. The name’s the same:  the small engagement in western Virginia that some consider the first battle of the American Civil War, and the somewhat larger engagement in 42 B.C. that ended Rome’s Second Civil War.  For 10 points--identify these battles which began George McClellan’s career and that of Brutus.

Answer:   Philippi    

22.  He was Muhammad’s eldest uncle, but unlike Abu Bakr, he never succeeded to the Caliphate.  His name was attached to the second long dynasty of Islam, comprising 37 caliphs, which ruled from Baghdad until 1258.  For 10 points--identify this common Arabic name.

Answer:   Abbas

23. It is subtitled “History as a Novel, the Novel as History” and is a first-person account of a 1967 protest march against the Vietnam War.  The title was taken from the final line of “Dover Beach.”  For 10 points--identify this work by Norman Mailer.

Answer: Armies of the Night

24. He studied in the U.S. under Charles Wilson Peale and in London with Benjamin West and Gilbert Stuart.  Like Samuel Morse he began as a portrait painter but became an inventor.  The French offered him 400,000 francs if he could build a submarine that would sink a British frigate.  When that project failed, he turned to building surface ships and operated on the Seine river until 1806.  In that year he returned to the U.S. and built his most famous ship, which steamed up the Hudson to Albany.  For 10 points--name this inventor of the Clermont .

Answer:  Robert Fulton

25. Sydenham's Chorea is a nervous disease of children aged 5-15, and is seen more often in girls.  Usually associated with rheumatic fever, it is characterized by involuntary contractions of the muscles of the face, trunk, and extremities.  For 10 points--by what name is Sydenham's Chorea better known?

Answer: St. Vitus' Dance

Armstrong State College - Toss-Ups

MLK Weekend Tournament - January 15-16, 1994

1. (30 points)  European colonization of the continent of Africa suffered only two setbacks during a century of conquest.  For 15 points each:

a. At what 1896 battle did Menelik II of Ethiopia defeat the Italians, helping to establish the independence of Ethiopia?

Answer:  Adowa

b. Name the 1879 battle in which 20,000 Zulu warriors obliterated a British imperial force of 1700 men near Natal in the major engagement of the Zulu War,

Answer:  Isandhlwana (or Rorke’s Drift)

2. (30 points)  Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1775 comedy The Rivals has generated its share of academic bowl questions.  Here is yet one more.  Mrs. Malaprop’s name has entered our language as a word, but three other Sheridan characters also have last names which are common English words.  For 10 points each, supply the missing last name of:

a. the hero, Captain Jack . . . . Answer: Absolute

b. Captain Jack Absolute’s rival, Bob . . . . Answer: Acres

c. the heroine, whom the rivals covet, Lydia . . . . Answer: Languish

3. (30 points)  The Cursus Honorarum of ancient Rome represented the steps up the ladder of political success.  I’ll supply you with a more modern description or title, you tell me the title held by the comparable Roman magistrate--ten points each.

a. Commissioner of public works Answer: Aedile

b. Supreme Court justice Answer: Praetor

c. Treasurer Answer: Quaestor

4. (30-20-10)  For 30 points--identify this writer after one clue, 20 after two, 10 if you need all three.

a. He was not Jean Paul Sartre, but he had a well-known affair with Simone de Beauvoir, which she fictionalized in Les Mandarins.

b. He was not Carl Sandburg, but he wrote Chicago, City on the Make.

c. He was not Ian Fleming, but he wrote Man With the Golden Arm.

Answer:  Nelson Algren

5. (30 points)  You can probably name every member of The Dirty Dozen or The Magnificent Seven, but, for 10 points each, can you name just any one member of:

a. the Scriblerus Club? Answer: Pope, Swift, or Arbuthnot

b. the Hartford Wits? Answer: Dwight, Trumbull, Barlow, Hopkins, Alsop, or Humphries

c. theBloomsbury Group? Answer: JM Keynes, Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Clive Bell, David Garnett, Duncan Grant, EM Forster, Roger Fry

6. (30 points)  The American Academy of Arts and Letters was founded in 1904 to honor the best in American arts and letters, what else.  For 10 points each, see if you can identify these three among the original seven inductees.

a. the editor of Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s who championed such writers as Mark Twain and Henry James.

Answer:  William Dean Howells

b. the Irish-born sculptor whose statues include Farragut in Madison Square and an equestrian statue of General Sherman.

Answer:  Augustus Saint-Gaudens

c. the diplomat and writer known for Pike County Ballads and for his 10-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln.

Answer:  John Hay

7. (30-20-10)  Identify this musician on a 30-20-10 basis.

a. His brilliant piano compositions, including “Carnival” and “Kinderszenen” made him a leader of the Romantics in Germany.

b. His later orchestral works influenced younger composers, such as Chopin and Brahms.  The most successful of these was his “Piano Concerto in A Minor.”

c. His final and most noted work was the 1850 Rhenish Symphony, which was followed by a nervous breakdown that ended his career and his life at age 46.

Answer:  Robert Shumann

8. (30 points)  “Everyman” is the title of the best known medieval morality play.  Answer these questions about it.

a. For 5 points--who summons Everyman? Answer: Death

b. Everyman, after being summoned by Death, tries to get his four closest friends to join him.  For 5 points each--name the three friends who refuse to go.

Answer:  Beauty, Kindred, Worldly Goods

c. For a final 10 points--who is the only one of Everyman’s friends to follow him?

Answer: Good Deeds  

9. (30 points)  As regent for her son, she neglected wars in her zeal to suppress Iconoclasm.  Her son’s misconduct enabled her to depose him, have him blinded, and claim the throne for herself.  For 20 points--name this Byzantine empress, the mother of Constantine VI.

Answer:  Irene

For an additional 10 points--the fact that an empress sat on the Byzantine throne provided the pretext for what western European leader’s power grab shortly thereafter?

Answer:  Charlemagne or Charles the Great

10. (30 points)  Xenophon’s Anabasis or “March of the Ten Thousand,” began in 401 B.C.  But how well do you know these later marches?  For 10 points each--supply any one year of:

a. The Great Boer Trek 1835-43

b. The Trail of Tears 1838-39

c. Mao’s Long March 1934-35

11. (30 points)  The current hot theory is that the dinosaurs were wiped out by the impact of a large meteor or asteroid with the Earth.  For 10 points each--answer these questions about this event.

a. There is a crater the size of Rhode Island in central Quebec that gives evidence of massive prehistoric impacts.  Name the crater.

Answer:   Manicougan Crater

b. More recently, scientists using gravity maps have discovered a 10-kilometer underground ring beneath a major North American peninsula.  What peninsula.

Answer:   Yucatan

c. A thin worldwide layer of what metallic element in rocks supports the theory of an asteroid’s impact?

Answer:   Iridium

13. (30-20-10)  Thirty points if you can identify this personality after one clue, 20 after two, 10 if you need all three.

a. His short stories, many of which appeared in The New Yorker, were collected in Getting Even, Without Feathers, and Side Effects.

b. His Broadway plays include The Floating Lightbulb and Don’t Drink the Water.

c. His lesser-known movies include Take the Money and Run (1969) and Stardust Memories (1980).

Answer:  Woody Allen

14. (30 points)  In 1906 Grace Brown was murdered at Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks.  Chester Gillette was accused and convicted of the crime.  For 10 points each:

a. What 1925 novel was inspired by this infamous case?

Answer: An American Tragedy (by Theodore Dreiser)

b. What name did Dreiser give to the Chester Gillette character in An American Tragedy (hint:  the character’s initials are also C.G.)

Answer: Clyde Griffiths

c. What name did Dreiser give to the character corresponding to Grace Brown?

Answer: Roberta Alden

15. (30 points)  It would be nice to discover a chemical element, but you would have to discover three to be in company with these scientists.  For 5 points each--name any ONE element discovered by:

a. Berzelius Answer: Selenium, Silicon, Thorium, Cerium

b. Scheele Answer: Chlorine, Manganese, Molybdenum

c. Klaproth Answer: Zirconium, Uranium, Cerium

16. (30 points)  You’ve just received a hot stock tip and want to call your broker and place an order.  To avoid confusion you first look up the ticker symbol.  For 5 points each, given the symbol of a Dow 30 stock, you name the stock.

a. MCD McDonalds d. BA Boeing

b. KO Coca-Cola e. T AT&T or Am Telephone and Telegraph

c. MRK Merck f. GT Goodyear Tire

17. (30 points)  The Aeneid remained unfinished at the sudden death of Vergil in 19 B.C., and sometimes it seems like he never got beyond the letter “A.”  Identify these characters from the Aeneid, each of which begin with “A.”

a. 10 pts: Aeneas’ constant companion and faithful friend Answer: Achates

b. 5 pts: Aeneas’ father Answer: Anchises

c. 5 pts: his son Answer: Ascanius

d. 5 pts: his mother Answer: Aphrodite

e. 5 pts: finally, name the capital city in Italy, founded by Ascanius.

Answer: Alba Longa

18. (30 points)  Joseph Heller wrote Catch-22 and George Orwell wrote 1984 .  For 5 points each--complete the titles of these other works with numbers in them:

a. Auden and Isherwood’s The Ascent of . . . Answer: F6

b. Jean Giradoux’s Amphitryon. . . Answer: 38

c. Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot . . . Answer: 49

19. (30 points)  This bonus is about operatic exits.  For 5 points each, tell me the modes of death of the following sopranos:

a. Mimi in LaBoheme Answer: Tuberculosis or TB

b. Nedda in I Pagliacci Answer: Murdered or Stabbed

c. Violetta in La Traviata Answer: Tuberculosis or TB

d. Cho-cho San in Madame Butterfly Answer: Suicide

e. Tosca in Tosca Answer: Suicide

f. Gilda in Rigoletto Answer: Murdered or Stabbed

20. (30-20-10)  Thirty points if you can identify him after one clue, 20 after two, 10 if you need all three.

a. Born in 1746, he had 19 children by his wife and more by a variety of mistresses, one of whom gave him syphilis.

b. He went stone deaf in 1792.  Thereafter, fearsome creatures began to appear in his works.

c. Some of his paintings include The Witches Sabbath and Los Caprichos.

Answer:  Francisco Goya

21. (30 points)  There are eight schools in the Ivy League.  For 10 points each, which:

a. is the only one that is not a university? Answer: Dartmouth

b. was founded in the 19th century? Answer: Cornell

c. has the largest enrollment? Answer: Penn (9949)

22. (25 points)  They flaunted their Christianity, rejected the modern world, and wanted to return to the Middle Ages of the Hohenstaufen Empire.  They formed the world’s first youth movement, wore their hair long, and grew beards.  At their first mass rally, at Wartburg in 1817, they reintroduced medieval book-burning.  For 15 points--identify this German society disbanded in 1820 by the Karslbad Decrees.

Answer:  Burschenschaften

For 10 more points--spell Burschenschaften.