Finals: BCQC's Ajai Ragde Memorial History-Geography Quiz by Kunal Sawardekar and Omkar Dhakephalkar

Finals
Kunal Sawardekar and Omkar Dhakephalkar | BCQC September Opens

QualifiedTeams
Team 1:
Team 2:
Team 3:
Team 4:
These teams to pounce to Kunal Sawardekar on +91 9960039164
Team 5:
Team 6:
Team 7:
Team 8:
These teams to pounce to Omkar Dhakephalkar on +91 9689950096

Just a refresher
• Please ensure you are on mute when you are not answering
• All hands visible, always
• IR questions are worth 10 points
• Pounces are infinite, and carry a -5 for a wrong answer
• Questions in written rounds are worth 4 points each, with a bonus 4 points for
answering all 4 in a round

Format
• 32 Questions in IR (16+16)
• Interspersed with three written rounds of 4 questions each

SpecialThanks for Guinea-Pigging Quiz
The Rt. Hon. Surajkumar Menon., esq

Flagging it off! –Written Round I
• Written Round on Colonial Flags
• 4 Questions, each for 5 points
• Bonus 5 for getting all correct

Ceylon Macau
(Greater) Lebanon German New Guinea

Infinite Rebounds
• +10 on Direct
• +10/-5 on Pounce
• Clockwise

Q1
• The Ryukyu kingdom was a tributary state
of China from the 15th century to the 19th
century - although it began to come under
increasing influence from a neighbouring
country until it was annexed in 1879.
• It has formed a subnational unit in this
neighbouring country except for 27 years
in the 20th century, when it was ruled by
military and civil administrations entirely.
• What is the subnational unit that is the
modern descendant of the Ryukyu
kingdom?

Q2
• In 1611, the Dutch explorer Hendrik Brouwer discovered what became known as
the Brouwer Route across the Indian Ocean from the Dutch outpost at Cape Town
to Indonesia. While the Dutch had previously used the traditional Monsoon route
that involved sailing up the Mozambique Channel turning northeast towards India
and then crossing the Bay of Bengal, the Brouwer Route took advantage of the
Roaring Forties to cut transit time to Java by six months.
• However, for the first 150 years of its existence, the Brouwer Route required a
great deal of judgment and experience from the captain and several Dutch vessels
who could not meet the technical challenges suffered shipwrecks (thus
inadvertently discovering Australia).
• What technological solution reduced the challenges and danger of the Brouwer
Route?

The invention of the Marine
Chronometer in 1761
• The issue with the Brouwer Route was that it was
incredibly challenging to determine where to turn
north, resulting in various percussive discoveries of
the Western Australian coast. With the chronometer,
captains could better gauge their longitude and DTN

Q3
• This city in Europe has a two-word name XY reflecting its
history of colonization and conquest over 3,000 years.
• The second word Y comes from the name of another city
on the coast of Lebanon (with a slight modification). The
first word X comes from a generic word in that part of the
world meaning “city”. This meaning comes from the most
famous city with this name, which is situated about 1,400
km to the south of the Lebanese city.
• The European city XY was a major ducal seat in its country,
and the ducal line continues to this day. The most famous
duke (at least to English speakers) was a military
commander who lost an important battle in 1588.
• What is the name of the city (and the dukedom), and
what military unit was the 7th Duke commanding in 1588?
Part points present and conserved.

Medina-Sidonia, the SpanishArmada

Q4
• The first season of Saturday Night Live coincided with a long-impending regime
change in a European country. Prior to this change actually happening, the global
press had been breathlessly covering, with frequent updates in spite of no real
change in status until it finally actually happened.
• Chevy Chase, who was hosting “Weekend Update” for the first two years, parodied
this by reciting a catchphrase using the full name and grandiose title of the
concerned person.
• What was this long-running SNL catchphrase, which was ironically announced
as a breaking news item?

“Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still
dead”

Q5
• In July 1941, the 112 Sqn RAF became one of the first
units to be equipped with the American fighter the
Curtiss P-40Tomahawk /Warhawk.The P-40’s unusually
large forward air inlet inspired them to copy markings
for their planes that they had earlier seen on planes from
German Heavy Fighter Squadron 76, which they had
faced in the Battle of Britain before.
• These markings proved very popular fellow P-40 users in
the AmericanVolunteer Group of the Republic of China
Air Force, and in fact led to the AVG’s nickname.
• What were these markings, which are still popular in
some fighter communities, most notably for the modern
A-10Thunderbolt?
(Larger image on next slide)

The “Shark’s Mouth” nose art, which led to the AVG’s
nicknameThe FlyingTigers

Q6
• In the city of Tromsø, Norway, a special type of Berliner doughnut called a Solbolle is
eaten on January 21 every year. The consumption of Solboller is almost 1 per capita on
this day with over 60,000 being sold within the city.
• What are these Solboller eaten to celebrate?
(Larger image on next slide)

The end of the polar night inTromsø

Q7
• The human use of cereal grains as foods predates the invention of kiln-fired
pottery by several millennia, which means that for a long period of time, people
needed to find different ways to heat cereals or cereal pastes for cooking. One
solution was the use of pot-boilers - a stone heated in a fire that was then dropped
into a weak pot filled with water and cereal grains.
• This cooking technique is thought to be the origin of what food preparation
process that makes niacin bio-available, and whose absence in certain places in
certain periods led to epidemic-like conditions of micronutrient deficiency?

Q8
• Sir Charles _______ was a civil servant who is supposed to have developed the first
“modern” suburb of Delhi north of Paharganj in the Pahari Dhiraj area. He was an
assistant commissioner in Delhi at that time. The broad street later took his name.
Today however, that name has been forgotten except in research papers.
• He would enter infamy a bit later when he served under HM's government as an
assistant in the treasury. During this period, a major crisis erupted, and he was put
in charge of relief measures. His (in)actions during this earned him a knighthood
but are today condemned as genocidal and his name is widely reviled (including in
a very famous folk song).
• What relief measure was he in charge of?

Irish Potato Famine (this is CharlesTrevelyan)
• Trevelyanpur/Trevelyanganj was commissioned sometime between 1827-1831.

Q9
• Historically, the Agaseke was a basket that
symbolized a good harvest and was often a
gift during marriages in this country.
• After 1994 however, it has come to
symbolize a fresh start, forgiveness, and
healing.
• On which country’s coat of arms would
you find it?

Q10
• On 30th January 2018, the New Indian Express reported this headline:
Flowers start blooming in India-X maritime relations
It continued,
S Jaishankar signed a 20-year agreement with X on Saturday that will enable the
construction of Indian naval/military infrastructure on Assumption Island.
• The headline refers to a 1986 incident. ID the country X.

Seychelles
It refers to Operation Flowers are Blooming

Q11
• In 1975, the island of Guam saw its
civilian population double to 200,000
total people. While this was disruptive
to the lives of the islanders, the increase
was temporary and the newcomers
were mostly gone by the end of the
year.
• What was the cause of this
temporary surge in Guam's
population?

Vietnamese refugees after the Fall of Saigon were temporarily
resettled in Guam while undergoing processing

Hold it Firmly –Written Round II
• Written Round on panhandles

W2.1
• The current Zambezi region in Namibia was until 2013 indirectly named after a
town in what is now southern Slovenia. This came about when the scion of an
Italian-Slovene family from this town (the family having been ennobled in the 17th
century Ottoman-Hapsburg wars and immigrated north) negotiated the
acquisition of this territory in order to access the Indian Ocean, a scheme that was
doomed to failure due to the existence ofVictoria Falls.
• What is this previous name of the Zambezi region?

W2.2
• By area this is the largest administrative first-level division of this country. It gets
its name from a major port city on the banks of the Karnaphuli river. The hills here
are the few Buddhist majority districts as well as the few hilly regions in this
country.
• What is the division?

W2.3
• Spain and Great Britain traded a large territory back and forth in the latter half of
the 18th century after the settlements of the Seven Years’ War and the American
Revolutionary Wars. The British, when they controlled the territory, divided it into
Western and Eastern sections based on the Apalachicola river, a division the
Spanish retained but based on the Suwanee river.
• The Western portion had an ill-defined border with another colonial claim, and
was the site of a self-declared English speaking republic in 1810. However, neither
this nor the Spanish administration survived for long, and by the 1820s the entire
territory had been annexed to the US.
• Which territory?

W2.4
• The people living here refer to themselves as the Khik. However, the region and
their more common exonym is derived from “Wux”, which itself comes from Oxus,
the old name of the Amu Darya.
• What is this territory, given to the nation that currently administers it as a buffer
zone in the 19th century?

W2.1
Caprivi Region
(the region lies within the Caprivi Strip, named after Leo von Caprivi)

Q12
• The King's Daughters is a term
used to refer to French women
who were part of an elaborate
program under King Louis XIV
from 1663-73. These women had
their marriage expenses,
trousseaus and dowries financed
by the king under this program.
The program was considered a
success despite complaints that
the town girls found adjusting to
a cold and agricultural life hard.
• What was the purpose of this
program?

Sending women to settle in Quebec

Q13
• What geographical term meaning “a steep
slope” or “long cliff”, when preceded by
‘Great’ can refer to the
-Western Ghats in India,
-a region to the east and alongside the Great
Dividing Range in Australia,
-a geological formation south of Salvador
along the Brazilian coast and
-the borders of the central plateau of South
Africa

Q14
• At 9:00 pm Pacific time, 26 January 1700, a massive earthquake with a magnitude
of 9.2 occurred along the coast of what is now Washington state and British
Columbia, wiping out several local communities. This quake, caused by the
subduction of the Juan de Fuca plate under the North American plate, is
hypothesized to be part of a 500-year cycle of massive quakes and could cause
concern to Pacific northwest communities in the future.
• While memory of the 1700 quake persisted in the oral records of Native American
groups that reside in the region, and the year of the disaster can be confirmed by
ghost forests of dead trees with growth rings corresponding up to the year 1699,
the exact date and time of the disaster can be determined based on the written
records of a civilization thousands of miles away.
• What were these records documenting, that allowed researchers to corroborate
and determine the exact time of the 1700 Cascadia earthquake? (image follows)

An OrphanTsunami
• Records show of a tsunami without any accompanying tremors hitting the Pacific
coast of Honshu island, Japan in 1700.

Q15
• P-500 and P-700 cruise missiles as their main armament on
Russian cruisers and battle cruisers. These missiles also
equip Soviet and Russian vessels such as the Baku class
(that includes the ship formerly known as Admiral
Gorshkov) and the Admiral Kuznetsov class.
• Ships equivalent to the Bakus and the Admiral Kuznetsovs
in other navies do not normally carry such heavy weaponry
– the Soviets and Russians equipped them in this way to
allow a reclassification that would allow them to
circumvent treaty obligations that they agreed to in 1936.
• What does this allow ships like Admiral Gorshkov to do?

Pass through theTurkish Straits
• As per the Montreux Convention, aircraft carriers are not allowed to transit the
Dardanelles and Bosphorous. However by equipping its aircraft carriers with cruise
missiles, Russia calls them “aircraft cruisers” and they pass though merrily.

Q16
• Most languages spoken in India either belong to the Indo-Aryan, Dravidian or
Tibeto-Burman language families. The fourth language family present in India is
the Austro-Asiatic (or Mon-Khmer) language family that counts among its major
languagesVietnamese and Khmer.
• Austro-Asiatic languages are present in India’s north-east (the Khasi language in
Meghalaya being a major example) and the Andaman and Nicobar islands
(Nicobarese) - but the most widely spoken Austro-Asiatic language in India (with
7.3 million speakers) belongs to a group of people living in Orissa, West Bengal,
Assam, Jharkhand andTripura, along with Bangladesh and Bhutan.
• The common name for this language comes from a Bengali exonym for the ethnic
group that speaks it. What language?

Q17
• A ‘Faubourg’ is an ancient French term used to refer to agglomerations
surrounding the throughway leading outwards from a city gate.
• The English approximation of this term also comes via Old French stemming in
Latin. Often these surrounding areas and gates were at a lower level than the
cities which were built on hills for defensive purposes.
• What is this English word?

Q18
• In geology, a tumulus is a mound of
earth and stones raised over a grave
or graves. The Turkic word for such
a mound is also given to a
hypothetical culture associated
with the spread of PIE.
• What is this word?

Q19
• This two word-term was first proposed
by Norwegian meteorologists Jacob
Bjerknes and Halvor Solberg while
studying mid-latitude storms (the blue
jet stream).
• They likened the boundaries between
warm and cold air to the battle
between opposing sides of the second-
world war.
• What term which you might have
heard in Feb 2021?

Q20
• Sinan Reis was a corsair under the Ottoman admiral
Hayreddin Barbarossa, and was born in 1533 in the Turkish city
of Smyrna to a family of religious refugees. He flew
Barbarossa’s flag (or sanjak) on his expeditions, which had
Islamic iconography including the Seal of Solomon.
• However, over the years, the central design element of the
Seal of Solomon changed meaning through the actions of a
political movement in Europe in the 19th century. Finally
something happened in 1948 that completely changed the
meaning of this symbol from what a 16th century Turk would
have understood it. This has led to a modern misconception
that Sinan Reis flying this flag was actually acknowledging his
heritage and taunting his family’s persecutors.
• What was the misconception created by the Seal of
Solomon being on Sinan Reis’ flag?

That he was flying a Jewish pirate flag to
taunt the Spanish
• The Spanish had expelled his family from Spain - the six-pointed star on the Seal
of Solomon gave rise to what is known today as the Star of David.

Here Lie Answers –Written Round III
• Written Round on Physical Features that existed at one point

W3.1
• During the African Humid period
(14,600 – 5,000 years before
present) the African continent
was home to multiple massive
paleolakes. The northernmost
and most massive of these was
named after a modern day
remnant lake along with a
signifier for its greater size. This
paleolake should not be
confused for an internet meme
of an impossibly muscular man.
• Name the paleolake.

W3.2
• During the last Ice Age, the
Chukotka peninsula in Russia
and Alaska were connected by
land, which is the land
connections that the first
human settlers of the Americas
crossed over.
• What was this now submerged
area called?

W3.3
• In the Late Cretaceous period, North
America was divided into two
landmasses by the Western Interior
Seaway. The eastern of the two
landmasses is named for a prominent
geographic feature in the area today
(that is identifiable on this map).
• What was the name of the eastern
landmass?

W3.4
• This ancient capital of Lower Egypt was a major religious and commercial centre.
It lost its importance first due to the establishment of Alexandria as a seaport and
commercial capital of Egypt, and then with the abandonment of the Ancient
Egyptian religion. By the Arab conquest, it was completely abandoned and served
mainly as a source of stone for building Cairo.
• What is this city, whose namesake is currently far better known?

Q21
• In 1871, the Great Northern Telegraph Company created a new code for telegraph
encoding, using 4-digit combinations of numbers. The system, invented by
Septime Auguste Viguier (who was stationed in the area for which it was intended,
but not born there) initially had 7,000 code combinations, but later expanded to
about 9,800.
• In 1949, the code split into two diverging standards. Since the demise of
telegraphy, the code has been used in the early days of computing in the
concerned region. It is still used today in international law enforcement dealings
with people from this region, to avoid confusion due to spelling differences.
• What is this code used for?

Encoding Chinese Characters (in Morse)

Q22
• This March 5 1966 operation marked the first, if not the only time, that this
occurred on Indian soil.Today it is commemorated as Zoram Day.
• This operation was also cited by a current CM for his actions, before reconciling in
1986.
• What operation?

Q23
• Because Koreans played a lot of video-
games, Microsoft decided to add that
civilization in Age of Empires 2. However,
the company ran into trouble due to a
decision that made with respect to the
Korean campaign which showed the
Koreans kicking out the Japanese in the
Battle of Noryang. The police even came
to arrest the Korean rep of Microsoft.
• What decision was this, which actually
met the international convention?

Naming of Sea of Japan.The Koreans call
it the East Sea.

Q24
• In 1919, a referendum was held in New
Zealand. The proposed policy did not
pass thanks to the votes of returning
soldiers.This is shown in this poster.
• What was the referendum regarding?

Whether or not to impose prohibition

Q25
• This region was formed post
the Allied occupation of
Germany following WW1.
• The area you see here was a
virtual microstate as it was cut
off from Germany due to the
lack of roads/rail and was
surrounded on other sides by
the US and French occupation
zones and the Rhine.
• What did it call itself thanks to
the shape?

Q26
• Birgitta Stenberg was a Swedish writer. In the early 1950s, she lived in Paris, Rome
and on the French Riviera, experiences that inspired her book, Love in Europe.
• She was first a mistress of an American who was deported to Italy as part of a deal
where he provided dockyard intelligence to US authorities duringWW2.
• In Italy her partner bonded with another exiled person who “bought” her from the
former. Of the latter she wrote: “I'm doing this with the king of twenty million
people.This nice fat man was one of the world's symbols of power”.
• Who were her two partners? Part points present and conserved.

Lucky Luciano and Farouk of Egypt

Q27
• This term is used to mean ‘verbally attack or crush (a person or idea) ruthlessly and
forcefully’ and was often used by the receivers in the European Community.
• What term, that comes form one of the defining features of the attire of a political
figure?

Q28
• These are Nicolas Gentile
and his friends, some of
who live alongside him in
the countryside village of
Bucchianico.
• They plan to undertake a
long journey on foot to
recreate a fictional one.
• At which real life physical
feature will their journey
end?

Q29
• When airports were being built in Canada, it was important to establish if it had a
weather station or not.
• If that was in the affirmative, the rest of a the feature would be taken from a
railway station, or nominative custom.
• What is this unique feature that sets Canada apart?

Airport codes begin withY
• YOW for Ottawa,YWG forWinnipeg,YVR forVancouver etc.

Q30
• This house is located at the base of a hill
with a Shankarachyachara temple. The
hill was known as Gopa, or Gopadri. Later
on, brahmins were given agrahars or
dwelling places at the base of this hill,
from which the surrounding area gets its
name.
• Today the area is a centre of power (or
lack thereof) housing many residences.
• What is this area, where an ‘unholy
alliance’ gathered in 2020?

Gupkar, Srinagar
Gives its name to Gupkar residences and the Gupkar Declaration

Q31
• Reactions to the Aug 2 2007 expedition include:
A former Canadian Foreign Minister said: “This isn't the 15th century. You can't go around
the world and just plant flags and say ‘We’re claiming this territory’.”
The US State Dept communicated that planting the flag “doesn't have any legal standing or
effect on this claim.”
The Russians retorted “I was amazed by my Canadian counterpart’s statement that we are
planting flags around. We’re not throwing flags around. We just do what other discoverers
did. By the way on the Moon it was the same.”
• Immediately, on August 12, the Danish science minister Helge Sander told reporters: “The
preliminary investigations done on this matter so far are very promising for Denmark.”
• Where did Russia plant a flag?

Q32
• In Remembrance Day ceremonies in Commonwealth Countries (and also at the
ceremony at Amar Jawan Jyoti on Republic day), the two minutes silence is
bracketed by two bugle calls - the Last Post before the silence begins, and the
Rouse to signal its end.
• What is the historical and symbolic reason for playing these bugle calls before
and after the two minutes’ silence?

Symbolically transforms it
into an overnight vigil
• The Last Post is the bugle call to end the day, and
the Rouse is the bugle call to get soldiers out of bed -
hence playing these on either side of the two
minutes’ silence symbolically transforms it into an
overnight vigil.

End
Kunal Sawardekar and Omkar Dhakephalkar | BCQC September Opens

Finals: BCQC's Ajai Ragde Memorial History-Geography Quiz by Kunal Sawardekar and Omkar Dhakephalkar

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Finals: BCQC's Ajai Ragde Memorial History-Geography Quiz by Kunal Sawardekar and Omkar Dhakephalkar