Friday, January 05, 2007

Answers to our last Quiz

These things also happened in 2006:

1) George Galloway, MP surprised supporters by announcing he would be taking part in the "reality TV" Big Brother programme, to raise money for charity, and it would be the last vote he faced. He was voted out of the Big Brother House a few weeks later.

2) Labour's Culture Minister Tessa Jowell announced in March that she was separating from lawyer husband David Mills, following reports that the couple took out a £408,000 mortgage on their home in September 2000 then repaid it a month later. Mills faced trial alongside former Italian prime minister Sylvio Berlusconi, on charges involving tax evasion and money laundering.

3) St.Pancras Coroner's Court said news cameraman James Miller had been murdered by the Israeli army.

4) Labour lost 200 seats in local council elections on May 4, and came third in vote totals.

5) Arsenal played its last game at the old Highbury stadium on May 7.

6) Leaflets advertising Brent TUC's commemoration of the Grunwick strike were banned from the borough's public libraries as too "political".

7) MPs have written to the Public Service Pay Review Board saying they need a 66 per cent pay increase to come in line with senior civil servants.

8) The government proposed in the Queen's Speech in November that the age at which people become eligible for the state pension should be raised to 68 by 2046.

9) Prime Minister Tony Blair

10) The investigation into corruption surrounding the al-Yamama arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

Anniversaries

1) The 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin.

2) The 1926 British General Strike.

3) The flight was to pick up General Franco so that he could call up the military revolt which began the Spanish Civil War.

4) The blowing up of the King David Hotel, in Jerusalem, then housing British military and police headquarters, on July 22, 1946. More than 90 people were killed, and 45 injured.

5) The 1956 Hungarian Uprising. Peter Fryer's despatches were censored or suppressed by the Daily Worker, and he was expelled from the Communist Party for publishing them outside. Shortly before his death, nearing the 50th anniversary, Peter heard that Hungary was awarding him the Knights Cross of the Order of Merit in recognition of his "continuous support of the Hungarian revolution and freedom fight".

6) The Anglo-French assault on Egypt in 1956, in response to the nationalisation of the Suez Canal and in collusion with Israel.

7) The seafarers' strike

8) In Lebanon. The Palestinians there were besieged in 1976 by right-wing Christians and Syrian forces.

9) The Battle of Cable Street, October 4, 1936, when the police were unable to clear a path for Sir Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts. .

10) Pickles was a mongrel dog who while out for a walk with his owner in south London on March 27, 1966, found the football World Cup, stolen seven days earlier from Central Hall, Westminster.

Animal

1) Two Tamworth Ginger pigs who escaped from the slaughterhouse in Malmesbury, Wiltshire. Besides newspaper coverage, their week-long escapade inspired a film and so to speak, saved their bacon.

2) Holsteins and Friesians are breeds of dairy cattle, usually black and white, and hailing originally from roughly the same area in north-west Europe. Holsteins, common in the US, are taller than British Friesians.

3) Silkworms.

4) Master McGrath(1866-1871) and Mick the Miller(1926-39) were successful champion greyhounds, both born in Ireland. Mick the Miller was eventually stuffed and stood in a glass case at London's Natural History Museum, but later moved to the Walter Rothschild Natural History Museum in Tring, Herts.

5) A bottle-nosed whale strayed up the Thames and became stranded. It died on January 21, 2006, apparently from the stress of being trapped in London. We know the feeling.

Vegetable

1) 'King' Cotton.
2) Between Pontefract, Wakefield and Leeds. It used to produce 90 per cent of the world's rhubarb, in heated greenhouses. There's a rhubarb festival due next month.
3) Potatoes.
4) Flax, used for making linen, also provides linseed oil, used in paints, varnishes, and for treating cricket bats. Flaxseed oil, obtained cold and refrigerated, provides omega-3 fatty acids now favoured in human and animal foods, and said to be good for us.
5) Tulip bulbs. The Black Tulip, published 1850, was Dumas' last novel.

True Colours

1) William Brown.
2) Vicount Grey of Falloden was Foreign Secretary from 1905-16, but Earl Grey who have his name to the blend of tea with bergamot oil prime minister in the 1830s.
3) Red Nichols, and Red Adair.
4) Captain Jack White, b.Co.Antrim
5) Conrad Black, former owner of Telegraph newspapers.

By any other name

1) Rita Hayworth.
2) Lauren Bacall.
3) Peggy Lee.
4) Alicia Markova, ballerina.
5) Ninette de Valois ballerina and director, Sadler Wells.
6) Tony Curtis
7) Tommy Steele
8) Michael Caine.
9) Elke Brooks.
10) Jasper Carrot
11) George Eliot
12) Joseph Conrad
13) Sholem Aleichem
14) Robert Maxwell
15) Pele

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