1997 MLK Invitational Questions by John Sheahan for the bastard Chicago team =0D 2. In one of his more notable works, the main thesis is that the switch from Norman to Gothic architecture in the late thirteenth century represented a shift from a masculine to a feminine world-view, and that a similar process was at work in nineteenth century America, as the electrical dynamo took over the role of the Virgin Mary. FTP, name this 19th century American author of "The Virgin and the Dynamo", Democracy, and a famous autobiography. Answer: Henry Adams =0D 3. He predicted that in the age to follow, six new moons would appear in the sky, the ocean would become lemonade, and gentle creatures like the anti-lion and anti-rat would roam the earth. Meanwhile, humans would live to age of 144, remain sexually active into their 120s, and settle in planned communities called phalanxes. FTP, name this crackpot utopian socialist, whose American followers founded communes at Oneida and Brook Farm. Answer: Charles Fourier =0D 4. In 1955, her enemies removed her body to Italy, where she was buried in a nondescript grave under the false name of "Maria Maggi." In 1974, she was returned to her native country, and today her tomb in the Recoleta Cemetery is one of the major tourist attractions of Buenos Aires. FTP, name this cultural icon and former Argentine first lady. Answer: Eva (Evita) Peron =0D 5. Assume for a minute that the physical universe is infinite, uniform, and unchanging. Therefore, if we stare at any point in the sky, our line of sight will eventually take us to a star. Therefore, the night sky should be bright, not dark. FTP, name this astronomical paradox, which is resolved by the fact that the universe is actually not infinite, uniform, or unchanging. Answer: Olbers' Paradox =0D 6. In 1978, representatives of an Arabian corporation known as Abdul Enterprises swept Washington, offering to buy political favors for cash. Six members of Congress took the bait, including Senator Harrison Williams of New Jersey, only to be thrown into prison when Abdul turned out to be an FBI sting operation. FTP, name this political scandal of the late seventies, whose name is a contraction of "Abdul scam." Answer: Abscam =0D 7. Deciphered 155 years after its last entry, the bulk of this six- volume manuscript was written in shorthand using Shelton's system of tachygraphy, although the parts involving sex and masturbation were written in an even more-complicated code invented by the author himself. FTP, identify this work begun on New Year's Day 1660 and abandoned on account of the author's failing eyesight in 1669. Answer: The Samuel Pepys Diary =0D 8. He was sentenced to death in absentia for killing a man in Rome, was thrown into prison by the Knights of Malta, was abducted and mutilated by the mafia in Sicily, received a pardon from the Pope, and was on his way home when he collapsed and died while chasing after a boat that was about to sail off with all his paintings. FTP, thus ended the strange life of what artist, most famous for his "Virgin and Serpent," and "St. Matthew" series, as well as for pioneering of the technique of chiaroscuro? Answer: Caravaggio (Michaelangelo Merisi) =0D 10. His real name was Erasmus, and there are two versions of how he came by his claim to fame: the first simply says that he liked to preach outdoors in violent thunderstorms, while the second claims that the Romans dipped him in pitch, rolled him in canvas, and lit him up as a human torch. FTP, name this saint whose "fire" is the electrical phenomenon sometimes seen around the masts of ships during storms. Answer: St. Elmo (St. Erasmus) =0C11. In the fifth century, this island was visited by the nearsighted Irish missionary St. Mael (My-YELL), who mistook its native birds for short, well-dressed humans and baptized them. After realizing his mistake, Mael miraculously turned the birds into men, and from this point on, the island's history bears a striking resemblance to that of France. FTP, name this fictituous nation whose history is chronicled by Anatole France. Answer: Penguin Island (L'Ile des Pingouins) =0D 12. It was said of this war that everybody agreed it had to be fought, but that nobody could agree where to fight it. As a result, there was preliminary skirmishing in Transylvania, Bulgaria, Finland, and the White Sea before both sides settled on a theater of battle near the towns of Simferopol, Malakov, and Sevastopol. FTP, name this Anglo-Franco-Turko-Russian war of 1854. Answer: The Crimean War =0D 13. It is very nearly not an island at all, since it is separated from the mainland only by the half-mile-wide Gut of Canso. At the same time, it is almost two islands, since its two halves are joined only by a razor-thin isthmus at St. Peter's. FTP, name this northeasternmost section of Nova Scotia, site of the French colonial fortress of Louisburg. Answer: Cape Breton Island =0D 14. As a general in Julius Caesar's army, he lost every battle he fought in. As governor of Numidia, he was so incompetent and corrupt that even Caesar had difficulty saving him from prosecution. Forced into early retirement by Caesar's death, he became a professional propagandist, and in this he finally found something he could do well. FTP, name this Roman historian of The Jugurthine War and The Conspiracy of Catiline. Answer: Sallust =0D 15. In 1981, an FBI agent named Bill Maxwell and and a special-ed teacher named Ralph Hinkley got lost in the desert and encountered a group of space aliens. The aliens gave Ralph a magic flying costume, but he lost the instruction book before he got to the part about landing. FTP, this was the premise of what early-80s TV superhero spoof, best known for its Joey Scarbury theme song? Answer: The Greatest American Hero =0D 16. As originally written, this 1871 work flaunted just about every convention of nineteenth-century opera: it had no overture, no love scenes, no significant roles for tenor or soprano, no dance numbers, no orchestral showpieces, and no arias. Moreover, it ended with a scene in which gleeful peasants massacre the aristocracy, practically guaranteeing that it would be rejected by tsarist censors. FTP, name this opera, later heavily revised, the masterpiece of Modest Mussorgsky. Answer: Boris Godunov =0D 17. His wife, Claudia Procula, was a granddaughter of Augustus, while he himself was rumored to be an illegitimate son of the German king of Mainz. Removed from office by Claudius because of his excessive brutality, he eventually died in one of Nero's political purges. FTP, name this fifth procurator of Judea, who is a saint in several eastern Christian churches. Answer: Pontius Pilate =0D 18. Discovered in the nineteenth century by amateur naturalist William Legrand, this insect of order Scaraboeus is about the size of a hickory-nut, and is characterized by a glossy yellow color and three black spots which give it the appearance of a death's head. FTP, name this bettle native to Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, the title character of an Edgar Allan Poe short story. Answer: The Gold Bug =0D 19. Although it became extinct everywhere else in the world around two million years ago, recent evidence suggests that a colony of this species held out on the island of Java until about 25,000 B.C., and may have even co-existed for a time with modern homo sapiens. FTP, name this hominid ancestor of ours, which followed homo habilus and preceded archaic homo sapiens on the evolutionary ladder. Answer: Homo Erectus =0D 20. In 1963, eighteen-year-old Barbara Ann Johnson was walking home from her job at a Phoenix movie theater when she was abducted and raped. At a police line-up three days later, Johnson identified her assailant, who confessed without being told that he could ask for a lawyer, and it was because of this that the Supreme Court threw out the conviction three years later. FTP, name this rapist and namesake of a speech that police now read to all arrested suspects. Answer: Ernesto Miranda =0D 21. He was the last reputable scientist to reject the theories of Copernicus, a fact that tends to obscure his better accomplishments, such as the calculation of the Martian parallax and the first accurate estimate of the distance between Earth and the Sun=2E FTP, name this Italian-French astronomer, who also discovered four moons of Saturn and lent his name to a division in that planet's rings. Answer: Jean Dominique Cassini =0C22. This writer lived in the late fourteenth century, probably in the west Midlands, and may or may not have a written "The Legend of St. Erkenwald." Other than this, the only thing we know about him (or her) is that he wrote four other works that are preserved in a single manuscript, three of which are "Patience," "Purity," and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." FTP, name this anonymous poet, known only by the title of his first work. Answer: The Pearl Poet 24. On February 17, 1912, Evans dropped dead of exhaustion. A month later, Oates killed himself in hopes of preserving food supplies for the others. But this was not enough to save Wilson, Bowers, and the group's leader, who were caught in a blizzard and froze to death, just seven miles from a supply depot. FTP, such was the end of what failed expedition, which lost the race to the South Pole to Amundsen? Answer: The Scott Expedition (Terra Nova Expedition) =0D Because he insisted on recording even the most minute details, he could be boring in places- so much so that, according to legend, the Inquisition used to torture heretics by reading aloud to them from his Description of the Siege of Pisa. FTP, name this leading historian of the Italian Renaissance, whose History of Italy is a continuation of Machiavelli's Florentine Histories. Answer: Francesco Guicciardini =0D It is a parody of the didactic elegy, and contains poems on such topics as how to sexually gratify yourself in a crowded stadium and how to keep your mistress' husband from finding out about you, as well a discussion on why vaginal intercourse is better than anal intercourse. FTP, name this sexually graphic how- to book which helped get Ovid banished from Rome for obscenity. Answer: The Art of Love (Ars Amatoria) =0D As a youth, he was a runner-up to Edison in the race to invent the light bulb, and as an older man he raised eyebrows by publicy suggesting that scientists should get patents on any cosmological forces they discover. FTP, name this failed inventor but successful chemist, whose heat theorem states that absolute zero cannot be attained in a finite number of steps. =0D Answer: Walther Nernst 2. Identify the scientist, 30-20-10. 1. In 1868, he published the first-ever map of the solar spectrum and proved that the sun contains hydrogen. Later, he did similar work on the Aurora Borealis. 2. In 1853, he predicted that hot gases emitted and absorbed radiation of the same wavelength, a theory that was later empirically proven by Kirchoff. 3. This Swedish physicist is the namesake of a unit of length equal to 10 exponent negative-eight centimeters. Answer: Anders Jonas Angstrom =0D 3. For ten points each, given a long-serving European head of government, name his or her less-famous immediate predecessor. 1. Margaret Thatcher Answer: James Callaghan 2. Francois Mitterand Answer: Valery Giscard D'Estaing 3. Helmut Kohl Answer: Helmut Schmidt =0D 4. Gabriel Garcia Marquez has written many of literature's best- ever opening lines. Edward Bulwer-Lytton wrote many of the worst. For ten points each, given an opening line that is by either Garcia Marquez or Bulwer-Lytton, identify the novel. (NOT the author, which should be patently obvious in every case). 1. "It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love." Answer: Love in the Time of Cholera 2. "`Ho, Diomed, well met! Do you sup with Glaucus to-night?' said a young man of small stature, who wore his tunic in those loose and effeminate folds which proved him to be a gentleman and a coxcomb." Answer: The Last Days of Pompeii 3. "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aurelio Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." Answer: One Hundred Years of Solitude =0D 5. Identify these American historians, 10 pts., each. 1. The first person to write a full-length American history, this career diplomat and rabid partisan of Andrew Jakson spent over forty years on his work, which was completed in 1874. Answer: George Bancroft 2. Arguably the only great Marxist historian of America, his principal work is 1913's Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, in which he argued that the Founders' real purpose was to protect the power and privileges of the wealthy. Answer: Charles Beard 3. A professor at Wisconsin and Harvard, he is best remembered for his 1893 essay The Significance of the Frontier in American History. Answer: Frederick Jackson Turner =0D 6. For five points each, and a bonus five for all five correct, identify the authors of these Elizabethean and Jacobean plays not written by Shakespeare, Marlowe, or Jonson. 1. The White Devil Answer: John Webster 2. The Spanish Tragedy Answer: Thomas Kyd 3. Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding Answer: Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher 4. Ralph Roister Doister Answer: Nicholas Udall 5. 'Tis Pity She's a Whore Answer: John Ford =0C7. This bonus will be about particularly nasty ways to die. For ten points each, name the characters of legend who die in the ways described. 1. At the battle of Roncevalles, he blows his trumpet so hard that his head explodes. Answer: Roland 2. After rejecting the advances of a lusty Roman, this virgin and martyr is given an on-the-spot double masectomy, before being burned, flogged, beheaded, etc=2E In medieval art, she is often depicted carrying her severed breasts on a silver platter. Answer: St. Agatha 3. Her great-great grandson rips her lower jaw off, then kills her by shooting an arrow down her exposed throat. After her death, her body is ripped in two and used to build earth and sky. Answer: Tiamat =0D 8. For fifteen points each, identify these battles lost by the Teutonic knights. 1. Fought near the city of Pskov on April 5, 1240, this battle halted the knights' invasion of Russia and is the subject of the film "Alexander Nevsky." Answer: Lake Peipus or Chudskoye Ozero 2. The battle which effectively finished off the knights as a political force, this crushing 1410 loss to Poland shares its name with another famous battle fought 504 years later. Answer: Tannenberg =0D 9. Identify the object, 30-20-10. 1. It is mentioned in the Natural History of Pliny the Elder, who reports that it was created by the team of Athenodorus, Polydorus, and Agesander. 2. Lost for over a millenium, it was rediscovered in 1506 by workers excavating the ruins of Nero's Esquiline Palace. 3. Considered the masterpiece of ancient Roman art, this naturalistic marble sculpture shows a large snake strangling a Trojan priest and his two sons. Answer: Laocoon or Laocoon group =0D 10. For the stated number of pt., identify these proteges of Ernest Rutherford. 1. With Mardsen, he assisted Rutherford in the gold-leaf experiment which detected the atomic nucleus. He also lent his name to a device that measures alpha-radiation=2E 10 pt. Answer: Hans Geiger 2. With Rutherford, he co-authored the paper which put forth the theory of successive nuclear transformations. Later, he coined the term "isotope." 20 pt. Answer: Frederick Soddy =0D 11. Over the years, the Oscars have seen more than a few inexplicably bad votes for Best Picture. For ten points each, given a some classic films that were nominated but lost in the same year, name the vastly inferior movie that won. 1. "The Maltese Falcon," "Suspicion," and "Citizen Kane." Answer: How Green Was My Valley 2. "Raging Bull." Answer: Ordinary People 3. "Bonnie and Clyde," and "The Graduate." Answer: In the Heat of the Night =0D 12. For the stated number of points, answer these questions about the end of the Manchu dynasty in China. 1. First, for five: name China's last emperor. Answer: Henry Pu Yi or Hsuan Tung 2. Second, for ten: name the year in which the infant Pu Yi was deposed, or name it within two years for five points. Answer: 1912 3. For five: name the founder of the revolutionary Kuomintang party, who served as the country's provisional leader for one month in 1912. Answer: Sun Yat-Sen 4. For ten: name the first president of the Chinese republic, whose attempted coup and sudden death in 1916 accelerated the disintegration of the country. Answer: Yuan Shih-K'ai =0D 13. Time for another exciting round of "geography from hell." For ten points each, identify the following places. 1. It is the smallest but most famous of the Iles du Salut, lying about 27 miles northwest of Cayenne. Answer: Devil's Island 2. The first National Monument in the U.S., this 600-foot-tall natural obelisk lies near the Belle Fourche river in northeastern Wyoming. Answer: Devil's Tower 3. Roughly speaking, it is bounded by the Wallowa Mountains, the Blue Mountains, and the Salmon River Mountains. Also the name of a National Recreation Area, it forms the part of the Idaho-Oregon border. Answer: Hell's Canyon=0C14. 15. For ten points each, identify the people who made the following discoveries about Mars. 1. In 1659, he discovered a dark region on the Martian surface that he called Syrtis Major, or the Large Bog. By tracking its shadows, he was able to calculate the length of the Martian day. Answer: Christiaan Huygens 2. In 1877, he discovered the canals of Mars. Answer: Giovanni Schiaperelli 3. Beginning in 1894, he mapped over 500 canals on the surface of Mars. He is best known for arguing that the canals were built by intelligent creatures, a theory that he explained in his 1908 book Mars, The Abode of Life. Answer: Percival Lowell =0D 16. For ten points each: given the second, third, and fourth lines of an Emily Dickinson poem, supply the more well-known first line. 1. ... From tankards scooped in pearl/ Not all the vats upon the Rhine/ Yield such an alcohol. Answer: I taste a liquor never brewed 2. ... Are you Nobody, too?/ Then there's a pair of us-- don't tell!/ They'll banish us, you know. Answer: I'm Nobody! Who are you? 3. ... He kindly stopped for me./ The carriage held but just ourselves/ And Immortality Answer: Because I could not stop for Death =0D 18. Identify the following two literary characters: fifteen points if you get them from a description of their miserable lives; ten points if you need the name and author of the novel in which they appear. 1. 15 point clue: Enters a seminary, seduces the aristocratic Mathilde in a cynical attempt to obtain social advancement, attempts to murder his ex-lover Mme de Renal, gets arrested and executed. 10 point clue: Stendhal's The Red and the Black. Answer: Julien Sorrel 2. 15 point clue: Spends all his money on his two spoiled daughters, Mme de Nuciegen and Mme de Restaud, who treat him like dirt. Dies of apoplexy after pawning his last silver plate; his daughters send empty carriages to the funeral. 10 point clue: He is the title character of a novel by Balzac. Answer: Pere Goriot =0D 19. For ten points each: identify these explorers of the New World, given the year and unpleasant circumstances of their deaths. 1. 1611; set adrift by mutineers in a body of water later named for him. Answer: Henry Hudson 2. 1517; arrested and beheaded on trumped-up treason charges by his rivals Pizarro and Pedrarias. Answer: Vasco Nunez de Balboa 3. 1527; eaten by natives while exploring the coast of South America for France. Answer: Giovanni da Verrazano =0C20. Identify the deficiency diseases: fifteen points if you can get them from a description of the symptoms, five if you need the name of the name of the vitamins whose deficiency causes them. 1. 15 point clue. Swelling in the legs, chest, and face; general muscular weakness and paralysis of the extremities; burning intestinal pains. Victims most frequently die of heart failure. 5 point clue. Thiamine, or Vitamin B1. Answer: Beriberi 2. 15 point clue. The teeth begin to rot, as do the bones, which is why many children who recover from it are left with permanent deformities. Also, a lot of sweating, nausea, and diarrhea. 5 point clue. Vitamin D. Answer: Rickets =0D 21. For ten points each, name these shrinking legislative bodies of seventeenth-century England. 1. Summoned in 1640, it remained in power (at least in theory) throughout the civil war and commonwealth periods, and was not replaced until 1660. Answer: The Long Parliament 2. In 1648, Pride's Purge removed the Presbetyrian faction from the Long Parliament, leaving this smaller assembly in power. Answer: The Rump 3. By 1653, even the Rump was showing some signs of independence, and so its members were purged yet again, leaving only this small pro-Cromwell faction. Answer: The Barebones Parliament =0D 22. Although most judicial opinions are (to quote H.L. Mencken) chloroform in print, a notable exception are those written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., many of which contain catchy phrases that are far more famous than the cases themselves. For ten points each, given a memorable Holmes quote, identify the Supreme Court decision in which it was contained. 1. "Three generations of imbeciles is enough." Answer: Buck v. Bell 2. "The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics." Answer: Lochner v. New York 3. "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man from falsely shouting `fire' in a crowded theater." Answer: Schenck v. United States =0D 23. For five points each, given a modern city, identify the European power that possessed it (or its future site) in the year 1648, after the signing of the Peace of Westphalia. 1. Antwerp Answer: Spain 2. Budapest Answer: Ottoman Empire or Turkey 3. Dubrovnik, Croatia Answer: Venice 4. Philadelphia, PA Answer: Sweden 5. Riga, Latvia Answer: Sweden 6. Smolensk Answer: Poland =0D 24. For the stated number of points, identify these scientists who helped debunk the theory of the spontaneous generation of life. 1. For ten points: in 1668, this Italian placed a screen of gauze over a vial of rotting meat, and thus was able to prove that maggots do not appear spontaneously, but must be hatched from fly eggs. Answer: Francisco Redi 2. For fifteen: What Redi did for maggots, this other Italian did for microorganisms in 1768, proving that bacteria would not grow in sealed vessels that had been boiled. Answer: Lazzaro Spallanzani 3. Spallanzani did not, however, put an end to the vitalist theory. For a final five points, name the great French bacteriologist whose bent-tube experiment is credited with once-and-for-all disproving the theory of spontaneous generation. Answer: Louis Pasteur =0D 25. For fifteen points each, identify these traditional arguments for the existence of God. 1. Let "God" be defined as the most perfect thing imaginable by human reason. Anything that exists is more perfect than something that doesn't exist, and so, therefore, God exists, since a non- existing God would be less perfect than a hypothetical existing God. Answer: Ontological argument 2. Everything in the universe happens because it's caused by some other thing in the universe. Therefore, God must exist, since somebody had to be around before anything else to set the whole universe in motion. Answer: Cosmological or Unmoved Mover argument =0C26. Identify the following works of American literature: ten points if you can get them from the name of the main character, five if you need the name of the author. 1. Ten point clue. Main character: Bigger Thomas Five point clue. Author: Richard Wright Answer: Native Son 2. Ten point clue. Main character: Sele, spelled with an "S" Five point clue. Author: Toni Morrison Answer: Beloved 3. Ten point clue. Main characters: John and Gabriel Grimes Five point clue. Author: James Baldwin Answer: Go Tell it on the Mountain =0D 27. For the stated number of points, answer the following questions about really big blowouts in games such as the one you are now playing. You will have twenty seconds to answer each part. 1. First, for ten: give the score of the largest theoretically possible blowout in a standard 20-question ACF match. Answer: 800 to negative 100 2. For a slightly harder twenty points, give, within $20,000, the largest theoretically possible single-game score for one player in the TV show Jeopardy. You may assume optimal placement of the Daily Doubles. Answer: $212,400 =0D 30. Identify the opera, 30-20-10. 1. Its more popular tunes include "Brindisi," "Sempre Libre," amd "Pura Siccome Un Angelo." 2. It is based on the novel "La Dame aux Camelias," the one hit of literary one-hit wonder Alexandre Dumas, fils. 3. This Verdi work features one of opera's most famous female roles, the tubercular courtesan Violetta. Answer: La Traviata =0D 6. For fifteen points each, identify these short stories by Saki, given a brief synopsis. 1. A bored young boy invents his own pagan religion, in which the central deity is a wild polecat that he keeps in a locked hutch. When the boy's no-nonsense aunt tries to spoil his fun, he prays to his god for deliverance, and the polecat bursts out and tears the aunt to pieces. Answer: Sredni Vashtar 2. Two feuding East European neigbors are stalking each other in the woods when a tree falls, trapping them both underneath. While waiting to be rescued, they talk, discover that they actually have a lot in common, and become great friends. Then they get eaten by wolves. Answer: The Interlopers =0D Naming U.S. states was never simple, and in many cases, Congress or colonists tried and rejected several proposals before settling on a final name. For five points each and five more for all correct, given a name which a state almost took, identify the state. 1. "Franklin" Answer: Tennessee 2. "Columbia" Answer: Washington 3. "New Connecticut" Answer: Vermont 4. "Esmerelda" Answer: Idaho 5. "Albania" Answer: New Jersey=0C