Answers to Ian’s Trivialus 1 June 2025
Answers
Versailles
Kentucky
a) 25% - the report, in The Economist, found that in 1900, 80% of poems contained rhyme, but today rhyme has become unfashionable amongst poets.
a) – Cuba
W
Canada – he performed this function as head of state. Normally the job is carried out by Canada’s governor general. The last time a monarch performed this task in Canada was in 1977, by his mother, Queen Elizabeth. So why the change? Well, Mark Carney, the country’s PM wanted to make a statement against President Trump’s designs on making the country the 51st state.
Labyrinth
Largely true – it was only during the Renaissance that history became a principal subject. This coupled with the spread of printing made history available to a much wider audience than before.
Japan – the new rules, developed over a number of years, require parents to specify the pronunciations and to avoid absurd names. The government wishes to protect the interests of the child against having to grow up with an unusual or ridiculous name, like Pikachu.
A knight
age
a) Pioneer 10 launched in 1972 to photograph Jupiter. Communications were lost in 2003. Both Voyager spacecraft have now overtaken it in terms of distance from Earth.
President Macron of France – his wife Brigitte appeared to push his face back just as he was about to exit the plane. The move set off claims of strife between the couple, but officials dismissed these pointing out that it was entirely non-violent and that it was just part of some horsing around.
Alan Shearer with 260 goals. He initially played for Southampton (where he scored 23 goals), but this was before the Premier League. The two teams scoring points here are Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United.
A sculptor and King of Cyprus who fell in love with his own statue of Aphrodite. He is supposed to have persuaded the goddess Aphrodite, through prayers, to give life to the statue – which he married.
Brian Jones who founded the Rolling Stones as a British blues band in 1962. In time, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards effectively assumed the band’s musical direction when they became a successful songwriting team.
Richard Nixon
The Fourth Estate
C S Forester – Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn.
a) the Kiel Canal which links the North Sea to the Baltic and permits shipping to avoid having to circumvent the Jutland peninsula.