Q 01/05

What did Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut, report about seeing the Great Wall of China from orbit?

A) He saw it clearly

B) He saw only its shadow

C) He could not see it

D) He photographed it twice

Answer · why

C) He could not see it

He could not see it, and NASA agrees: the wall is barely visible from low orbit even in perfect conditions and no more conspicuous than many other man...

Q 02/05

Napoleon stood roughly 1.67 metres; how did that compare with Frenchmen of his era, despite the cartoons?

A) About average

B) Well below average

C) Well above average

D) Far below average

Answer · why

A) About average

About average is right: his recorded 5 feet 2 was in old French units, nearer 5 feet 6 or 7 in English ones, and British cartoonist James Gillray's ti...

Q 03/05

Bulls cannot pick out red as a bright colour, so what actually draws the charge in a bullfight?

A) The cape's movement

B) The crowd's roar

C) The trumpets' fanfare

D) The scent of blood

Answer · why

A) The cape's movement

The cape's movement is the trigger: when MythBusters stood a motionless man in red in the ring in 2007, the bull ignored him and went after the cowboy...

Q 04/05

Goldfish, said to forget everything within seconds, actually have a memory span of at least how long?

A) A few minutes

B) About a day

C) About a week

D) Three months

Answer · why

D) Three months

Three months is the floor for a goldfish's memory, and they can tell shapes, colours and sounds apart; on MythBusters, trained fish still ran an under...

Q 05/05

Albert Einstein, far from failing maths, taught himself algebra and which subject at age twelve?

A) Calculus

B) Statistics

C) Probability

D) Number theory

Answer · why

A) Calculus

Calculus was mastered 'before I was fifteen', as Einstein put it in 1935 when shown a Ripley's column claiming he had failed maths; he had found his o...