Q 01/05

In Peanuts, whose kites always end up in the Kite-Eating Tree?

A) Schroeder

B) Linus van Pelt

C) Charlie Brown

D) Peppermint Patty

Answer · why

C) Charlie Brown

Charlie Brown. In a 1977 storyline he finally took an angry bite out of the tree, then ran away from home when the Environmental Protection Agency cam...

Q 02/05

Fengzheng, the modern Chinese word for kite, is said to describe which feature of early kites?

A) Their bird-like shape

B) Their sound in the wind

C) Their long silk tails

D) Their bamboo frames

Answer · why

B) Their sound in the wind

Their sound in the wind. Fengzheng joins 'wind' with zheng, a zither: the word once named chimes hung under eaves, and is said to have passed to kites...

Q 03/05

Which traveller first brought stories of kites to Europe at the end of the 13th century?

A) Ibn Battuta

B) Vasco da Gama

C) Marco Polo

D) William of Rubruck

Answer · why

C) Marco Polo

Marco Polo. He described a custom of sending a man up on a kite before a ship sailed and reading its flight as an omen of whether the voyage would pro...

Q 04/05

The English word 'kite' comes from the name of what?

A) A hovering bird of prey

B) A Dutch sailing term

C) A Chinese character

D) A Norse word for wind

Answer · why

A) A hovering bird of prey

A hovering bird of prey. The toy took the bird's name in the 1660s because it hangs in the air the same way; the bird's own Old English name, cyta, pr...

Q 05/05

In 1752, Benjamin Franklin published a kite experiment to prove what?

A) That air has weight

B) That wind speed rises with altitude

C) That clouds carry water

D) That lightning is electricity

Answer · why

D) That lightning is electricity

That lightning is electricity. Contrary to legend, no bolt ever struck the kite, which would probably have killed him: it simply gathered charge from ...