QUES: Giovanni Battista Montini was born in the village of Concesio, in the province of Brescia, Lombardy in 1897. His father Giorgio Montini was a lawyer, journalist, director of the Catholic Action and member of the Italian Parliament. His mother was Giudetta Alghisi, from a family of rural nobility. He had two brothers, Francesco Montini, who became a physician, and Lodovico Montini, who became a lawyer and politician. On 30 September 1897, he was baptized in the name of Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini. He attended Cesare Arici, a school run by the Jesuits, and in 1916, he received a diploma from Arnaldo da Brescia, a public school in Brescia. His education was often interrupted by bouts of illness.
What was Giovanni's mother descended from?

ANS: rural nobility

QUES: In 1965, Pope Paul VI decreed in his motu proprio Ad Purpuratorum Patrum that patriarchs of the Eastern Catholic Churches who were named cardinals (i.e., patriarch cardinals) would also be part of the episcopal order, ranking after the six cardinal bishops of the suburbicarian sees (who had been relieved of direct responsibilities for those sees by Pope John XXIII three years earlier). Patriarch cardinals do not receive title of a suburbicarian see, and as such they cannot elect the dean or become dean. There are currently three Eastern Patriarchs who are cardinal bishops:
Who ranked after the seven cardinal bishops of the suburbicarian sees?

ANS: unanswerable

QUES: India rejected Chinese demands that the torch route be clear of India's 150,000-strong Tibetan exile community, by which they required a ban on congregation near the curtailed 3 km route. In response Indian officials said India was a democracy, and "a wholesale ban on protests was out of the question". Contradicting some other reports, Indian officials also refused permission to the "Olympic Holy Flame Protection Unit". The combined effect is a "rapid deterioration" of relations between India and China. Meanwhile, the Tibetan government in exile, which is based in India, has stated that it did not support the disruption of the Olympic torch relay.
India refused China's request that the Tibetan exile community be avoided because they said India is what?

ANS: a democracy

QUES: Despite these crises, the 14th century was also a time of great progress in the arts and sciences. Following a renewed interest in ancient Greek and Roman texts that took root in the High Middle Ages, the Italian Renaissance began. The absorption of Latin texts had started before the Renaissance of the 12th century through contact with Arabs during the Crusades, but the availability of important Greek texts accelerated with the capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks, when many Byzantine scholars had to seek refuge in the West, particularly Italy.
Which city was captured by the Ottoman Turks, resulting in the fleeing of scholars to Eastern Europe?

ANS:
unanswerable