Five general knowledge questions 3 – Quick Quiz answers

By British Expat, 25 February 2017

We asked you five pot-luck general knowledge questions. Here come the answers!

1. In Tudor times, what influential post did Will Sommers hold?
   He was a court jester. Henry VIII of England offered him a position at court in 1525, and he soon rose to become Henry’s favourite. He remained at court through the subsequent reigns of Edward VI, Mary and Elizabeth, retiring after Elizabeth’s coronation.
2. In 1919 the first scheduled daily international commercial air services flew to and from which British airport?
   Hounslow Heath Aerodrome. The first service was flown on 25 August to Paris’s Le Bourget airport. However, commercial services from the Heath ceased as early as March 1920, when Croydon Airport took over as London’s airport. They returned to West London in 1946 when Heathrow opened, just over a mile away from Hounslow Heath.
3. The 1964 epic war film Zulu depicts which battle?
   Rorke’s Drift. The day after the Zulus’ rout of the invading British Army at Isandhlwana on 22 January, a force of approximately 3,000-4,000 Zulus attacked the mission station at Rorke’s Drift, a support garrison defended by fewer than 160 men. The battle for the station started at 4.20pm and lasted overnight; by the time the Zulus withdrew at 7am the next morning, 350 of them were dead and approximately 500 wounded, for the loss of 17 dead and 15 wounded British soldiers.
4. Who created and wrote the British TV sitcom Only Fools And Horses?
   John Sullivan. Born in Balham in South London in 1946, his first success as a writer was with Citizen Smith in the late 1970s, but Only Fools…, which ran from 1981-2003 and spawned a spinoff (The Green Green Grass) and a prequel (Rock & Chips), is what he’s most remembered for. He died in 2011.
5. What is catfishing?
   It’s the creation of a fake social media profile to deceive others into a relationship, often but not always for fraudulent financial gain. Romance fraud in the UK parted 3,889 victims from £39 million in 2016. (It’s not to be confused with fishing for catfish using only your bare arm, which is called noodling.)

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