Today's #quizzytime: Beneath the snow on the North and South poles you may find thousands of thin copper needles. Where have they come from?
Quiz ends at 2 PM. Google if you like.
Ans: During the cold war USA launched half a billion whisker-thin copper wires into orbit in an attempt to install a ring around the Earth. It was called Project West Ford & it was to protect USA's long-range communications from the Russians by moving it from undersea to space.
Because the copper wires were so light, project leaders assumed that they would re-enter the atmosphere within several years, pushed Earthward by solar wind. Most of the needles likely met this fate. Many now lie beneath snow at the poles.
The needles were embedded in a naphthalene gel designed to evaporate quickly once it reached the vacuum of space. But this design allowed metal-on-metal contact, which, in a vacuum, can weld fragments into larger clumps. These clumps are still in orbit. wired.com/2013/08/projec…
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Today's #quizzytime: Which of these dry fruits could be considered 'non-veg' and why?
Ans: Figs. While figs are treated as a fruit, they are actually inverted flowers, and their pollination process is actually quite a tragic story for fig wasps. A female wasp crawls inside the fig, but the opening is so small, it destroys her wings.
She lays her eggs before she dies, as she is unable to get back out and fly away. The eggs hatch, and the wingless males help the winged females to escape by creating tunnels after they have mated with them. After the wasps die, they are digested by the fig plant’s enzymes,
Today's #quizzytime: Which Indian cuisine came about due to the combination of child marriage and then the oppression the widows faced when their husbands died?
Quiz ends at 2 PM. Google if you like.
Ans: Child marriage in Bengal lead to early widowhood. The strict rules and regulations of Bengali culture did not allow these widows to consume onion, garlic or any sort of non-vegetarian food. Even masoor dal was prohibited. Within these limitations Bengali veg cuisine emerged.
The concept of utilizing everything, from stems to shoots and roots was a result of this situation. The widows creatively used leftover peels of vegetables for making dishes that Bengalis love to devour today. These include alur khosha bhaja
Today's #quizzytime: Which dictator hated intellectuals so much he killed everyone wearing glasses, hacked journalists apart and fed them to sharks, banned medicine and used witch doctors and finally destroyed boats, the railways, and mined roads to stop people from fleeing?
It's not Pol Pot
Ans: Francisco Macias Nguema was born into a poor peasant family in the then-Spanish colony of Equatorial Guinea, the son of a witch doctor from neighboring Gabon. When Equatorial Guinea gained independence in 1968, he was elected president.
Today's #quizzytime: Admiral Hopper who won the the Data Processing Management Association Computer Sciences Man of the Year Award also coined a term commonly used by programmers today. What was it?
Quiz ends at 2 PM. Google if you like.
Ans: Debug. A mathematics genius and computer pioneer, Grace Hopper created computer programming technology that forever changed the flow of information and paved the way for modern data processing. In 1943, wanting to aid her country during World War II, Hopper joined the
United States Navy. She was soon assigned to the Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project at Harvard University, where she began her legacy of groundbreaking computer programming with the Mark I, a precursor to electronic computers.
Today's #quizzytime: Which Bengali gentleman was probably the person to popularize erotic entertainment for women worldover?
Quiz ends at 2 PM. Google if you like.
Ans: One of the best known American brand name was created by Desi boy Somen 'Steve' Banerjee. Having left India possibly in the late 1960s, Banerjee arrived in the USA via Canada, ultimately settling in Playa Del Rey, California, near Los Angeles.
His early business ventures were a Mobil gas station and a failed backgammon club. But his luck turned in 1975, when he bought Destiny II for a song. In 1979 he renamed it ‘Chippendales’, and launched a ‘Male Exotic Dance Night for Ladies Only’ the first such spectacle in the USA
Today's #quizzytime: If you were in a train that plunged into a river, hit by a bus, blown out of an airplane, your car erupted into flames while driving – twice, and once plunged 300 feet off a cliff...and then you won a massive lottery...who would you be?
Ans: Born in Croatia, Frane Selak has often been labeled the world’s luckiest unlucky man. In 1962, Frane Selak kicked off his decades of ducking death when a train in which he was riding skidded off the rails, and plunged down a canyon into an icy river. 17 passengers drowned,
But Selak got away with a broken arm and hypothermia from immersion in the cold water. In 1963, on his first and only plane ride, Selak was blown out of malfunctioning door, but again managed to escape death: he landed on a haystack. The plane crashed, killing nineteen people.