Context and question: With the rise of disco in the US and punk rock in the UK, hard rock's mainstream dominance was rivalled toward the later part of the decade. Disco appealed to a more diverse group of people and punk seemed to take over the rebellious role that hard rock once held. Early punk bands like The Ramones explicitly rebelled against the drum solos and extended guitar solos that characterised stadium rock, with almost all of their songs clocking in around two minutes with no guitar solos. However, new rock acts continued to emerge and record sales remained high into the 1980s. 1977 saw the debut and rise to stardom of Foreigner, who went on to release several platinum albums through to the mid-1980s. Midwestern groups like Kansas, REO Speedwagon and Styx helped further cement heavy rock in the Midwest as a form of stadium rock. In 1978, Van Halen emerged from the Los Angeles music scene with a sound based around the skills of lead guitarist Eddie Van Halen. He popularised a guitar-playing technique of two-handed hammer-ons and pull-offs called tapping, showcased on the song "Eruption" from the album Van Halen, which was highly influential in re-establishing hard rock as a popular genre after the punk and disco explosion, while also redefining and elevating the role of electric guitar.
Which Van Halen instrumental showcased the guitar mastery of Eddie Van Halen?
Answer: "Eruption"
Context and question: A great power is a sovereign state that is recognized as having the ability and expertise to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess military and economic strength, as well as diplomatic and soft power influence, which may cause middle or small powers to consider the great powers' opinions before taking actions of their own. International relations theorists have posited that great power status can be characterized into power capabilities, spatial aspects, and status dimensions. Sometimes the status of great powers is formally recognized in conferences such as the Congress of Vienna or an international structure such as the United Nations Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States serve as the body's five permanent members). At the same time the status of great powers can be informally recognized in a forum such as the G7 which consists of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
What has the United Nations Security Council characterized as comprising great power status?
Answer: unanswerable
Context and question: During World War II, when Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany, the United States briefly controlled Greenland for battlefields and protection. In 1946, the United States offered to buy Greenland from Denmark for $100 million ($1.2 billion today) but Denmark refused to sell it. Several politicians and others have in recent years argued that Greenland could hypothetically be in a better financial situation as a part of the United States; for instance mentioned by professor Gudmundur Alfredsson at University of Akureyri in 2014. One of the actual reasons behind US interest in Greenland could be the vast natural resources of the island. According to Wikileaks, the U.S. appears to be highly interested in investing in the resource base of the island and in tapping the vast expected hydrocarbons off the Greenlandic coast.
How much did the US offer to pay for Akureyri?
Answer:
unanswerable