Question: What two-word term that first appeared in the play The Conquest of Granada (1672) later became associated with a sentimental 18th century notion that a human being in a natural state (away from civilization) is essentially 'good'?
Answer: 'Noble Savage'

Question: In 2008, Islamabad International Airport was renamed as a tribute to which person who passed away in 2007?
Answer: Benazir Bhutto

Question: When dissident Liu Xiaobo won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, a Chinese businessman proposed the creation of an equivalent prize to 'promote world peace from an Eastern perspective.' In whose name was the prize created? (hint: not Buddha)
Answer: Confucius

Question: In a 2005 vote, Father Damien, Jacques Brel, Mercator and Peter Paul Rubens all finished in the top-10 list of the greatest people of what country?
Answer: Belgium

Question: Ahmed Yassin who was killed by an Israeli helicopter gunship in 2004 is best known as the founder of what organization?
Answer: Hamas

Question: Kryptos is a 1990 sculpture by American artist Jim Sanborn that is famous for its four encrypted messages, three of which have been solved. Where is it located?
Answer: Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley, Virginia

Question: The JIM suit, which is designed to maintain a pressure of one atmosphere regardless of external conditions is used by members of which profession?
Answer: Diving

Question: Dr. Conrad Murray whose trial started in September 2011 in the US was tried for giving a fatal dose of a sedative to which talented celebrity?
Answer: Michael Jackson

Question: Named for Polish-Lithuanian-American book dealer, what 15th century book whose script, language and illustrations continue to baffle experts has been called "the world's most mysterious manuscript"?
Answer: Voynich manuscript

Question: Joseph Rotblat, the only scientist to leave the Manhattan Project on moral grounds co-founded what Nobel Peace Prize winning organization that is named for a Canadian village?
Answer: Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs

Question: What was the Soviet government agency that administered the country's forced labor camps which were compared to 'a chain of islands' by a Nobel Prize winning author?
Answer: Gulag

Question: You've surely heard about the Stockholm syndrome. But what is the opposite of this condition where the hostage takers become more sympathetic to the hostages? It is named after a South American city where it was observed after the Japanese Embassy hostage crisis in 1996.
Answer: Lima syndrome

Question: What comic book character who is particularly appealing to teens was created by its producer who hoped to attract fans of the Andy Hardy movies starring Mickey Rooney?
Answer: Archie

Question: Who is the 19th century French police officer who gave his name to a system of identification based on measurements of parts of the human frame that was soon adapted by police forces around the world?
Answer: Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914)

Question: In 19th century Britain, the poet Keats and the writer Charles Lamb chastised a painter for inserting this person into one of his paintings by claiming this person "... had destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow ..." Which person?
Answer: Isaac Newton

Question: Which tradition, whose first pick was Charles Lindbergh, began in 1927 with some magazine editors contemplating newsworthy stories during a slow week?
Answer: Time Person of the Year

Question: What building whose construction started in 1792 was once described by one of its residents as "... big enough for two emperors, one pope and the grand lama ..."?
Answer: White House

Question: The town of Prypiat in Ukraine that was abandoned in 1986 was built in 1970 to house whom?
Answer: Workers of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant

Question: What is the name of the photograph taken by Voyager 1 of the Earth against the vastness of space which lent itself to the title of a 1994 book by Carl Sagan?
Answer: Pale Blue Dot

Question: A lazaretto which can be an isolated island or a ship at anchor near a harbor is used for what purpose for maritime travelers?
Answer: Quarantine station

Question: In 2007, which celebrity started a charitable organization called SixDegrees.org?
Answer: Kevin Bacon

Question: What 'sunny' entertainment company got its first major boost in 1983 when the government of Quebec asked its founder to create a production celebrating Cartier's discovery of Canada?
Answer: Cirque du Soleil (Circus of the Sun)

Question: If the Iron Curtain and the Bamboo Curtain separated American interests from their antagonists in Europe and Asia respectively, the present-day Cactus Curtain separates an American military base and what else?
Answer: Cuba (from Guantanamo Bay Naval Base)

Question: Citizens of Switzerland are prohibited from serving in any foreign army with what notable exception? Think religion.
Answer: Vatican (the Swiss Guard)

Question: The German pedagogue Friedrich Fröbel who recognized that children have unique needs and capabilities introduced what concept of modern education?
Answer: Kindergarten

Question: In navigation, what is the process of estimating one's current position based upon a previously determined position and advancing it using estimated speed over elapsed time, and course?
Answer: Dead reckoning

Question: In December 2010, which country unveiled a new passport design with a picture of a nude Aphrodite on it that raised many eyebrows? (hint: where was Aphrodite born?)
Answer: Cyprus

Question: """Man is driven by continued, unachievable desires, and the gulf between our desires and the possibility of achieving them leads to misery while the world is a representation of an unknowable reality."" This is the gloomy essence of which German philosopher's work?"
Answer: Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

Question: Can you connect 'paper fragments' and 'an African country'?
Answer: Chad

Question: What is the common name of the computational problem whose task, when given a list of cities and the distances between them is to find the shortest possible tour that visits each city once?
Answer: Travelling salesman problem

Question: Which web application on Yahoo! that translates text between different languages is named after a fictional animal used for a similar purpose in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
Answer: Babel Fish

Question: """Truth is a pathless land. Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, nor through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique."" This statement made in 1929 is the core of which Indian philosopher's teaching?"
Answer: Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986)

Question: Which great philosopher corresponded with Queen Christina of Sweden in his final years and died in 1650 in Stockholm where he had been invited as a teacher for her?
Answer: René Descartes

Question: Biograph Theater in Chicago is notable as the site of the killing of which notorious personality in 1934?
Answer: John Dillinger

Question: What follows next? Servant of God, Venerable, Blessed, ___
Answer: Saint (these are the stages of Canonization in the Catholic Church)

Question: In 1821, who was inspired by the night writing invention of a former French Army captain that enabled soldiers to share top-secret information on the battlefield without having to speak?
Answer: Louis Braille

Question: Groote Schuur estate in South Africa was the site for the signing of a historic agreement between Nelson Mandela and F. W. de Klerk in 1990. The estate originally belonged to which tycoon?
Answer: Cecil Rhodes

Question: In 1872, which British ship was discovered intact in the Atlantic unmanned and apparently abandoned with the incident often being cited as the greatest maritime mystery of all time?
Answer: The Mary Celeste