Science and technology

1. Which invention was first used to fasten boots and shoes?
2. What is the smallest unit of length?
3. Why does ice float on water?
4. What happens when you hiccup?
5. Most scientific units are named after famous scientists. There is even a unit called a henry. It is an electrical unit named after the American physicist, Joseph Henry. True /false?
6. What kind of cooking is named from a Spanish word meaning a framework of slides?
7. What is the general name for foods such as spaghetti, macaroni and ravioli?
8.Which machines are silent but make use of sound?
9. In 1983, the American space probe Pioneer 10 became the first space craft to leave the solar system and head for the stars. True/false?
10. Name the first woman to fly in space.

[Arts and history]

1. Which building was saved by a diver?
2. Who discovered Tasmania and New Zealand in 1642?
3. What did Vasco Nunez de Balboa discover when he crossed the Panama in 1513?
4. Who was Norma Jean Mortenson?
5. In which year did President Richard M. Nixon, resign after the political scandal ‘Watergate’ which rocked the United States?
6. The earliest workable ball point pen, the ancestor of the modern ones used today, was the brainchild of Hungarian - born inventor, Jose L. Biro. True/false?
7. Which famous city was burned in 1666?
8. Which palace is famous for its Hall of Mirrors?
9. What were the former names of these African countries: Burkina Faso, Ghana, Zambia, Malawi?
10. What were the main weapons of a Roman soldier?

[Answers]

Science and technology

1. The zip fastner.
2. The smallest unit of length is the attometre. There are a million million million attometres in a metre.
3. Because water expands and becomes less dense when it freezes.
4. Hiccups or hiccoughs are caused by sudden movements of your diaphragm, (a large muscle beneath your chest). The diaphragm controls your breath and the movement causes a sudden intake of air. This is the hiccup. Hiccups can start for many reasons.
5.True
6. Barbecues
7. Pasta
8. Ultrasound scanners which are used in medicine to examine the interior of the body. Ultrasound is a kind of sound that we cannot hear. It is too high-pitched for our ears to pick up, though animals such as bats make use of it. Many ultrasonic machines work in similar ways to bats.
9. True
10. Russian cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova. She orbited the Earth aboard the spacecraft Vostok 6 in 1963.

[Arts and history]

1. The Winchester Cathedral in southern England. The huge building stands on swampy ground. In 1905 some of the walls were crumbling and a diver named William Walker worked underwater in complete darkness to lay concrete blocks and bricks to provide solid new foundations for the cathedral.
2.David Livingstone
3. The Pacific Ocean
4. A popular film star, Marilyn Monroe who died from an overdose of sleeping pills at the age of 36 in 1962. She was born in Los Angeles and brought up in an orphanage and several foster homes.
5. President Nixon resigned in August 1974.
6. True
7. London (England)
8. Versailles
9. Upper Volta, Gold Coast, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasa land.
10. A two-edged sword and a spear.