This week's questions have been gleaned from, or inspired by, those set for use in the Cup and Plate finals of the 2016–17
season in Stockport Quiz League, and in the final week of the League season (Week 18).
My thanks go to the Horse & Farrier, Heaton Moor Rugby Club, the Printers and the Star.
| What's the only NATO member state that doesn't have a standing army? |
 |
Iceland |
| What was invented in 1947 by Valerie Hunter Gordon (née Ferranti – grand–daughter of Sebastian de
Ferranti, founder of the British electrical engineering firm) following the birth of the third of her six children? |
|
The disposable nappy |
| William 'Billy' Bishop, a World War I flying ace and World War II Air Marshal,
gave his name to a regional airport
serving which Commonwealth city? |
|
Toronto |
| Which London Borough includes Wimbledon and the All England Lawn Tennis Club? |
|
Merton |
| The city of Battle Creek, Michigan (population 52,347 in 2010) is best known as the home of which major company, that
was founded there in 1906? |
|
Kellogg's |
| Whose major film appearances included Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, The Girl Can't Help It,
The Wayward Bus, Too Hot to Handle, and Promises! Promises! – all released between 1957 and 1963? |
|
Jayne Mansfield |
| Oak Ridge Cemetery, in Springfield, Illinois, is the second most visited cemetery in the United States –
after Arlington National Cemetery – largely because it's the last resting place of which American icon? |
|
Abraham Lincoln |
| Who narrated BBC Television's original 1970s series of The Wombles? |
|
Bernard Cribbins |
| In which European city is the concert hall known as the Musikverein (literally 'Music Association') –
home to the city's famous orchestra? |
|
Vienna |
| Which pop–rock group, formed in 1975, was named after the boyhood gang of folk singer and songwriter Woody Guthrie,
as described in his 1943 autobiography Bound for Glory? |
|
Boomtown Rats |
| Which topical, satirical comedy programme, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 since 1998, is presented by Steve Punt and Hugh
Dennis, and features material by Marcus Brigstock, John Holmes and Mitch Benn (among others)? |
|
The Now Show |
| The statement that "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" is often
attributed to which eighteenth–century Anglo–Irish statesman and philosopher (despite a complete lack of evidence)? |
|
Edmund Burke |
| The supermarket chain Aldi was founded in 1946 in which German city, whose name is literally German for 'to
eat'? |
|
Essen |
| What was the only act to appear on the first two versions of Do They Know It's Christmas? (in 1984 and 1989)? |
|
Bananarama |
| In the BBC television sitcom Peter Kay's Car Share, what was the name of the radio station that John and
Kayleigh always listened to? |
|
Forever FM |
| John Blackthorne, an English pilot serving on the Dutch warship Erasmus, is the central character in which
bestselling novel of 1975? |
|
Shōgun |
| Flowers in the Rain, by The Move, was famously the first record to be played on Radio 1. But what was the
first record to be played on Radio 2? |
|
The Sound of Music |
| Tate Britain's most visited exhibition to date was a 2017 retrospective of the works of which artist? |
|
David Hockney |
| Which Assyrian king (whose name means "the God of the Moon has destroyed the brothers") destroyed Babylon
in 689 BC, having failed to take Jerusalem in 701 BC – as described in the Bible, and in a famous poem by Lord Byron, first published in
1815? |
|
Sennacherib |
| On which island in the South Shetland group (off Antarctica) did Sir Ernest Shackleton and the crew of the
Endurance land on three lifeboats in 1916, after the ship was crushed in the ice and sank? |
|
Elephant Island |
| Heelis – a new office building, completed in 2005 as the home of the National Trust – is in which English town? |
|
Swindon |
| The sixth largest moon of Saturn (with a mean diameter slightly over 500 km) is believed to fulfil many of the conditions
necessary to support life, including an ocean of hot liquid water underneath its surface of water ice. What's the name of this body? |
|
Enceladus |
| Prosecco – the village that gave its name to "the party wine of choice" – is now a suburb of
which Italian city? |
|
Trieste |
| What is the world's fourth largest island, and the largest that's a single sovereign state in its own right? |
|
Madagascar |
| Who wrote the "robinsonade" children's novel Masterman Ready, or The Wreck of the Pacific (first
published in 1841)? |
|
Captain (Frederick) Marryat |
| The "city" of Maplewood has been home to the 3M Company (an American multinational) since 1962. It's
effectively a suburb of which American state capital, where the company had been based for the previous 52 years? |
|
St. Paul, Minnesota |
| Which Greek city has been nicknamed 'the mother of Israel' by its Jews, and 'the Jerusalem of the Balkans'
by others – having a large Jewish population, particularly since 1492 when Jews were expelled from Castile and Aragon? |
|
Thessaloniki (Salonica) |
| Who was the elder son of Alfred the Great, and his successor as King of Wessex in AD 899? |
|
Edward (the Elder) |
| What collective name, from the Greek for 'fortunate islands', is used to refer to the Azores, Madeira, the
Canary Islands, and Cape Verde? |
|
Macaronesia |
| Which US president, under pressure from Congress in opposition to British policy regarding the impressment of
British–born American citizens, declared war on the United Kingdom in 1812? |
|
James Madison |
And finally (this one has a long but definitive answer, which doesn't fit the normal format for these pages):
