Answers to Ian’s Trivialus 10 August 2025
Answers
Autostrada
The atomic bombing of the Japanese city Hiroshima.
RMS Lusitania
Jean-Paul Sartre - a key figure in the philosophy of existentialism.
Sydney Sweeney – Jeans – American Eagle. The use of an attractive actress, flaunting her beauty, and attributing it to the genes inherited from her parents, was turned into a racist, white supremacist rant.
Australian Rules Football – a full contact sport between two teams of 18 players. The most popular football code sport in Australia.
c) – South Africa, at almost 30% of the workforce, it is two percentage points above second-placed Djibouti. A prime example of corruption hobbling potential.
True
Robert Frost
The Roman emperor Hadrian (AD 76 – 138) – the Antonine Wall – shorter, and much further north, it was more a turf fortification than an established wall. The wall stretched across the narrowest segment of Scotland between the Firths of Clyde and Forth. It was built on the command of Hadrian’s successor, Antoninus Pius, in AD 142.
Riser
Buy Now, Pay Later – a facility not unlike hire purchase, but typically a short-term financing scheme, where the consumer pays a portion of the asking price with the remainder recouped with a series of payments over a defined period. In most cases there is no interest charge over and above the purchase price, unlike hp or credit card purchases.
The Carpenters
b) – Belgrade, the capital of Serbia.
In Alaska – but judging form Trump’s initial comments about what will be needed to appease Putin, and Zelensky’s non-negotiable issues, it seems that Trump has some time before he can hope to copy Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize.
The probability of throwing a combination of seven is 6 out of 36, or 1/6. To convert a probability to odds, divide the probability of the event by the probability of the event not occurring. So we have 1/6 (probability of seven) ÷ 5/6 (probability of not a seven) which is 5-1 odds.
Roald Dahl
Halley’s Comet – it was last seen in 1986 and is next due in 2061.
Michael Caine – Educating Rita (1983). He used it in the film as a joke given that the phrase had by that date been attributed to him. Caine claims to have never used the phrase himself, adding that the source was Peter Sellers who used it for a bit of fun on a telephone answering machine while impersonating Caine. The joke took on a life of its own and people assumed Caine had originated it.
Annus horribilis – or, in the elegant prose of the Sun’s headline the next day, One’s Bum Year.