Question: Which musical instrument named after its Russian inventor is unique in that it is designed to be played without being touched?
Answer: Theremin

Question: Which song written by the Hungarian pianist and composer Rezső Seress in 1933 was marketed as 'Hungarian suicide song' as it was mistakenly believed to have inspired hundreds of suicides?
Answer: """Gloomy Sunday"""

Question: What is the musical term for a playing technique that involves plucking the strings of an instrument?
Answer: Pizzicato

Question: Which famous Irish traditional song about a highwayman (usually in the Cork and Kerry mountains) was given a rock veneer by the rock band Thin Lizzy?
Answer: """Whiskey in the Jar"""

Question: Which Swedish pop group went through the names 'Kalinin Prospect', CAD (Computer-Aided Disco) and Tech-Noir before settling on their present name as nobody could remember their previous names?
Answer: Ace of Base

Question: Dit-dit-dit-dot. In his novel Howard's End, E. M. Forster refers to which Beethoven composition as "the most sublime noise that ever penetrated into the ear of man."?
Answer: The 5th Symphony

Question: Which 1982 song by the London punk rock group 'The Clash' is about Iran's outlawing of rock music, and also become the unofficial anthem for the Armed Forces during the Gulf War conflicts?
Answer: """Rock the Casbah"""

Question: Can you connect the singer Bobby McFerrin with the mystic Meher Baba?
Answer: """Don't Worry, Be Happy"""

Question: Which collection of orchestral movements were composed by George Frideric Handel in 1717 at the request of King George I? These are also his best known work.
Answer: """Water Music"""

Question: Which controversial 1992 song by the punk band Body Count was co-written by the group's vocalist Ice-T and provoked a national debate about freedom of speech in the US?
Answer: """Cop Killer"""

Question: The first album by the rock group Pink Floyd The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967) was named after a chapter in which children's classic?
Answer: The Wind in the Willows

Question: According to Opera America, what 'flutters' to the no.1 spot in the list of the 20 most-performed operas in North America?
Answer: Madama Butterfly

Question: Name the only two non-US/UK bands to achieve a #1 hit in both the UK and the US?
Answer: Men at Work for "Down Under" (1982) and ABBA for "Dancing Queen" (1976)

Question: By his own request, which Austrian composer was buried next to Beethoven in 1828?
Answer: Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

Question: What musical work, the only one in that genre by an all-time great, tells the story of Leonore rescuing her husband Florestan from death in a prison?
Answer: The opera Fidelio by Beethoven

Question: Which rock group's name comes from the UK Social Security form for unemployment benefit?
Answer: UB40 (UB40 = Unemployment Benefit, Form 40)

Question: Which iconic opera stereotype plays in the background as helicopters swoop in to annihilate a village in one of the opening scenes of the movie Apocalypse Now?
Answer: """Ride of the Valkyries"""

Question: The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time was a special issue of Rolling Stone published in 2003 which had Jimi Hendrix at no.1. Which American Southern Rock band was the most represented with 4 of its guitarists making the list?
Answer: Allman Brothers Band

Question: Presidency of the United States is important. In Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start The Fire", who are the only two people mentioned twice?
Answer: john f. kennedy and richard nixon

Question: Which set of 30 keyboard techniques were written by Johann Sebastian Bach to reportedly cure insomnia?
Answer: """The Goldberg Variations"" published in 1741"

Question: In the movie The Bridge on the River Kwai what was the tune whistled by Colonel Nicholson and his men?
Answer: """Colonel Bogie's March"""

Question: What song was written and performed by Billy Joel to underscore the plight of fishermen on Long Island?
Answer: """The Downeaster Alexa"""

Question: Which punk band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006 but refused to attend the induction calling the museum a "piss stain"? Maybe they did not find any 'filthy lucre' there!
Answer: Sex Pistols

Question: A famous remark often attributed to Brian Eno is that while only a few thousand people bought a record of this band, almost every single one of the purchasers was inspired to start their own band. Which influential rock band was Eno referring to?
Answer: Velvet Underground

Question: What is particularly common to the topics of photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, and mass–energy equivalence? Just saying Einstein won't do!
Answer: These are the subjects of the four papers that he published in 1905 that are called the Annus Mirabilis papers.

Question: The Russian scientist Vasili Samarsky-Bykhovets has what pioneering connection with the periodic table of elements?
Answer: First person whose name was given to a chemical element.

Question: The rediscovery of what genus of the coniferous tree in Australia in 1994 by David Noble was a celebrated event of 20th century botany?
Answer: Wollemia

Question: In a study published in the journal Science in 2009, it was determined through DNA analysis that what race was the world's most ancient? Think of the most common theory of man's origin and go from there.
Answer: San/ Bushmen

Question: When Nixon was president, Sample 70017 was cut into fragments and distributed to all U.S. states and 135 countries around the globe as a goodwill gesture. What is it?
Answer: Moon rock

Question: 1. The A is the outermost of the large, bright ones. 2. The B is the largest, brightest, and most massive. 3. The C is wide but faint and located inward of the B. 4. The D is the innermost and is also very faint. 5. The E is the second outermost and is extremely wide. 6. The F is the outermost discrete one and very active. 7. The G is very thin and faint and is halfway between the F and the E. What are we talking about?
Answer: Rings of Saturn

Question: In mathematics, what object commonly seen in video games with secret getaways is used to describe a function that is easy to compute in one direction but very hard to compute the opposite way?
Answer: Trapdoor function

Question: Anna Bertha who exclaimed "I have seen my death!" after seeing her photograph taken by her husband in 1895 was married to whom?
Answer: Wilhelm Röntgen

Question: In a Oct, 2014 interview to The Guardian, Prof. Peter Piot said the following. What's the missing word? "In 1976 I discovered ... - now I fear an unimaginable tragedy."
Answer: Ebola

Question: What striking wildlife form mostly endemic to a large island gets its name from specimens prepared by traders without wings and feet lending to a belief that they are creatures that originated in an other-worldly place?
Answer: Bird-of-paradise

Question: Maria, the heroine of the 1941 novel Storm by George Rippey Stewart, was the first of sorts in what practice streamlined from 1953 on?
Answer: Naming hurricanes after people

Question: The Bortle scale on which areas away from human habitation unsurprisingly receive high ratings and which is of particular interest to amateur astronomers is concerned with what property?
Answer: Darkness of the night sky

Question: In a letter written in 1924, who wrote "You will be interested to hear that I have found a Cepheid variable in the Andromeda Nebula" and transformed our view of the universe forever?
Answer: Edwin Hubble

Question: In 2007, Lisa Nowak drove 900 miles to attack another lady in a fit of lovers jealousy. It was initially reported that she wore a Maximum Absorbency Garment to avoid restroom stops. What was Lisa Nowak's professional role that made the story newsworthy?
Answer: She was an astronaut