General Ignorance UPDATE Post 41

[marypops!]

For those hovering this thread wondering to click or not, it is rather long and you may learn something...

This is a thread with simple questions with answers people should know, but are alot different then you think they are. Since they're so long, i'm going to split this into 2 parts and maybe more if I feel like it. Here are the the first 5 questions and the other 5 will be sometime tomorrow.

1. What is the tallest mountain in the world?

2. How many states are there in the USA?

3. How many moons does the Earth have?

4. How many wives did King Henry VIII have?

5. Where is the driest place on Earth?


Nice and simple huh? Well, Everything you know is wrong... Here are the answers.

1.
WRONG ANSWER - Mount Everest.
RIGHT ANSWER - Mauna Kea.
REASON - As far as mountains are concerned, the current convention is that 'highest' means measured from sea level to summit; 'tallest means measured from the bottom of the mountain to the top. Mauna Kea is 10,200m tall which is about 3/4 mile taller then Mount Everest.

2.
WRONG ANSWER - 50
RIGHT ANSWER - 46
REASON - Technically, there are only 46 states. Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts are officially Commonwealths. This grants them no special constitutional powers. They simply chose this word to describe themselves at the end of the War of Independance. It made clear they were no longer 'royal colonies' answering to the King, but states governed by the 'common consent of the people'.

3.
WRONG ANSWER - 1
RIGHT ANSWER - At least 7.
REASON - Certainly the Moon (or Luna) is the only celestrial body to observe a strict orbit of the Earth. But there are now 6 other 'Near-Earth' Asteroids which do follow the Earth around the Sun, despite being invisible to the naked eye. The first to be identified was Cruithne (pronounced Cru-Enn-Ya) is a three mile wide natural satellite discovered in 1997. It has an odd horeshoe shaped orbit. Since then 5 more have been identified: 2000 PH5 2000 WN10, 2002 AA29, 2003 YN107, and 2004 GU9.

4.
WRONG ANSWER - 6
RIGHT ANSWER - 2, or if Catholic, 4.
REASON - Henry declared that is marriage to Catherine of Aragon invalid to the Pope when told his marriage to Anne Boleyn illegal, already being married to Catherine of Aragon. It was invalid on the legal ground that a man could not sleep with his brother's widow. The marriage to Anne Boleyn was annulled, which is different to divorce, meaning legally the marriage never took place. She was anulled just before she was executed for Adultery. The marriage to Anne of Cleaves was also anulled. In addition, Anne was bethrothed to Francis, Duke of Lorraine when she married Henry. He also anulled his marriage to Catherine Howard. All the evidence suggests he was unfaithful to him before and during their marriage. This time, Henry passed a law making it treasonable for a Queen to commit Adultery. This means there were only 2 incontestably legal marriages to Jane Seymour (who died after giving birth to their son) and Catherine Parr (who outlived him).

5.
WRONG ANSWER - The Sahara Desert or the Atacama Desert.
RIGHT ANSWER - Antartica.
REASON - Parts of the continent have seen no rain for 2 million years. A desert is technically defined as a place that recieves less then 252 mm (10 inches) of rain a year. The Sahara gets 25mm (1 inch) of rain a year. Antartica's average rainfall is about the same but 2% of it, known as the Dry Valleys, is free of ice and snow and never rains there at all. The next driest place in the world is the driest desert in the world, known as the Atacama Desert in Chile. It's average rainfall is 0.1mm (0.0004 inches)

Part 2 tomorrow at some point...

I got all this information from a book called "The Book of General Ignorance". If anyone has seen the TV Show QI (which i'm sure many of you haven't because last time I checked, there was a petition for it to get shown on BBC America) then these are questions from the show from the ending point of it, also called General Ignorance. I have copied most of the answers from this book but left some bits out and worded a few things differently. I do not take any credit for writing these answers out, though it did take over an hour to do...

 

[BabyPiglet]

At first I thought 'Woah, George is making a vent thread!?'

Those are interesting.

 

[Babyjustrun]

Mm, they are interesting.
I like ones centered around geography.
Moreee please xD

 

[CrazyChik]

I got four wrong.
I said Antartica for driest place though and i knew it wasn't everest but i didn't know what it actually was.
interesting

 

[pigletgirl]

Huh, wow. haha. I got 3 wrong.

 

[joepic]

Wow, I got 3 wrong, thanks for posting! That was interesting.

 

[Ms.Squeakers]

YAY!!
I hate how they make it seem like Everest is the tallest.


Moorreeeee moreeee moreee!

 

[Axel]

I got 2 wrong. I knew the Commonwealth question because we went over it in my US History class. I knew the mountains one because I tell that to everybody I meet that says Everest is the tallest. And I knew about Antartica because my godmother is a meteorologist and she spent 6 months there and told me all about it and it's meteorological history one day when we were stuck at her beach house because it was pouring.

 

[Packfan25]

Those are interesting. I only got the Mauna Kea one right.

 

[marypops!]

Thanks everyone Here are 5 more questions:

6. Where do most tigers live?

7. What animal are the Canary Islands named after?

8. Who discovered Penicillin?

9. How many sheep were there on Noah's Ark?

10. What colour were the original Oompa Loompa's?

6.
WRONG ANSWER - India, Asia, Africa, etc.
RIGHT ANSWER - USA.
REASON - A century ago, there were 40,000 tigers in India. Now there are between 3,000 and 4,700. Some scientists estimate there are between 5,100 and 7,000 wild tigers left on the planet. On the other hand, there are thought to be 4,000 tigers living in captivity in Texas alone. The American Zoo and Aquarium Association estimate that up to 12,000 tigers are being kept as private pets in the USA. Part of the reason for America's enourmous tiger population relates to legislation. Only 19 states have banned private ownership of tigers, 15 require a licence and the rest have no regulations at all.

7.
WRONG ANSWER - Canaries
RIGHT ANSWER - Dogs
REASON - Canaries Birds are named after the Island, not the other way around. The name comes from the Latin Name for the largest of the islands surrounding it, the 'Isle of Dogs' (Insula Canaria) which was named after the large amount of dogs on it. London's Isle of Dogs was first so-called on a map dated 1588. It's an odd coincidence that Canary Wharf is located there.

8.
WRONG ANSWER - Sir Alexander Fleming
RIGHT ANSWER - Bedouin tribesmen.
REASON - The tribesmen, from North Africa, have been making a healing ointment from the mould on donkey harnesses for over a thousand years. in 1897, a French army doctor called Ernest Duchesne rediscovered this by observing how Arab stable boys used the mould from damp saddles to treat saddle sores. He researched further into it and sent it in as his doctor's thesis, urging further study, but was ignored maybe because he was ony 23 and an unknown student. He was posthumously honoured in 1949, 5 years after Sir Alexander Fleming had recieved a Nobel Prize for re-rediscovering Penicillin.

9.
WRONG ANSWER - 2
RIGHT ANSWER - 7 or 14
REASON - The relevant Passage in the King Jame's Bible appears in Genesis 7:2 where God tells Noah 'Of every clean beast, though shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of the beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female'. 'Unclean' beasts are the extensive range of creatures that Jews are forbidden to eat. This includes pigs, camels, eels, lizards, vultures, and bats. 'Clean' (edible) animals include sheep, cattle, goats, loucusts and antelopes. In the Douay-Rheims Bible, the authoritative Catholic translation of the Latin Vulgate published in 1609 says 'Of all clean beast, take seven and seven, the male and the female' which means there could have been 14 sheep on the Ark.

10.
WRONG ANSWER - Orange
RIGHT ANSWER - Black
REASON - In the first edition of the 1964 children's novel 'Charlie & the Chocolate Factory', the Oompa-Loompas were black, not orange. Dahl descried them as a tribe of 3,000 black pygmies imported by Mr. Wonka from the 'very deepest and darkest part of the African jungle where no white man had been before' to replace the sacked white workers in his factory. They lived on chocolate, whereas before they had only eaten 'beetles, eucalyptus leaves, caterpillars and the bark of the bong-bong tree'. Dahl's descriptions of the Oompa-Loompas, with it's overtones of slavery, veered dangerously close to racism, so by the early 1970s, his publisher, Knopf insisted on changes. In 1972, a revised edition of the book appeared. They were now described having long 'golden brown hair' and rosy-white skin'. The 2 movies in 1971 and 2005 had them look like orange elves. The film's title was changed to 'Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory' because 'Charlie' had become US street slang for an African American.

I might add more either tomorrow or Monday.

 

[dancergirlsasha]

I don't live in a state.

 

[Babyjustrun]

I just got all the new ones wrong xD

 

[Packfan25]

I just got all the new ones wrong xD

same with me.

 

[Axel]

I just got all the new ones wrong xD

Ditto.

 

[StitchfansJr]

I got all 10 wrong. D=

 

[PrincessEeyore]

I got all 10 wrong. D=

Glad to know I'm not the only one.

Well, I knew about the sheep on Noah's Arc, I just couldn't remember what the number was.

 

[PowerMonkey]

haha the only one i got right was the oompa loompa one.. these are pretty awesome though lol

 

[MrsSparrow..]

Got all 10 wrong

I am so proud.

-Ashleigh

 

[reminisce]

are there going to be any more posted?

 

[joepic]

This thread is really good! thanks!