Question: The rights to which book, begun in 1768 by William Smellie and completed in 1771 and continually revised, were bought by Sears, Roebuck of Chicago, Illinois, USA in 1920?
Answer: Encyclopaedia Brittanica

Question: For what sport is the Cresta Run, built in Switzerland in 1884, used?
Answer: Sled racing

Question: The two carotid arteries in mammals carry blood to where?
Answer: Brain, head and neck

Question: Who composed the music for the 1979 musical "Sweeney Todd"?
Answer: Stephen Sondheim

Question: What is the first sentence of the book "Nineteen Eighty Four" by George Orwell?
Answer: It was a bright, cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen

Question: A punnet is used as what in relationship to strawberries and other soft fruit?
Answer: Container

Question: Which famous Ramone was never one of "The Ramones"?
Answer: Phil

Question: Which American novelist, poet and painter, a major figure of the Beat Generation who affected popular culture as well as literature, shot his wife in Mexico in 1951?
Answer: William Burroughs

Question: The agreements reached in the 2015 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change were of particular interest to a number of island nations among them Tuvalu whose average height above sea level is what?
Answer: Less than 2 metres

Question: One of the children in the 19th century family at the centre of the famous murder trial dramatised in the UK TV show "The Suspicions of Mr Whicher", William Saville-Kent, became a naturalist whose seminal work shaped Australian practice in what area ?
Answer: Fisheries

Question: Robert Drewe's book "Our Sunshine" was made into what film in 2003?
Answer: Ned Kelly

Question: What nationality were the first European settlers in Brooklyn, New York City?
Answer: Dutch

Question: If someone takes a person for a ride what could they be said to do?
Answer: Deceive them

Question: Where are the sites of the elaborately planned and sophisticated 4th and 3rd millennia BCE urban settlements of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro?
Answer: Indus Valley, Pakistan

Question: Who formed the band called "The Tin Machine", that ran from 1988 to 1992, primarily to play for the "Glass Spider" world tour?
Answer: David Bowie

Question: Which city, sometimes known as the City of Drizzle and having the motto "I am not led, I lead", is the capital of Brazil's most populous and wealthiest state?
Answer: So Paulo

Question: The melody of the song "Happy Birthday to You" dates from when?
Answer: 1893

Question: """Imagination encircles the world"" is an example of what figure of speech?"
Answer: Metaphor

Question: From where did the guillotine get its name?
Answer: Deputy to the Estates-General who proposed beheading as the death penalty in the French Revolution

Question: What was the main element in the UK television series "Last Tango in Halifax"?
Answer: The romance and marriage of two widowed septuagenarians

Question: How did Rio de Janeiro get its name?
Answer: The bay where the town was later built was discovered by Portuguese on 1 January.

Question: The anxiety treatment drug Diazepam was originally marketed under what name?
Answer: Valium

Question: A famous Icelandic freshwater diving site, the Silfra (Silver) Fissure, is known for the extreme clarity of its water and for which other of these?
Answer: It is a crack between the Eurasian and North American continental plates

Question: Who was the last British monarch to die in battle?
Answer: Richard III

Question: Where are the Sugarloaf Mountain, the Morro da Babilnia, the Morro da Urca, and Mount Corcovado (with its famous giant religious statue)?
Answer: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Question: Doves Type created in the late 19th century by, and exclusively for, Doves Press based on a 1470s typeface and used to print special works, now highly prized, was resurrected in 2015 after 100 years by Robert Green; why was it not used in the meantime?
Answer: The man who commissioned the type threw the matrices into the River Thames

Question: Which fictional character in the land of Oz, created by L. Frank Baum, is sometimes named "Locasta" or "Tattypoo"?
Answer: The Good Witch of the North

Question: Who, having been a Lieutenant General with three stars on his epaulettes, was posthumously appointed "General of the Armies of the United States" by a congressional joint resolution in 1976, with an effective appointment date of 4 July 1976?
Answer: George Washington

Question: Where are the almost the only mountainous areas near the African coast of the Red Sea?
Answer: Ethiopia

Question: When British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton led an expedition 1914-17, in the course of which his men spent time on Elephant Island, what was the aim of the expedition?
Answer: To cross Antarctica from sea to sea via the South Pole

Question: Which African American athlete's career included causing particular annoyance to Adolf Hitler?
Answer: Jesse Owens

Question: """It was a dark and stormy night"", the ""standard"" for hackneyed writing, was the opening line of a novel by whom?"
Answer: Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Question: What fictitious national park was the setting for the 1960s TV series "Skippy the Bush Kangaroo"?
Answer: Waratah

Question: In Japanese cuisine, what are "udons"?
Answer: Thick noodles

Question: Of these which is North Korea's nearest neighbour?
Answer: People's Republic of China

Question: An easel is most likely to be used by ...?
Answer: A watercolourist

Question: Who was the leader of the band playing at the Palomar Ballroom, Los Angeles, in August 1935, when the "Jitterbug" became a new dance craze?
Answer: Benny Goodman

Question: In what year did clubs in the first division of the English Football League, founded in 1888, break away and found the Premier League?
Answer: 1992

Question: In which country is the Nubian Desert?
Answer: Sudan

Question: """The Count of Monte Cristo"" was originally written in which language?"
Answer: French

Question: In the course of what did the captain of the Australian cricket team Michael Clarke resign in 2015?
Answer: The Ashes

Question: What is Dr Joseph-Ignace Guillotin best known for?
Answer: Proposing beheading as the humane death penalty in the French Revolution

Question: The mountainous country which begins as the Cordillera de Guanacaste rising in the north of Costa Rica, continuing into the Cordillera de Talamanca, peters out where?
Answer: West of the Panama Canal

Question: What does term "monorchid" describe?
Answer: Having only a single testicle in the scrotum

Question: Which UK television series was, unusually, adapted from a US series of the same name?
Answer: Law & Order

Question: What role did John Flamsteed (1646 1719) fill in Great Britain?
Answer: Astronomer Royal

Question: Who, with more than 70 million records sold worldwide during a career in seven decades, is the most successful British female solo recording artist according to the Guinness Book of World Records?
Answer: Petula Clark

Question: Calicivirus, which was introduced illegally into New Zealand in 1997 to kill the exploding rabbit population, also has a form which seriously infects what other animal?
Answer: Cats

Question: Which of Ludwig van Beethoven's symphonies starts with two tempestuous statements, when interpreted by the Morse code, of the letter "V"?
Answer: 5th

Question: Which is People's Republic of China's southernmost province?
Answer: Hainan

Question: Kurt Wiese (1887 - 1974) was born in Germany, lived in China, was a prisoner of war in Japan and Australia, moved to Brazil after the end of WW I, then the USA in 1927, and is well-known as what?
Answer: Illustrator and writer of children's books

Question: When General Francisco Franco, Leader of Spain, died in 1975 what became of the government in Spain?
Answer: Juan Carlos was crowned king

Question: Complete the title of this James Bond film: "Diamonds Are ... "?
Answer: Forever