community-datasets/selqa huggingface dataset:
Article: Forbidden City
Section: Religion

Question: How many Taoist shrines were located in the Forbidden City?

Religion was an important part of life for the imperial court.
In the Qing dynasty, the Palace of Earthly Harmony became a place of Manchu Shamanist ceremony.
At the same time, the native Chinese Taoist religion continued to have an important role throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties.
There were two Taoist shrines, one in the imperial garden and another in the central area of the Inner Court.
Another prevalent form of religion in the Qing dynasty palace was Buddhism.
A number of temples and shrines were scattered throughout the Inner Court, including that of Tibetan Buddhism or Lamaism.
Buddhist iconography also proliferated in the interior decorations of many buildings.
Of these, the Pavilion of the Rain of Flowers is one of the most important.
It housed a large number of Buddhist statues, icons, and mandalas, placed in ritualistic arrangements.
Article: Cake
Section: History

Question: Where does the word "cake" come from?

The term "cake" has a long history.
The word itself is of Viking origin, from the Old Norse word "kaka".
Although clear examples of the difference between cake and bread are easy to find, the precise classification has always been elusive.
For example, banana bread may be properly considered either a quick bread or a cake.
The Greeks invented beer as a leavener, frying fritters in olive oil, and cheesecakes using goat's milk.
In ancient Rome, basic bread dough was sometimes enriched with butter, eggs, and honey, which produced a sweet and cake-like baked good.
Latin poet Ovid refers to the birthday of him and his brother with party and cake in his first book of exile, "Tristia".
Early cakes in England were also essentially bread: the most obvious differences between a "cake" and "bread" were the round, flat shape of the cakes, and the cooking method, which turned cakes over once while cooking, while bread was left upright throughout the baking process.
Sponge cakes, leavened with beaten eggs, originated during the Renaissance, possibly in Spain.
Article: Sien (Van Gogh series)
Section: Abstract

Question: What are the circumstances of Sien's death?

Sien (Van Gogh series)Vincent van Gogh drew and painted a series of works of his mistress Sien during their time together in the Netherlands.
In particular, his drawing "Sorrow" is widely acknowledged as a masterwork of draftsmanship, the culmination of a long and sometimes uncertain apprenticeship in learning his craft.
Commonly called Sien Hoornik, Clasina Maria Hoornik (1850 - 1904) lived with van Gogh during much of his time in The Hague from 1881 to 1883.
Van Gogh used Sien, a pregnant prostitute, as a model for his work and later took Sien and her daughter into his home.
Van Gogh made drawings and paintings of Sien and her daughter, baby and mother over that period, which reflected the domestic life and hardships of the working poor.
Their relationship was not accepted by his family or supporters, although his brother Theo did not withdraw his support over it.
It did contribute undoubtedly, however, to a split with Anton Mauve, a cousin-in-law and noted painter of the Hague School, who had introduced van Gogh to painting as well as supporting him financially, and whom van Gogh revered.
At his brother Theo's urging, van Gogh left Sien in 1883 to paint in Drenthe, putting an end to the only domestic relationship he was ever to have.
Sien resumed her life as a seamstress, cleaning woman and likely prostitute before marrying in 1901.
On 12 November 1904, aged 54, she threw herself into the Schelde river and drowned, fulfilling a prophecy she had made to van Gogh in 1883: "Yes, I'm a whore ... it’s bound to end up with me jumping into the water."
Article: Nordic combined
Section: Cross-country skiing equipment

Question: What body part of the competitor are ski poles often able to reach.

 Bindings
 Bindings secure only the toe of the boot to the ski.
 Boots
 The skating shoe is fixed to the ski with a binding, holding the toe firm.
The rear of the boot is built up to shore up the ankle, which is constantly under pressure in skating technique.
 Poles
 Long and straight, often reaching up as high as a competitor's nose, with a specially shaped basket designed to allow skiers to push hard and evacuate snow.
 Skis
 Narrower and lighter than those used in Alpine skiing.
They have long, curved ends and rise up slightly in the middle.
They can be up to 2 meters long.
 Suit
 Uses stretch fabric hugging the body, similar to a runner’s training clothing.
 Wax
 Glide wax is crucial, and determined by snow and weather conditions.
Article: Henri Matisse
Section: Early life and education

Question: Where was Matisse born?

Matisse was born in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, in the Nord department in northern France, the oldest son of a prosperous grain merchant.
He grew up in Bohain-en-Vermandois, Picardie, France.
In 1887 he went to Paris to study law, working as a court administrator in Le Cateau-Cambrésis after gaining his qualification.
He first started to paint in 1889, after his mother brought him art supplies during a period of convalescence following an attack of appendicitis.
He discovered "a kind of paradise" as he later described it, and decided to become an artist, deeply disappointing his father.
In 1891, he returned to Paris to study art at the Académie Julian and became a student of William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Gustave Moreau.
Initially he painted still-lifes and landscapes in a traditional style, at which he achieved reasonable proficiency.
Matisse was influenced by the works of earlier masters such as Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Nicolas Poussin, and Antoine Watteau, as well as by modern artists such as Édouard Manet, and by Japanese art.
Chardin was one of the painters Matisse most admired; as an art student he made copies of four of Chardin's paintings in the Louvre.
In 1896 and 1897, Matisse visited the Australian painter John Peter Russell on the island Belle Île off the coast of Brittany.
Russell introduced him to Impressionism and to the work of van Gogh, who had been a friend of Russell but was completely unknown at the time.
Matisse's style changed completely, and he would later say "Russell was my teacher, and Russell explained colour theory to me."
In 1896 Matisse exhibited five paintings in the salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, two of which were purchased by the state.
With the model Caroline Joblau, he had a daughter, Marguerite, born in 1894.
In 1898 he married Amélie Noellie Parayre; the two raised Marguerite together and had two sons, Jean (born 1899) and Pierre (born 1900).
Marguerite and Amélie often served as models for Matisse.
In 1898, on the advice of Camille Pissarro, he went to London to study the paintings of J. M. W. Turner and then went on a trip to Corsica.
Upon his return to Paris in February 1899, he worked beside Albert Marquet and met André Derain, Jean Puy, and Jules Flandrin.
Matisse immersed himself in the work of others and went into debt from buying work from painters he admired.
The work he hung and displayed in his home included a plaster bust by Rodin, a painting by Gauguin, a drawing by van Gogh, and Cézanne's "Three Bathers".
In Cézanne's sense of pictorial structure and colour, Matisse found his main inspiration.
Many of Matisse's paintings from 1898 to 1901 make use of a Divisionist technique he adopted after reading Paul Signac's essay, "D'Eugène Delacroix au Néo-impressionisme".
His paintings of 1902–03, a period of material hardship for the artist, are comparatively somber and reveal a preoccupation with form.
Having made his first attempt at sculpture, a copy after Antoine-Louis Barye, in 1899, he devoted much of his energy to working in clay, completing "The Slave" in 1903.
Article: Steak
Section: Abstract

Question: How is a fish steak cut?

A steak (from Old Norse "steik", "roast") is generally a cut of beef sliced perpendicular to the muscle fibers, or of fish cut perpendicular to the spine.
Meat steaks are usually grilled, pan-fried, or broiled, while fish steaks may also be baked.
Steak can also be meat cooked in sauce, such as steak and kidney pie, or minced meat formed into a steak shape, such as Salisbury steak and hamburger steak.
Without qualification, the word "steak" generally refers to beefsteak.
Steaks from other animals are usually qualified as, "e.g.
", 'swordfish steak' or 'venison steak'.
Article: Peru
Section: Demographics

Question: Over how many centuries did it take to form the country of Peru?

Peru is a multiethnic country formed by different groups over five centuries.
Amerindians inhabited Peruvian territory for several millennia before the Spanish Conquest of the 16th century; according to historian Noble David Cook their population decreased from nearly 5–9 million in the 1520s to around 600,000 in 1620 mainly because of infectious diseases.
Spaniards and Africans arrived in large numbers under colonial rule, mixing widely with each other and indigenous peoples.
Gradual European immigration from Italy, Spain, France, Britain, and Germany followed independence.
Peru freed its black slaves in 1854.
Chinese arrived in the 1850s, replacing slave workers, and have since greatly influenced Peruvian society.
The last Peruvian census that attempted to classify persons according to ethnicity was in 1940, when 53% of the population was found to be white or mestizo (mixed white and Amerindian ancestry) and 46% was found to be Amerindian.
According to the CIA World Factbook, the majority of the people in Peru are Amerindians, mostly Quechua and Aymara, followed by mestizos.
Yet, in a 2006 survey from the "Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática" (INEI), the Peruvian population self-identified primarily as mestizo (59.5%), followed by Quechua (22.7%), Aymara (2.7%), Amazonian (1.8%), Black/Mulatto (1.6%), white (4.9%), and "Others" (6.7%).
With about 29.5 million inhabitants, Peru is the fifth most populous country in South America.
Its demographic growth rate declined from 2.6% to 1.6% between 1950 and 2000; population is expected to reach approximately 42 million in 2050.
As of 2007, 75.9% lived in urban areas and 24.1% in rural areas.
Major cities include Lima (home to over 8 million people), Arequipa, Trujillo, Chiclayo, Piura, Iquitos, Cusco, Chimbote, and Huancayo; all reported more than 250,000 inhabitants in the 2007 census.
There are 15 uncontacted Amerindian tribes in Peru.
Spanish, the first language of 83.9% of Peruvians aged five and older in 2007, is the primary language of the country.
It coexists with several indigenous languages, the most common of which is Quechua, spoken by 13.2% of the population.
Other native and foreign languages were spoken at that time by 2.7% and 0.1% of Peruvians, respectively.
In the 2007 census, 81.3% of the population over 12 years old described themselves as Catholic, 12.5% as Evangelical, 3.3% as of other denominations, and 2.9% as non-religious.
Literacy was estimated at 92.9% in 2007; this rate is lower in rural areas (80.3%) than in urban areas (96.3%).
Primary and secondary education are compulsory and free in public schools.
Article: Portrait of Dr. Gachet
Section: Background

Question: What was Van Gogh's brother's name?

In 1890, Van Gogh's brother Theo was searching for a home for the artist upon his release from an asylum at Saint-Rémy.
Upon the recommendation of Camille Pissarro, a former patient of the doctor who told Theo of Gachet's interests in working with artists, Theo sent Vincent to Gachet's second home in Auvers.
Vincent van Gogh's first impression of Gachet was unfavorable.
Writing to Theo he remarked:"I think that we must not count on Dr. Gachet at all.
First of all, he is sicker than I am, I think, or shall we say just as much, so that's that.
Now when one blind man leads another blind man, don't they both fall into the ditch?
"However, in a letter dated two days later to their sister Wilhelmina, he relayed, "I have found a true friend in Dr. Gachet, something like another brother, so much do we resemble each other physically and also mentally."
Van Gogh's thoughts returned several times to the painting by Eugène Delacroix of Torquato Tasso in the madhouse.
After a visit with Paul Gauguin to Montpellier to see Alfred Bruyas's collection in the Musée Fabre, Van Gogh wrote to Theo, asking if he could find a copy of the lithograph after the painting.
Three and a half months earlier, he had been thinking of the painting as an example of the sort of portraits he wanted to paint: "But it would be more in harmony with what Eugène Delacroix attempted and brought off in his "Tasso in Prison", and many other pictures, representing a real man.
Ah!
portraiture, portraiture with the thought, the soul of the model in it, that is what I think must come.
"Van Gogh wrote to his brother in 1890 about the painting:
Article: Protestant Reformation
Section: Puritan movement

Question: How did the Pilgrims celebrate Christmas?

The success of the Counter-Reformation on the Continent and the growth of a Puritan party dedicated to further Protestant reform polarised the Elizabethan Age, although it was not until the '40s that England underwent religious strife comparable to what its neighbours had suffered some generations before.
The early "Puritan movement" (late 16th–17th centuries) was Reformed or Calvinist and was a movement for reform in the Church of England.
Its origins lay in the discontent with the Elizabethan Religious Settlement.
The desire was for the Church of England to resemble more closely the Protestant churches of Europe, especially Geneva.
The Puritans objected to ornaments and ritual in the churches as idolatrous (vestments, surplices, organs, genuflection), which they castigated as "popish pomp and rags".
(See Vestments controversy.)
They also objected to ecclesiastical courts.
They refused to endorse completely all of the ritual directions and formulas of the "Book of Common Prayer"; the imposition of its liturgical order by legal force and inspection sharpened Puritanism into a definite opposition movement.
The later Puritan movement were often referred to as dissenters and nonconformists and eventually led to the formation of various reformed denominations.
The most famous and well-known emigration to America was the migration of the Puritan separatists from the Anglican Church of England, who fled first to Holland, and then later to America, to establish the English colony of Massachusetts in New England, which later became one of the original United States.
These Puritan separatists were also known as "the Pilgrims".
After establishing a colony at Plymouth (which became part of the colony of Massachusetts) in 1620, the Puritan pilgrims received a charter from the King of England that legitimised their colony, allowing them to do trade and commerce with merchants in England, in accordance with the principles of mercantilism.
This successful, though initially quite difficult, colony marked the beginning of the Protestant presence in America (the earlier French, Spanish and Portuguese settlements had been Roman Catholic), and became a kind of oasis of spiritual and economic freedom, to which persecuted Protestants and other minorities from the British Isles and Europe (and later, from all over the world) fled to for peace, freedom and opportunity.
The Pilgrims of New England disapproved of Christmas and celebration was outlawed in Boston from 1659 to 1681.
The ban was revoked in 1681 by Sir Edmund Andros, who also revoked a Puritan ban against festivities on Saturday night.
Despite the removal of the ban, it wouldn't be until the middle of the 19th century that Christmas would become a popular holiday in the Boston region.
The original intent of the colonists was to establish spiritual Puritanism, which had been denied to them in England and the rest of Europe, to engage in peaceful commerce with England and the native American Indians, and to Christianize the peoples of the Americas.
Article: Up Series
Section: Lynn

Question: When did Lynn marry?

After attending the same primary school as Jackie and Sue, Lynn Johnson attended a grammar school.
She went on to marry at 19, had 2 daughters, and become a children's librarian at 21.
She later became a school librarian and remained in that career until being made redundant due to budget cuts.
At 56 Up she continues to believe her career as a librarian is of great value and it has helped define her life.
She is a doting grandmother with 3 grandchildren, and still married to her husband Russ whom she still considers her soulmate.
Article: Great Wall of China
Section: Abstract

Question: What materials were used in the construction of the Great Wall of China?

The Great Wall of China is a series of fortifications made of stone, brick, tamped earth, wood, and other materials, generally built along an east-to-west line across the historical northern borders of China in part to protect the Chinese Empire or its prototypical states against intrusions by various nomadic groups or military incursions by various warlike peoples or forces.
Several walls were being built as early as the 7th century BC; these, later joined together and made bigger and stronger, are now collectively referred to as the Great Wall.
Especially famous is the wall built between 220–206 BC by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang.
Little of that wall remains.
Since then, the Great Wall has on and off been rebuilt, maintained, and enhanced; the majority of the existing wall are from the Ming Dynasty.
Other purposes of the Great Wall have included border controls, allowing the imposition of duties on goods transported along the Silk Road, regulation or encouragement of trade and the control of immigration and emigration.
Furthermore, the defensive characteristics of the Great Wall were enhanced by the construction of watch towers, troop barracks, garrison stations, signaling capabilities through the means of smoke or fire, and the fact that the path of the Great Wall also served as a transportation corridor.
The main Great Wall line stretches from Shanhaiguan in the east, to Lop Lake in the west, along an arc that roughly delineates the southern edge of Inner Mongolia.
A comprehensive archaeological survey, using advanced technologies, has concluded that the Ming walls measure .
This is made up of sections of actual wall, of trenches and of natural defensive barriers such as hills and rivers.
Another archaeological survey found that the entire wall with all of its branches measure out to be .
Article: The Motto
Section: Abstract

Question: What Canadian Recaroding artist wrote "The Motto"?

"The Motto" is a song by Canadian recording artist Drake.
The song features Lil Wayne and is a digital iTunes Store bonus track from Drake's second studio album, "Take Care".
"The Motto" premiered on Los Angeles' Power 106 on October 31, 2011.
Drake released the song on his OVO blog a day later.
It was first played on rhythmic top 40 radio stations on November 29, 2011, as the album's fourth single.
The track was a commercial success in the U.S., selling over 3,000,000 copies.
denoting 3× Platinum status.
The track peaked atop both the US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and US Rap Songs charts, and was ranked 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 Year-end Chart.
"The Motto" was nominated for Best Rap Song at the 55th Grammy Awards.
The song is one of the few songs to rank within the top 20 in the year-end chart, but to never crack the top ten, due to peaking at number 14.
Article: Marshall Plan
Section: The Speech

Question: Marshall gave his address to who?

After the adjournment of the Moscow conference following six weeks of failed discussions with the Soviets regarding a potential German reconstruction, the United States concluded that a solution could not wait any longer.
To clarify the US's position, a major address by Secretary of State George Marshall was planned.
Marshall gave the address to the graduating class of Harvard University on June 5, 1947.
Standing on the steps of Memorial Church in Harvard Yard, he offered American aid to promote European recovery and reconstruction.
The speech described the dysfunction of the European economy and presented a rationale for US aid.
The modern system of the division of labor upon which the exchange of products is based is in danger of breaking down.
.
.
.
Aside from the demoralizing effect on the world at large and the possibilities of disturbances arising as a result of the desperation of the people concerned, the consequences to the economy of the United States should be apparent to all.
It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health to the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace.
Our policy is not directed against any country, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.
Any government that is willing to assist in recovery will find full co-operation on the part of the USA.
Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.
Marshall was convinced that economic stability would provide political stability in Europe.
He offered aid, but the European countries had to organize the program themselves.
The speech, written by Charles Bohlen, contained virtually no details and no numbers.
More a proposal than a plan, it was presented vaguely and made little impact in America.
Eight weeks after the Harvard speech, the State Department wrote in a confidential memorandum that "The Marshall Plan has been compared to a flying saucer — nobody knows what it looks like, how big it is, in what direction it is moving, or whether it really exists."
The most important element of the speech was the call for the Europeans to meet and create their own plan for rebuilding Europe, and that the United States would then fund this plan.
The administration felt that the plan would likely be unpopular among many Americans, and the speech was mainly directed at a European audience.
In an attempt to keep the speech out of American papers journalists were not contacted, and on the same day Truman called a press conference to take away headlines.
In contrast, Dean Acheson, an Under Secretary of State, was dispatched to contact the European media, especially the British media, and the speech was read in its entirety on the BBC.