Q 01/05

Howard Hughes's flying boat, mocked as the Spruce Goose, was built almost entirely of which wood?

A) Spruce

B) Pine

C) Birch

D) Fir

Answer · why

C) Birch

Birch was chosen because wartime rules kept aluminum for other aircraft, so Hughes had the wood moulded into shape instead. The giant plane made only ...

Q 02/05

Which type of saw descends from a device Scottish doctors devised in the 1780s to ease childbirth?

A) Chainsaw

B) Circular saw

C) Band saw

D) Jigsaw

Answer · why

A) Chainsaw

Chainsaw ancestors were fine serrated chains drawn back and forth between two wooden handles to cut through bone. One was pictured in a 1785 textbook ...

Q 03/05

Thor Heyerdahl crossed the Pacific in 1947 on Kon-Tiki, a raft of nine trunks of which light wood?

A) Bamboo

B) Balsa

C) Cypress

D) Redwood

Answer · why

B) Balsa

Balsa is the Spanish word for raft, and the tree's wood is the softest ever measured on the standard hardness test. Botanists class it as a hardwood a...

Q 04/05

Which US president's false teeth, long said to be wooden, were really made of ivory, brass and gold?

A) Theodore Roosevelt

B) Thomas Jefferson

C) Andrew Jackson

D) George Washington

Answer · why

D) George Washington

George Washington had a single natural tooth left on the day he was first sworn in. He owned at least four sets of dentures, and none of them containe...

Q 05/05

Which popular ice cream flavour can be made artificially from the waste liquor of wood pulp mills?

A) Caramel

B) Vanilla

C) Almond

D) Coconut

Answer · why

B) Vanilla

Vanilla flavouring made from paper-mill waste took over the market in the 1930s. By 1981 a single mill in Ontario supplied 60 percent of the world's s...