1. Today, April 9, in 837 A.D., this visitor came so close to Earth that it alarmed the Chinese Emperor. It hasn’t come closer since. Author Mark Twain correctly predicted his own death at the age of 75 saying that he was born when the visitor came so he would die the next time it came. Who is this punctual visitor?
2. Tomorrow, April 10, is Siblings Day. (So say something nice to your sibling.☺) Victor Richardson was Australia’s vice-captain during the Bodyline series of 1932-33. Three of his grandsons played Test cricket and were also responsible for the first instance of two brothers scoring centuries in the same Test innings. Which talented family is this?
3. Rohini Hattangadi was born on April 11, 1951, in Pune. An acclaimed theatre actress, she was offered a role in a 1982 movie which went on to win her a BAFTA award. The movie itself got India its first Oscar. The quizmaster just found out that the character she played shared Hattangadi’s birthday as well! So which character got Hattangadi her ‘Best Actress in Supporting Role’ award at the BAFTAs?
4. Vostok 2 was a Russian spacecraft which Gherman Titov took in to orbit for 24 hours. He was given this job because he was physically stronger than a friend of his. That friend got to pilot Vostok 1, which entered orbit on April 12 for a much shorter time than Vostok 2. Why was Titov disappointed that he was stronger and who was this friend of his?
5. On April 13, 1919, a group of people gathered in Amritsar to celebrate Baisakhi, the day when Guru Gobind Singh founded the Khalsa Panth. What happened next led to Rabindarnath Tagore renouncing his knighthood, Mahatma Gandhi returning his Kaiser-i-Hind (emperor of India) medal and the re-evaluation of the use of the army by the British. What is this bleak moment in history known as?
6. Many years ago on April 14, a comedy play, Our American Cousin , was staged in Washington D.C. on Good Friday. In the audience was a good-looking actor called John, who just the month before had performed on that very stage. He knew the play well and also that there was a particular line in act three, scene two, that always drew loud laughter. Choosing that moment he triggered an event that changed history. What did John do?
7. This person has been rightly described thus: “his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, while the man himself mysterious and remote”. This unschooled, illegitimate child of a peasant woman went on to become a hyper-genius whose contributions to science, art, technology and culture are immortal. An ambidextrous dyslexic, he wrote manuscripts that we are still deciphering. And he was the first human on record who correctly explained why the sky is blue. Who is this extraordinary human who was born on April 15?
8. A sailor called David Blair was reassigned from one ship to another at the last moment. He was deemed not experienced enough for this ‘magnificent ship’. He departed, disappointed, and in his haste, accidentally carried away a key to a locker which contained a pair of binoculars. The man who would have used it, Fred Fleet, later said that if he had had the binoculars, he would have seen something earlier and averted the disaster of April 15, 1912. What would the locked binoculars have spotted?
9. On April 16, 1900, the first book of postage stamps was released. Till today, collecting stamps is a popular hobby. If you were to go through them all, which is the only one you would come across that did not have the name of the issuing country on it and why?
10. Born on April 16, 1889, this gentleman was the first actor to be on the cover of Time magazine. Very interestingly, he won only one Oscar, that too for best music for the film Limelight . The Americans thought he was a Communist and removed his star from the Hollywood Walk of Fame as well. Who is this actor?
Answers
Halley’s Comet
The Chappell brothers, Ian and Greg, scored a century in both innings versus England in 1972. Their brother Trevor scored a century for Australia against India in the 1983 World Cup
Kasturba Gandhi (also born on April 11), in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi
The friend was Yuri Gagarin who became the first man in space. The Russians needed stronger cosmonaut Titov for the longer but less famous mission
The Jallianwallah Bagh massacre
John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States of America
Leonardo da Vinci (Happy 565th birthday, sir!)
The iceberg that hit and sunk the Titanic
Great Britain, because they were the first to produce stamps. A profile of the reigning monarch is all that was required for identification of Britain’s stamps
Charlie Chaplin
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’.
