A molecular biologist from Madurai, our quizmaster enjoys trivia and music and is working on a rock ballad called ‘Coffee is a Drink, Kaapi is an Emotion’. @bertyashley
Quiz | Easy like Sunday morning: What has August 11 ever given us?
George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and John Lennon of ‘The Beatles’ at Abbey Road in London in 1969.
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‘The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar’ begins on August 11, 3114 BCE, and is considered the date of creation of the universe in those cultures. The Mayan civilisation that followed it believed that the successful fourth world, where men were placed, would end on the 13th b’ak’tun (a b’ak’tun is 1,44,000 days). This translated to a particular date in the Julian calendar, which sparked an increased interest in popular culture. According to this calendar, on what date was the world supposed to end?
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Leading Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil received a patent for a frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication system on August 11, 1942. They had developed it while standing around an 88-key piano. This patent later became the basis for a modern technology that is now present in many of our devices. What technology is this that one usually asks for a password for?
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Born on this date in 1858, Christiaan Eijkman was a Dutch physician who was awarded a Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of a certain organic molecule. He discovered this when researching how poor diets led to a disease called beriberi. What did he discover that can now be taken as pills?
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James Plimpton, on August 11, 1866, leased The Atlantic House hotel in Rhode Island and converted the dining room into a playing field he called a ‘rink’. He did this to promote his invention, a four-wheeled device he got people to wear and race around on. What did he invent?
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Henry S. Parmelee obtained a patent for his invention on this day in 1874. He ran a company called ‘Mathushek Piano Manufacturing Co.’, and was worried about the amount of valuable wood that was stored in the factory. Hence, he invented the very first automatic version of a system, which we now see everywhere, from parks to golf lawns. What did he invent?
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Arguably the most famous children’s author of all time, this person was born on August 11, 1897. She could write up to 10,000 publishable words per day, which came up to 800 books. Though she excelled in tennis in school, she trained as a teacher at Ipswich High School. Who was this prolific author who started her legacy with a collection of poems called Child Whispers?
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The Austrian biochemist Erwin Chargaff, whose studies of a certain molecule at Columbia University led to the revolution known as biotechnology, was born on this day in 1905. His lecture, where he stated that the amounts of adenine and thymine in the molecule were roughly the same, as were the amounts of cytosine and guanine, was attended by James Watson and Francis Crick, who took the idea further. What was the molecule these gentlemen studied?
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On August 11, 1909, Theodore Haubner, a telegraph operator aboard the American ship SS Arapahoe, sent off a string of signals when his ship became disabled off Cape Hatteras in North Carolina. Technically, it is not an abbreviation or acronym; it is just the most convenient way to send a message. This was the very first use of what signal?
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Steve Wozniak, an American computer scientist born on August 11, 1950, pioneered the personal computer revolution. He was the designer of the first successful mass-produced microcomputer and later created the first programmable universal remote as well. Which company did he co-found with Steve Jobs in 1976 and operate out of a garage?
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On this date in 1968, The Beatles released a song which became pretty much the song to end all concerts with (even non-Beatle ones). Written to pacify Jules Lennon after his parents decided to separate, the song starts off as a ballad and then ends on an iconic loop of singing that has entire stadiums on their legs and screaming their lungs out. What song is it that just keeps getting better, better, better, yeah?
