Q 01/05

Atari's 1983 landfill burial at Alamogordo, New Mexico, was long rumoured to hold millions of copies of which game?

A) Pong

B) E.T.

C) Frogger

D) Q*bert

Answer · why

B) E.T.

E.T. cartridges did surface when the site was dug up in 2014, but as part of about 700,000 games of many titles, not the rumoured millions.

Q 02/05

In 2013 James Howells threw away a hard drive, now deep in a Newport landfill, that unlocks 8,000 units of what?

A) Ethereum

B) Dogecoin

C) Bitcoin

D) Litecoin

Answer · why

C) Bitcoin

Bitcoin worth a fortune is locked on the drive, but Newport's council has refused to let him dig, citing landfill gases and pollution risks.

Q 03/05

The Corona Ash Dumps in Queens, later cleared to make Flushing Meadows park, appear as a valley of ashes in which novel?

A) The Great Gatsby

B) The Catcher in the Rye

C) Invisible Man

D) The Age of Innocence

Answer · why

A) The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby made the dump famous in 1925; it was later levelled and rebuilt as the grounds of the 1939 New York World's Fair.

Q 04/05

In which Pixar film are Woody and Buzz hauled by garbage truck to a waste plant and tipped towards its incinerator?

A) Toy Story

B) Toy Story 2

C) Toy Story 3

D) Toy Story 4

Answer · why

C) Toy Story 3

Toy Story 3 sends the gang down a conveyor belt at the tip, and they are saved at the last moment when the Aliens lift them out with an industrial cra...

Q 05/05

Monte Testaccio, a hill built from some 53 million discarded olive oil jars, is an ancient rubbish heap in which city?

A) Athens

B) Naples

C) Carthage

D) Rome

Answer · why

D) Rome

Rome was then the world's largest city, with at least a million people, and the mountain of broken jars shows how much olive oil it got through.