Q 01/05

Swiss medical student Johannes Hofer coined which word in 1688 for the homesick misery of soldiers serving far away?

A) Melancholia

B) Hysteria

C) Nostalgia

D) Neurasthenia

Answer · why

C) Nostalgia

Nostalgia joins the Greek words for homecoming and pain, and doctors treated it as a real illness of Swiss mercenaries long before it came to mean a f...

Q 02/05

Which Victorian novelist was left nervous of train travel after surviving the Staplehurst rail crash of 1865?

A) Charles Dickens

B) Thomas Hardy

C) Wilkie Collins

D) Anthony Trollope

Answer · why

A) Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens lost his voice for two weeks after the derailment and avoided trains when he could. He later turned the experience into his ghost stor...

Q 03/05

Playing which classic puzzle video game soon after a car crash cut survivors' intrusive memories in one study?

A) Candy Crush

B) Minesweeper

C) Bejeweled

D) Tetris

Answer · why

D) Tetris

Tetris is thought to compete with the fresh memory for the brain's attention, which disrupts how vividly the traumatic images are stored.

Q 04/05

In which Marvel film does Tony Stark suffer panic attacks and nightmares after the alien invasion of New York?

A) Iron Man 2

B) Iron Man 3

C) Captain America: Civil War

D) Spider-Man: Homecoming

Answer · why

B) Iron Man 3

Iron Man 3 shows a superhero with hypervigilance, bad dreams and a fear of crowds. One psychologist judged that Stark met every diagnostic criterion f...

Q 05/05

Tommy Shelby, a First World War veteran with PTSD, leads a Birmingham gang in which BBC crime drama?

A) Ripper Street

B) Downton Abbey

C) Peaky Blinders

D) Boardwalk Empire

Answer · why

C) Peaky Blinders

Peaky Blinders makes Shelby's wartime trauma a thread that runs through the whole series: he served as a sergeant major and came home a changed man.