Q 01/05

Which singer's name went to the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, a Scottish sheep born in 1996?

A) Loretta Lynn

B) Reba McEntire

C) Dolly Parton

D) Shania Twain

Answer · why

C) Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton got the honour because the clone grew from a mammary gland cell, as the Roslin Institute team cheerfully admitted. The lamb was born on 5...

Q 02/05

Bluetooth is named after a 10th-century king, whose runic initials make up the Bluetooth logo, of which country?

A) Denmark

B) Iceland

C) Sweden

D) Finland

Answer · why

A) Denmark

Denmark's King Harald Bluetooth united its squabbling tribes into one kingdom, so Intel's Jim Kardach proposed the name in 1997 to suggest uniting riv...

Q 03/05

Which item was eBay's first sale in 1995, going for $14.83 to a buyer who collected that kind of thing?

A) A cracked Pez dispenser

B) A scratched Beatles LP

C) A dented Zippo lighter

D) A broken laser pointer

Answer · why

D) A broken laser pointer

A broken laser pointer went to a bidder who told founder Pierre Omidyar 'I'm a collector of broken laser pointers', settling his worry that the buyer ...

Q 04/05

The world's first webcam, set up at the University of Cambridge in 1991, kept watch over what?

A) A lab door

B) A coffee pot

C) A car park

D) A fish tank

Answer · why

B) A coffee pot

A coffee pot in the Trojan Room was filmed so people elsewhere in the building would not trek over to find it empty; the pot later fetched £3,350 at a...

Q 05/05

Which two-word greeting was the first SMS, sent from a computer to a Vodafone phone in December 1992?

A) Happy Birthday

B) Hello World

C) Merry Christmas

D) Happy New Year

Answer · why

C) Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas was typed by Sema Group test engineer Neil Papworth on 3 December 1992 and received by Vodafone's Richard Jarvis on an Orbitel 901 han...