Q 01/05

Which physician inoculated his gardener's eight-year-old son with cowpox from a milkmaid's blisters to prevent smallpox?

A) Edward Jenner

B) William Harvey

C) Joseph Lister

D) John Snow

Answer · why

A) Edward Jenner

Edward Jenner took the cowpox from milkmaid Sarah Nelmes, who caught it from a cow called Blossom, whose hide now hangs in a London medical school lib...

Q 02/05

Which novel, begun by an 18-year-old during the 'Year Without a Summer' of 1816, is subtitled The Modern Prometheus?

A) The Castle of Otranto

B) Frankenstein

C) The Monk

D) Northanger Abbey

Answer · why

B) Frankenstein

Frankenstein came out of Lord Byron's ghost-story contest at Villa Diodati, the same wet week that produced The Vampyre, a precursor of Dracula.

Q 03/05

Whose skull does Hamlet hold in the graveyard, the court jester who once carried the young prince on his back?

A) Osric

B) Polonius

C) Yorick

D) Laertes

Answer · why

C) Yorick

Yorick's skull has been a real one: pianist André Tchaikowsky left his to the Royal Shakespeare Company, and David Tennant held it as Hamlet in 2008.

Q 04/05

Which 1948 US programme sent $13 billion to rebuild 17 European countries, an offer the Soviet Union refused?

A) Marshall Plan

B) Truman Doctrine

C) Lend-Lease

D) Dawes Plan

Answer · why

A) Marshall Plan

The Marshall Plan was officially the European Recovery Program, and its $13.3 billion works out at about $137 billion in today's money.

Q 05/05

Which particle, identified by Chadwick at Cambridge in 1932, opened the way to nuclear fission six years later?

A) Proton

B) Positron

C) Muon

D) Neutron

Answer · why

D) Neutron

The neutron's discovery earned Chadwick the 1935 Nobel Prize, and he went on to head the British team on the Manhattan Project.