1. Which type of machine first took to the skies at Lake Constance near Friedrichshafen, Germany, on this date in 1900?
2. In fiction, what was Admiral Benbow?
3. Hassan Rouhani is the new President of which Asian country?
4. In the world of computers, what record does China’s ‘Tianhe-2’ currently hold?
5. If Alaska is the largest of the 50 US States, then which is the smallest?
6. How has American Edward Snowden made international front-page news in the recent past?
7. Kimberlite, an inequigranular igneous rock, is best known for sometimes containing which precious commodity?
8. Name the capital of the country where Po is the longest river?
9. If it is Bruce Wayne for Batman, then Barry Allen is which superhero?
10. The coagulation of which protein gives us cheese?
11. In a controversial move, which country’s lawmakers have approved a $40-billion cross-country shipping canal linking Pacific and Atlantic Oceans?
12. By what other common name is the High Efficiency Video Coding, the successor to the present H.264 or Mpeg-4 video standard, also known?
13. Which prominent European landmark grows by six inches during summer and shrinks similarly during cold weather?
14. What type of a bovine is a dzho?
15. In Venice, what is the “Triumphal Quadriga”?
Answers: 1. The Zeppelin; 2. The inn in ‘Treasure Island’; 3. Iran; 4. It’s the world’s fastest supercomputer with a processing speeds of 33.86 petaflops; 5. Rhode Island; 6. He is the whistleblower who has revealed the secret spying program PRISM of the United States’ National Security Agency; 7. Diamond; 8. Rome; 9. The Flash; 10. Casein; 11. Nicaragua; 12. H.265; 13. Eiffel Tower; 14. Hybrid of a yak and domestic cattle; 15. Also called Horses of St. Mark’s, it is a set of bronze statues of four horses at the famed basilica.
