Paper view

Most of the wood fiber produced in the world is used for making paper. How much more paper is used in the world today compared to 50 years ago?

A) Twice as much
B) Three times as much
C) Five times as much
D) We actually use slightly less today

Click here to check your answer on our site.

Who wounded the heel?

In the famous Greek myth, the generally invulnerable Achilles was killed during the Trojan War by an arrow that struck him in the heel. Who fired the fatal bolt?

A) Hector
B) Paris
C) Patroclus
D) Priam

Click here to check your answer on our site.

What are they?

The sailor’s term “Roaring Forties” refers to:

A) The 1840s, a time of much perilous exploration
B) The tendency of older seamen to roar
C) Forty windswept islands off the West African coast
D) Southern latitudes between 40 and 50 degrees

Click here to check your answer on our site.

High tide

The highest tides in the world are found in:

A) The Great Australian Bight
B) The Gulf of Finland
C) The Bay of Fundy, Canada
D) Tierra del Fuego, South America

Click here to check your answer on our site.

Learning one’s lines

“What’s the good of Mercator’s North Poles and Equators, Tropics, Zones and Meridian Lines?” asked the bellman in Lewis Carroll’s poem “The Hunting of the Snark”. Meridian lines are:

A) Lines dividing the oceans in two
B) Lines used by sailors to set the sails
C) Mnemonics used in learning navigation
D) Lines of longitude

Click here to check your answer on our site.

Cargoes

The well-known poem “Cargoes” by John Masefield begins with the words “Quinquireme of Nineveh”. A quinquireme (or “quinquereme”) is:

A) A mixture of five pungent spices
B) A galley with five banks of oars
C) A sailing vessel with five masts
D) A commander of five platoons of soldiers

Click here to check your answer on our site.

What is it?

A bathyscaphe is:

A) A map of the ocean bottom
B) A small bathtub used on sailing ships
C) A submersible craft
D) What early explorers called the baleen whale

Click here to check your answer on our site.

Hot topic?

What is “St. Anthony’s fire”?

A) A disease causing fever and redness of the skin
B) A heat-producing ointment used for treating bone injuries
C) A meadow plant with bright red and yellow flowers
D) A “torch of brotherhood”, kept alight for the Christmas season

Click here to check your answer on our site.

Gitche Gumee

Hiawatha, the hero of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, was raised “by the shores of Gitche Gumee”. Most of us know Gitche Gumee by which other name?

A) Georgian Bay
B) Lake Superior
C) The Atlantic Ocean
D) The Mississippi River

Click here to check your answer on our site.

Name of a conqueror

In the 14th century, a warlord created a vast empire by conquering much of Asia and Eastern Europe. His name was:

A) Attila
B) Babur
C) Genghis
D) Tamerlane

Click here to check your answer on our site.