wiki-illiam #111 (scire ubi aliquid invenire possis ea demum maxima pars eruditionis est)*

[dubdobdee]

RUBRIC: welcome to the LJ wing of a quiz** sat for 111 years by some lucky schoolkids*** somewhere and etc blah blah: viz 18 themed sets of 10 questions each -- a new one every day (more or less). Don't put googled answers up till after the next question appears -- to let others show off their BRANES -- and note where they are googled (or borrowed off of rival sites with good answers). OFF WE GO!



1 During 1915:
i: who developed an innovative equine?
ii: what oversized delivery brought joy to Dolly and Marty?
iii: whose work was also recognised by Barnard and Matteucci?
iv: which two spies in the cigar business faced the firing squad on the same morning?
v: whose determination to have no hatred or bitterness for anyone would be later set in stone?
vi: which eponymous vessel met its Waterloo at the hands of an adversary, which had been an ally 100 years earlier?
vii: where did the British deployment of Red Star backfire owing to inclement weather?
viii: what yarn revealed the murderous activities of the Black Stone?
ix: which former MO to the Pennywell Colliery passed away?
x: from what disaster did PL 11 rescue the first survivors?

COMPLETED:
i: the first horse bred by a woman to win a British Classic (1918) was GAINSBOROUGH, b.1915
(googled by carsmilesteve)
ii: "Francis Albert Sinatra was born on December 12, 1915 [… to] Italian immigrants Natalina "Dolly" Garaventa, the daughter of a lithographer from Genoa, and Antonino Martino "Marty" Sinatra, the son of grape growers from Lercara Friddi, near Palermo, Sicily […]. Sinatra weighed 13.5 pounds (6.1 kg) at birth and had to be delivered with the aid of forceps, which caused severe scarring to his left cheek, neck, and ear, and perforated his ear drum, damage that remained for life."
(Answer suggested by one of (possibly) several anonymous respondents; google-confirmed by dubdobdee)
iii: The Barnard and Matteucci prizes (science prizes, specifically physics for the Matteucci) went Lawrence "Billy" Bragg in 1915.
(Prizes identified by one of (possibly) several anonymous respondents; confirmed by a querulous jauntyalan, still fed up about the contents of the 1st year undergraduate crystallography course)
iv: Two Dutchmen, Haicke Janssen and Willem Roos, posing as cigar importers, were caught spying in Portsmouth for the Germans
(googled by jeff_worrell)
v: Edith Cavell, the nurse who was executed by the German army. Her words, mentioned in the question, are inscribed on the foot of her statue outside the National Portrait Gallery in London.
(known by alextiefling)
vi: SMS Blücher was sunk by various British ships at the Battle of Dogger Bank in 1915 (Blücher having been an ally of the British at Waterloo 100 years earlier).
(half-guessed by alextiefling)
vii: Red Star was the codename the British used for chlorine gas attacks, used -- disastrously -- in Sept 1915 at Loos, where the wind took the gas back into the British trenches.
(Answer suggested by one of (possibly) several anonymous respondents; google-confirmed by dubdobdee)
viii: The Black Stone is the German gang in Buchan's The 39 Steps, pub. Sept. 1915.
(googled by dubdobdee)
ix: Doctor W. G. Grace (more famous as a cricketer) tended patients at the Easton pit disaster in 1886 (one of the mines was called the Pennywell). He died 23 October 1915.
(Answered by one of (possibly) several anonymous respondents; google-confirmed by dubdobdee)
x: PL 11 is a post office boat and I'm quite certain one was first to the Lusitania site. Confirmation and image.
(Answered by one of (possibly) several anonymous respondents; google-confirmed by dubdobdee)

*= latin for: "real actual knowledge is knowin how to google**** stuff"
**as published every year in the guardian just before xmas (answers some time in the new year)
***all the boys of king williams school on the isle of man sit it sight unseen then take the paper home during holidays and look stuff up to increase their score and retake it
****the setters used to claim they've checked nothing is INSTANTLY googleable, tho this claim seems quite porous...

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i: might be something to do with the (military) tank, which i think began as a way to pull stuff rather than to shoot stuff
x: is this the sinking of the lusitania?

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

Completely concur on x.

Tanks are my first guess here too, but tank development had been going on for a fair while in different strands, so I'd guess some particulat innovation. Gun carriers?

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

I just say that because hefting the big artillery was something you needed the horses for, until gun carriages took over.

(for tank development, read armoured cars, atvs, etc. I have NO idea when these were put together though)

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

v is Edith Cavell, the nurse who was executed by the German army. Her words, mentioned in the question, are inscribed on the foot of her statue outside the National Portrait Gallery in London.

vi I think vi relates to the ships HMS Wellington and SMS Blucher (because that would be two who were allies 100 years earlier, at Waterloo, but now enemies) and I'm going to guess that Wellington sank Blucher this time.

random musings

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

viii: what yarn revealed the murderous activities of the Black Stone?
this sounds fictional (and exciting!)

ii: what oversized delivery brought joy to Dolly and Marty?
a 12lb baby?

iii: whose work was also recognised by Barnard and Matteucci?

ALSO - suggests that there was something or someone else that 'recognised' this work. Publisher, performance, prize?

vii: where did the British deployment of Red Star backfire owing to inclement weather?\

Were you trying to deploy COMMUNISM THE RED MENACE a little ahead of time???

White Star -> shipping line. Was this a related thing? When I actually try to think about it I just get this song in my head: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSWjOoXS-Pk (warning gloomy country music click at yr own peril)

RE: random musings

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Could ii) then be Robert (?) thingybob, tallest dude ever, who was on page 2 of my 1989 Guinness Book of Records despite being Long Dead. He was wearing 1940s style get-up in said picture and looked about 30 odd, so 1915 sounds about right?

RE: random musings

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Ah balls, he was born 1918. Never mind! Everyone remember this for Wiki-illiam 2018.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

Googled iii - yes ALSO is clue that there were other recognitions THAT YEAR.

I know of the person but would never have retained memory of these awards

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

(Also hi, look annual reminder of live journal and stuff from over 5 years ago)

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

I know! Mark emailed the link and i was all OH YEAH LJ??

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

so yeah iii is Lawrence Bragg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lawrence_Bragg who I knew all too much about as he basically defined my entire 1st year undergraduate crystallography course (though thankfully that was just 1 of 4 exams sat)

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

BILLY BRAGG

[(Anonymous)]

Dolly and Marty were the parents of Frank Sinatra, and it's in the right decade for sure.

The Barnard and Matteucci prizes are in science - physics, specifically, for the Matteucci. Probably the Nobel Prize winner from that year also got the Barnard and Matteucci prizes.

Red Star was the codename the British used for Chlorine gas attacks. I suspect it blew back.

WG Grace is the doctor in 9.

PL 11 is a post office boat and I'm quite certain one was first to the Lusitania site.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

(can i request that entrants append some kind of recognisable cognomen in the body of their answer posts if they aren't signing in to LJ? just to avoid a multiple carcrash of anons…)

(good answers btw)

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

GOOGLED (but we should have guessed):

viii: The Black Stone is the German gang in Buchan's The 39 Steps, pub. Sept. 1915. The KWiki-illiam setter is OBSESSED with Buchan and knows his works OFF BY HEART. THERE IS NEVER NOT A BUCHAN QUESTION, and this probable won't be the only one.

[alextiefling.livejournal.com]

I was wondering about this, but was totally misled by my memories of the film version in which the Thirty-Nine Steps is the name of the gang.

[belecrivain.livejournal.com]

I am nearly completely useless here. Does the cigar-business question involve Mata Hari somehow?

(this is Jessica from TSJ, using a threadbare excuse to say hi)

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

I googled Mata Hari and cigars to check this. Turns out that it's nothing to do with her but I think I found the answer by accident in the process via a Dorling Kindersley book: two Dutchmen, Haicke Janssen and Willem Roos posing as cigar importers, were spying in Portsmouth for the Germans:
http://www.stephen-stratford.co.uk/janssen_and_roos.htm

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

Horsey googling:

Gainsborough was first horse bred by a woman to win a British Classic:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gainsborough_(horse)

(And then the triple crown later in the season!)

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

Although that season was 1918! Horse was born in 1915 though [ahem]...