QUES: On 15 September 1940, known as the Battle of Britain Day, an RAF pilot, Ray Holmes of No. 504 Squadron RAF rammed a German bomber he believed was going to bomb the Palace. Holmes had run out of ammunition and made the quick decision to ram it. Holmes bailed out. Both aircraft crashed. In fact the Dornier Do 17 bomber was empty. It had already been damaged, two of its crew had been killed and the remainder bailed out. Its pilot, Feldwebel Robert Zehbe, landed, only to die later of wounds suffered during the attack. During the Dornier's descent, it somehow unloaded its bombs, one of which hit the Palace. It then crashed into the forecourt of London Victoria station. The bomber's engine was later exhibited at the Imperial War Museum in London. The British pilot became a King's Messenger after the war, and died at the age of 90 in 2005.

What did Ray Holmes think the German pilot was going to restore?
What is the answer?
ANS: unanswerable
QUES: The rival of Takeda Shingen (15211573) was Uesugi Kenshin (15301578), a legendary Sengoku warlord well-versed in the Chinese military classics and who advocated the "way of the warrior as death". Japanese historian Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki describes Uesugi's beliefs as: "Those who are reluctant to give up their lives and embrace death are not true warriors.... Go to the battlefield firmly confident of victory, and you will come home with no wounds whatever. Engage in combat fully determined to die and you will be alive; wish to survive in the battle and you will surely meet death. When you leave the house determined not to see it again you will come home safely; when you have any thought of returning you will not return. You may not be in the wrong to think that the world is always subject to change, but the warrior must not entertain this way of thinking, for his fate is always determined."

Who was Takeda's rival?
What is the answer?
ANS: Uesugi Kenshin
QUES: In his book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, biologist Richard Dawkins grapples with the question of why pain has to be so very painful. He describes the alternative as a simple, mental raising of a "red flag". To argue why that red flag might be insufficient, Dawkins explains that drives must compete with each other within living beings. The most fit creature would be the one whose pains are well balanced. Those pains which mean certain death when ignored will become the most powerfully felt. The relative intensities of pain, then, may resemble the relative importance of that risk to our ancestors (lack of food, too much cold, or serious injuries are felt as agony, whereas minor damage is felt as mere discomfort). This resemblance will not be perfect, however, because natural selection can be a poor designer. The result is often glitches in animals, including supernormal stimuli. Such glitches help explain pains which are not, or at least no longer directly adaptive (e.g. perhaps some forms of toothache, or injury to fingernails).

What does Dawkins explain must compete with each other in living begins?
What is the answer?
ANS:
drives