Sunday Quiz All about encyclopaedias
Isidore of Seville, painted by the 17th-century artist Bartolomé Esteban Murillo.
START THE QUIZ
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This book was first published on December 6, 1768 at Edinburgh. For more than 250 years it has been the most sought-after English-language general compendium of facts. It pledged to provide “ACCURATE DEFINITIONS and EXPLANATIONS, of all the Terms as they occur in the Order of the Alphabet” and had 2,500 pages. The 15th edition ,which came out in 2010 (the last printed edition), spanned 32 volumes and had 32,640 pages written by more than 100 full-time editors with more than 4,000 contributors. What book is this which most libraries have at least one copy of?
2 / 10 |
On page 1,850 of the 1975 edition of The New Columbia Encyclopedia, you would find an entry: ‘Mountweazel, Lillian Virginia, 1942-1973, American photographer, b. Bangs, Ohio. Turning from fountain design to photography in 1963...Mountweazel died at 31 in an explosion while on assignment for Combustibles magazine.’ Although Ms. Mountweazel has a Facebook page, she is non-existent. To detect what misdemeanour did The New Columbia Encyclopedia include this entry?
3 / 10 |
The Yongle Encyclopedia was commissioned by the Yongle Emperor of the Ming dynasty in 1403. It took five years to complete and finally comprised 22,937 manuscript rolls in 11,095 volumes. Currently, fewer than 400 volumes survive. Till September 9, 2007, it was the largest encyclopedia in the world. What now ubiquitous and familiar entity dethroned the Yongle Encyclopedia after 600 years, and continues to grow daily?
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Saint Isidore of Seville was one of the “last scholars of the ancient world”. He tried to compile a summa of universal knowledge in his work, Etymologiae, thereby creating one of the first encyclopaedias. This led to him being declared the patron saint of two entities that arguably rule the world of knowledge now. What is St Isidore the patron saint of?
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Arnold Stephen Jacobs Jr. is an American journalist and an exponent of ‘immersion journalism’, where he uses his own life as an experiment and writes about it. He wrote a book about one such experiment titled The Know-It-All: One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. But the earliest known person to do this feat was Fath Ali, the Shah of Persia who spent all of 1797 engaged in this marathon pursuit. What achievement is this that G.B. Shaw, Elon Musk and Bill Gates have all supposedly done?
Answer : Read the entire Encyclopædia Britannica
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6 / 10 |
The National Library of Scotland has made the first edition (1768) of the Encyclopædia Britannica available to the public. In it, a certain product is described as a luxury, with a prohibition on importing items made of it.. It could, however, be made at home for private use ‘upon three days notice given to the officer of excise, and provided no less than half an hundred weight be made at one time’. What item is this that you can now purchase everywhere?
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In the same edition, this entry made reference to only six entities as the rest of them were yet to be discovered. The first of the rest was discovered on 13 March 1781, so could make it to the seventh edition. The second entity was discovered on 23 September 1846 and was then added to the eighth edition. The final entity was discovered on 18 February 1930 and was added to the 15th edition. What were these three entities?
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This scientist, regarded as one of the greatest in physics, owes his success to the Encyclopædia Britannica. He was apprenticed to a book dealer as a teenager in the early 1800s, where he chanced upon the third edition. He read the article on electricity, which sparked in him a love for the subject, eventually leading him to discover the principles of electromagnetism. Who was this scientist who himself became an entry in the 11th edition?
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In 1915, this company issued a challenge to the public to come up with a new design for their main product. An employee of Root Glass Co. took a page from the 11th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica where there was an illustration of the ribbed, middle-bulged cocoa pod, and fittingly based his design on it. What product is this that since then has become iconic?
10 / 10 |
In 1998 this prominent guitarist wanted to read a book about anatomy by Leonardo da Vinci. He was reaching for it when the shelf broke, sending a set of encyclopaedias tumbling down on top of him. This caused three broken ribs and led to the delay of his band’s tour. He probably must have thought then ‘I can’t get no satisfaction’. Which band does he front that has been rocking and rolling since 1962?
