Five questions about St Andrew(s) – Quick Quiz answers

By British Expat, 29 November 2013

We asked you five quick trivia questions about St Andrew(s). Here are the answers:

1. What is the meaning of the name Andrew?
   Manly or brave – from the Greek ἀνδρεία, meaning “manhood, valour”. The name Andrew appears to have been a popular one in Palestine in Roman times – no Hebrew or Aramaic name is recorded for the apostle Andrew.
2. Which other country celebrates St Andrew’s feast day as its national day?
   Barbados, which obtained its independence from the United Kingdom on 30 November 1966. Its highest national award is also named after the saint, and a fist holding two sugar cane stalks in a St Andrew’s cross surmounts the country’s Coat of Arms.
3. St Andrews in Fife is the home of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews, regarded as the “Home of Golf”. How many courses does the club own?
   None! There are seven courses in the St Andrews Links: the famous Old Course, the New Course (which is actually the second oldest), the Jubilee Course (the longest, opened for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897), the Eden Course, the Balgove Course, the Strathtyrum Course, and the Castle Course (the newest, opened 2008). But all of them are publicly owned and administered by the St Andrews Links Trust.
4. The flag of Scotland famously bears a white saltire (St Andrew’s Cross) on a blue field. The same flag with the colours reversed is the ensign of which country’s navy?
   Russia. The flag was originally adopted as the flag of the Imperial Russian Navy founded by Tsar Peter the Great. The Soviet Navy had an ensign consisting of a red star and a red hammer and sickle side by side on a white field, with a broad light blue stripe at the bottom of the flag. When the Russian Navy was reconstituted in January 1992, it reverted to the Imperial Navy’s ensign.
5. Which English professional football club plays at St Andrew’s?
   Birmingham City. The club moved from its old ground in Muntz Street in Small Heath in 1906 because it was too small. To form a base for the Spion Kop (which, unusually for a “Kop”, is at the side of the pitch rather than at one end), the club opened the ground as a tip and charged local residents to leave their rubbish there. The £800 earned then was the equivalent of £43,000 in 1994, when the ground was redeveloped; unfortunately, decontaminating the tip cost £250,000!

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