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Posted by Katy R (U14748743) on Friday, 10th June 2011
Hello folks
Here's today's quiz question:
At what time did the Hawthorn Ridge mine explode? And on which battle-ground did the explosion take place?
Answers asap
Katy
7.20am on 1st July 1916. On the Somme. RIP all those who gave their lives that day.
Hunter-Weston wanted to blow the ridge hours before the opening assault to give his trooops time to capture and consolidate the crater but both Rawlinson and Haig ruled this out and approved the explosion only 10 minutes before H-hour (7:30 a.m.).
In the event the crater that was created was so deep that by the time British troops got to the bottom of it they were vulnerable to the Germans firing down on them from the top on the opposite side and it proved impossible to scale up the opposing side and the crater eventually had to be abandoned.
The explosion was captured on moving film by the photographer Geoffrey Malins and still features in a lot of stock footage of WWI and can be seen here:
Congratulations SuperLindyLou
You might also be interested in this article on the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News Magazine - Unearthing the hidden tunnel war
Your turn
WHY do all media outlets - the Beeb isn't alone in this - seem to assume that no-one knows about anything beyond the most superficial accounts of recent history?
Because 99% of people don't know anything except the most superficial, basic accounts of WWI. Or WWII for that matter. It's sad and depressing.
Come on someone, ask a question.
Anyone for tennis?
Monty Python
Cream
Daffy Duck
But who said it first?
Hi SST
The juvenile male lead enters the stage through the french windows and says it. I'm thinking a between the wars English dramatist. Somerset Maugham perhaps or Noel Coward. What about Teddie Luton in The Circle? I shall be really disappointed if it's Henry VIII although I believe he did play tennis.
TP
All good guesses, TP, but alas no right answer there.
Henry VIII was a glutton for the odd misalliance or two - cannot be denied - but he never asked, "Who's for tennis?"
Yes, Henry VIII did play tennis (until his leg started playing up!), but it was the real not the lawn variety and I don't think he ever had to ask anyone (since a refusal would only have offended).
The line is actually "Anyone on for a game of tennis?" and is spoken by Johnny Tarleton, the aimless son of the underwear millionaire, John Tarleton in "Misalliance", witten by that enemy of the upper-crust, George Bernard Shaw. It was first staged at the Duke of York's Theatre by Harley Granville-Barker on 23 February 1910. However it was not favourably received and only ran for 11 performances. One critic described it as like watching "the debating society of a lunatic asylum". It was not staged again for over two decades but evidently Shaw's line had struck a chord nonetheless.
I can't discover who created the part of Tarleton but I hope Shaw's failure didn't diminish his choice of roles or tennis partners.
You have it, Allan D!
Your go, sir.
Missed your clue, T, but thanks anyway.
As we seem to have got onto a theatrical theme, which inpromptu line followed this at one performance of the play concerned:
"Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, you sockodologizing old man trap!" ?
Do you mean "BANG!" as Booth shot Lincoln?
No. There was another line (of two sentences) spoken on stage afterwards (by some accounts). It is that that I'm looking for.
No one wants a go? Et tu, Brute?
Booth escaped vai the satge - so did he shout (perhaps in Latin) the "So perish all tyrants" tag?
Can't make two sentences of it though!
Indeed he did. Booth jumped from the Presidential box to the stage after shooting Lincoln, catching his foot in the US flag draping the box and breaking his ankle as he landed. However he nevertheless declaimed:
"Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged!"
before making his escape. The first part was supposedly said by Brutus when delivering the final coup de grace to Julius Caesar at the Capitol in 44BC.
Good enough, U-L, as you come up with better questions than I can. Over to you.
Missed your clue, T, but thanks anyway.
As we seem to have got onto a theatrical theme, which inpromptu line followed this at one performance of the play concerned:
"Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, you sockodologizing old man trap!" ?Β
Apparently Booth deliberately waited for that line as it got the biggest laugh in the show. If that was really the funniest line in the play one suspects that Lincoln was grateful for the bullet.
Hmm. I was also toying with the old chestnut "Is there a doctor in the house?"
OK> Let's stick with the theatre, then. What form of facial adornment was popularised by the play being given that night?
This would be "Dundrearies" popularised by the English action, Edward Sothern, who expanded the comparatively minor role of Lord Dundreary in Tom Taylor's "Our American Cousin" into a central comic role due to a lot of business and a chronic lisp (which may be why audiences found the play funny despite the script). He had a large, flowing moustache coupled with bushy sideburns which became known as "Dundrearies" although the Civil War general, Ambrose Burnside, had already popularised, and, after a fashion, given his name to "sideburns".
I don't know if Sothern was in the cast at the Ford's Theatre on Good Friday 1865 but he had created the role in London four years earlier.
Dundreary Weepers is what I was thinking of - away you go (pushed for time - off Samba banding right now!)
Sorry for not getting the full name right. Good luck with your samba band!
What connects George Canning, Edgar Allan Poe and John Major?
Maybe you shouldn't put your son on the stage either, Mrs Worthington!
... at least Canning's and Poe's mothers were on the "legit" stage, not like Major's mother (and father) who were on the Music Halls.
Neither Canning's nor Poe's mothers were regarded as "legit" at the time as a stage career, especially by a woman, was still regarded as rather disreputable. John Major's mother was Gwen Coats, a perfectly respectable dancer. I think you're confusing her with Tom Major's first wife, Kitty Grant (who changed her surname to Drum, hence Drum & Major).
However you're right, all three of them had mothers who performed professionally on stage at one time or another. Your go, U-L.
Staying in the field of entertainment, can you link a polygon, the sum of whose angles is 540 degrees, to a pioneering polychromatic TV series, via a polyrhythmic oeuvre?
You may find it necessary to make a stellar addition to the first.
This is a wild, wild guess.
Pentagon (Arlington)
to
West Wing ( White House, Washington)
via
Route 66
across
Potomac River
via
Roosevelt Bridge.
I think this is a TV trivia question rather than a historical one but I remember seeing a Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ series in the late 60s and early '70s, which was alas all too brief and did not receive the recognition it deserved, starring Liza Goddard, Susan Jameson and the excellent Angela Down about three young women beginning their professional lives in London called "Take Three Girls" which I gather was the first drama series shown in the UK in colour (we didn't have a colour set until rather later and the first programme I remember watching in colour was an edition of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" in a snow-bound hall of residence of Manchester University at the beginning of 1970 whilst on a sixth-form English course).
The very catchy theme music was provided by a folk-pop group of the kind very popular at the time called Pentangle - the five-pointed star whose angles add up, so I am reliably informed to 540o. Feel free to add another question as I am going out shortly.
That makes far better sense than my wild attempt - "stellar addition" - of course - star shape.
Oh well - it was worth a try.
Don't worry, T. I know the feeling!
For TV nostalgia fans, thanks to the miracle of YouTube, here are the opening credits of the first series of "Take Three Girls" in 1969 (in colour!). (Pentangle altered the lyrics of their song "Light Flight", which is all about getting away from the city not going to it, in order to fit the subject matter of the programme):
... a pioneering polychromatic TV series... Β
I thought this was possibly one of U-G's cunning ploys - referring to a programme *made* in colour but which actually pioneered something else.
"The West Wing" pioneered (sort of) the Walk and Talk shooting technique.
Well that's my excuse anyway.
Since U-L appears to have taken Sunday off and I decided to come back early from my outing because of the miserable weather I shall immodestly set another question - in threes given the last question, hopefully a trifle easier for some.
What was the common nationality of "a dangerous force", "a squalid nuisance" and someone "who could always be guaranteed to sound the wrong note" and what was the common occupation (past, present or future) of those giving those descriptions?
The only one I think I recognise was said by a one-time British PM about a Welsh politician.
Re my absence - sorry, family problems. Yes, a pentangle is also known as a "star pentagon", "Light Flight" (in a mix of 5/4, 6/8 and 7/8 times, hence the "polyrhythmic") was by Pentangle, and was modified as the sig for "Take Three Girls" which was the first Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ drama made in colour.
Take a look at
Jansch, McShee, Thompson, Renbourn, Cox - inimitable!
Thanks for the update, U-L. I hope everything's been resolved satisfactorily. You're quite right - all terms used by PMs (though not necessarily so at the time) tio describe famous Welsh politicians. In order: Baldwin about Lloyd George, Churchill about Aneurin Bevan and Mrs T about Neil Kinnock (in her memoirs).
Over to you again, U-L.
This is getting a bit two-way family favourites - anyone else care to pose us a poser (or even a poseur)?
Well yes, I have felt like a total moron for 48 hours. I believe Allan D has said he finds the periodic table difficult, so now it's payback time.
In the Bronze Age two separate elements could be alloyed individually with copper to produce bronze; which were they?
An oxide of what element is the basic ingredient, the former that is, of ancient glass?
A substitution of one alkali metal for another was the result of the production of 'forest glass' in Medieval Europe? Which were the two elements concerned.
In the post-Medieval period what second metal was important in the extraction of gold from its ores?
Steel and cast iron are basically alloys of iron and what other element?
Another non-metallic element seems to have made early wrought iron harder and capable of taking a better edge, but have ruined early attempts to make steel by the Bessemer process: which was it?
TP
Sorry; my mistake gold doesn't have ores in the usual sense being so non-reactive. I meant gold from the spoil in gold bearing rocks.
TP
Can I have a stab at some of these TP?
Bronze - copper with tin or arsenic?
I'm a bit confused by your second question - what do you mean by 'the former'?
The alkali metals - sodium and potassium?
Gold extraction - mercury?
After that, I'm pretty stumped.
Well, to expand on ferval's answer, ancient bronze frequently contained , as well as the copper, antimony, arsenic, gold, silver, tin, lead and zinc in varying proportions. Of these, arsenical and tin bronzes are regarded as the earliest forms.
Glass - fundamentally silica (silicon dioxide), Roman and Mediterranean glasses being fluxed with sodium and calcium, forest glass uses wood ash, thus potassium instead of sodium.
Phosphorus was a problem with the acid Bessemer, but the introduction of dolomitic linings in the basic Bessemer converter solved that.
Steel is fundamentally iron and carbon - cast iron is higher in carbon than steel, whilst wrought iron is lower, indeed, some early very mild steel rails were long thought to be wrought iron.
Hi ferval
Excellent. All your stabs are correct. But there are three unanswered parts:
Glass is made from three components: a former, a flux to reduce the temperature at which the former melts, and stabilisers (usually lime or magnesia) to reduce the glass solubility in water. The 'former' is the mineral that forms the basic substance of the glass - and this is what I want.
Have you ever asked yourself what is the basic difference between wrought iron, steel and cast iron? Remembering of course that diamonds are a girl's best friend.
TP
Hi Ur-Lugal
Very impressive as usual!
Arsenic and tin alloyed with copper make bronze as you say. Zinc and copper make brass (Roman and later) and copper, tin and zinc alloys are 'gunmetals'. A small percentage of lead added to any of these alloys improves casting and machining properties. Because of the number of metals that can be found together archaeologists tend to use the term 'copper alloy' as a blanket description.
Ancient glass is basically silica as you say; other oxides will form glasses but not at the temperatures available in the ancient world. All Iron Age and Roman glass was probably made in the eastern Mediterranean using sodium containing minerals or plants as fluxes. Medieval 'forest glass' used potassium from wood ash as a flux, as you say, for the windows of Gothic cathedrals. It is not as stable as Roman glass.
I need say no more about iron and steel except that the presence of phosphorus, although interfering with the steel produced by the acid Bessemer process, actually improved the qualities of early wrought irons.
That's quite enough from me.
TP
A seaside resort once had a tower, based on the Eiffel Tower - and the highest building in England when completed.
Where was it?
The obvious answer is Blackpool, but I have a feeling that it is not as simple as that.
TP
The obvious answer is Blackpool, but I have a feeling that it is not as simple as that.
°Υ±ΚΜύ
I suggest re-reading the question - because it certainly isn't quite that easy!
You mean we are searching for a seaside resort with a very high point on which there was built a little tower? Ah! Not Southend then. And I still don't know. Must be the lateness of the hour. Or possibly I drank too often from a pewter alloy with much lead in it as a child.
Regards, P.
I believe we're in New Brighton here with the Merseyside version.
Indeed we are!
Away you go!
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