QUES: The Juscelino Kubitschek bridge, also known as the 'President JK Bridge' or the 'JK Bridge', crosses Lake Paranoa in Brasilia. It is named after Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira, former president of Brazil. It was designed by architect Alexandre Chan and structural engineer Mario Vila Verde. Chan won the Gustav Lindenthal Medal for this project at the 2003 International Bridge Conference in Pittsburgh due to "...outstanding achievement demonstrating harmony with the environment, aesthetic merit and successful community participation".
What did Mario Vila Verde win in 2003?

ANS: unanswerable

QUES: Reporters Without Borders organised several symbolic protests, including scaling the Eiffel Tower to hang a protest banner from it, and hanging an identical banner from the Notre Dame cathedral.
Who climbed the Eiffel Tower to hang a protest banner?

ANS: Reporters Without Borders

QUES: The Wine and Beerhouse Act 1869 reintroduced the stricter controls of the previous century. The sale of beers, wines or spirits required a licence for the premises from the local magistrates. Further provisions regulated gaming, drunkenness, prostitution and undesirable conduct on licensed premises, enforceable by prosecution or more effectively by the landlord under threat of forfeiting his licence. Licences were only granted, transferred or renewed at special Licensing Sessions courts, and were limited to respectable individuals. Often these were ex-servicemen or ex-policemen; retiring to run a pub was popular amongst military officers at the end of their service. Licence conditions varied widely, according to local practice. They would specify permitted hours, which might require Sunday closing, or conversely permit all-night opening near a market. Typically they might require opening throughout the permitted hours, and the provision of food or lavatories. Once obtained, licences were jealously protected by the licensees (who were expected to be generally present, not an absentee owner or company), and even "Occasional Licences" to serve drinks at temporary premises such as fetes would usually be granted only to existing licensees. Objections might be made by the police, rival landlords or anyone else on the grounds of infractions such as serving drunks, disorderly or dirty premises, or ignoring permitted hours.
Retirees from what two professions often sought licenses for pubs?

ANS: ex-servicemen or ex-policemen

QUES: The transition from the mandolino to the mandolin began around 1744 with the designing of the metal-string mandolin by the Vinaccia family, 3 brass strings and one of gut, using friction tuning pegs on a fingerboard that sat "flush" with the sound table. The mandolin grew in popularity over the next 60 years, in the streets where it was used by young men courting and by street musicians, and in the concert hall. After the Napoleonic Wars of 1815, however, its popularity began to fall. The 19th century produced some prominent players, including Bartolomeo Bortolazzi of Venice and Pietro Vimercati. However, professional virtuosity was in decline, and the mandolin music changed as the mandolin became a folk instrument; "the large repertoire of notated instrumental music for the mandolino and the mandoline was completely forgotten". The export market for mandolins from Italy dried up around 1815, and when Carmine de Laurentiis wrote a mandolin method in 1874, the Music World magazine wrote that the mandolin was "out of date." Salvador Leonardi mentioned this decline in his 1921 book, Methode pour Banjoline ou Mandoline-Banjo, saying that the mandolin had been declining in popularity from previous times.
What year did the export market for mandolins from France dry up?

ANS:
unanswerable