Useless Trivia - 1st one to answer gets to ask

P.S. I posted before I noticed Samiam's post. I got my trivia from the book I mentioned. I had no other information. So I looked at Wikipedia (which may or may not always be reliable) and it says Chimborazo both in the entry on Chimborazo and in the entry for Equatorial Bulge. So I'll still say Chimborazo, but I will not bet my life on it! (Nor will I ever attempt to climb Chimborazo, Everest, Huascaran, Denali, or an aluminum ladder higher than about 15 feet.)

P.P.S. A guide/friend was telling me I ought to climb Kilimanjaro, which is a trek, not a technical climb. But either the Weathers book, or some other I was reading, says that after about the age of 50 it becomes much more difficult to climb high mountains, so I think I'll stick with British Columbia, where peaks tend to be in the eight to nine-and-a-half thousand foot range.

 

I thought the Dead Sea was salty, but wet.

 

global climate change has made sure the dead sea is dry... there is also the Ural which used to be one of the largest lakes/seas in the world, it has lost something like 80% of its size in recent times (all an estimate since googling is verboten)

**edit**

ok... shoot me...i googled... its actually the ARAL sea and its "only" lost 75% of its size since 1960. which isnt much really...only like us losing Lakes Erie AND Ontario!!

http://visearth.ucsd.edu/VisE_Int/aralsea/

ooooh crap!! there goes my trivia question!!

 

Perhaps it would have been well to answer the question The region of the Dead Sea. The region is dry. The Dead Sea itself is still wet, though very salty.

 

Ok I'll have a go, but I'll make it an easy one.
The biggest machine on earth was built to look for the smallest and rarest thing in the universe.

What is it and what is it looking for?

 

I think it's the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and they'd hope to find the Higgs boson.

 

You are thinking correctly Daniel.

And since we're all still here a few hours after the first particle collisions I think it is safe to say that it will not destroy the planet as was forecast by some.

Tag. You're it.

 

Yes I did leave the starting blocks early and you get two bonus points for catching that (Simon says). So what was my question again...something about a dry spot?

 

I have been asleep at the job; I forgot I had to ok my question's answer too. I think someone got it. It was the shore of the dead sea.

 

In the days before the world championship chess match was run by an organization that selected the official challenger by competition among the hopefuls, and then required the standing champion to play the challenger or forfeit his title (as happened to Bobby Fischer when he refused to play Spasky for the second time) the champion played at his own discretion against worthy opponents. It was a gentleman's sport where you were expected to play any challenger considered to be at the requisite level.

One world champion, however, who had seldom if ever lost a match, and who generally played against all comers, famously refused to give a rematch to the former champion, from whom he himself had won the title because this was the only player to whom he had ever lost in tournament play.

Name the two players: The one who refused, during many years and under various bogus excuses, to play his one real rival; and the one who had lost the championship and was never given the opportunity for a rematch.

If there is no correct answer by around this time tomorrow (give or take) I'll give a hint.

 

Not a nibble? Not even a guess? We have no chess players here?????

Okay, the promised hint:

The player who was too afraid and too ungentlemanly to allow his lifelong rival a rematch for the world championship was a Russian, and the unfortunate fellow who spent so many years begging for a chance to regain the title was a Cuban. The following is my opinion, which might not be shared by other chess enthusiasts: The Cuban, though he was a brilliant player, played games which in my opinion were rather dull: tedious positional duels. The Russian played flamboyant games full of unfathomable combinational complexities.

 

i know of which you speak, both parties, but the names have completely eluded me. didnt one party end up dying or going into seclusion during the duck and dodge shenanigans?

 

Both died long ago, without ever having a rematch.

 

Okay. For this chess question only you may use Google and any other web resource, but you may not ask any actual person, such as for example, your local neighborhood chess geek or drinking buddy or pen pal or email pen pal or anybody else.

Come on folks...

 

Sigh! For lack of an answer, and even lack of interest (only Dave has posted since I asked the question) here is the answer:

Alexander Alekhine won the world championship from Jose Raul Capablanca and refused ever to allow a rematch.

In going to Wikipedia to double-check the spelling of his name, I note that chess champions were not always such gentleman as I had thought. Capablanca himself had demanded that any challenger raise a $10,000 purse, more than half of which would go to the defending champion even if he lost, and Alekhine was able to play Capablanca only after some Argentine businessmen put up the money. That would be almost $400,000 in today's dollars.

This I had remembered, but left it out of the question because I could not remember the numbers: Alekhine was also famous for playing simultaneous blindfold exhibition matches: his opponents sat at boards and called out their moves to him, while he was not able to see any of the boards. Once he played thirty-two simultaneous blindfold games, winning 19, drawing 9, and losing 4. (My erroneous memory, from my high-school chess mentor, was that he typically won all of them, and that he did far better in his lifetime tournament play than the article records.)

New question to follow...

 

Back to the subject of climbing, since I'm still reading about that.

The following was written in 2003, so was true as of then. I do not know if it still is. Give the name of the climber.

"In California's Yosemite Valley, on El Capitan's 3,000-foot face, is a route called The Nose. Traditionally, climbers have spent days scaling it, hauling up gear behind them in sacks, whacking bolts into the rock to aid their progress, and sleeping in tiny tents pinned to the face. In 1994 [BLANK] became the first person to "free climb" The Nose, using a rope and equipment only [for protection] from falling, and scaling it in twenty-three hours straight."

Name the climber.

 

P.S. I left out the next line from the quote, and that is the part I don't know if it is still true:

"It was a feat that to date no one has repeated."

Sorry about the omission and any confusion that may have caused.

 

Nothing??? Nobody??? Okay. It was Lynn Hill.

Just one more, and then someone else will have to ask a question, whether anybody gets this one or not:

At the time of Charlemagne, Latin in present-day France and Spain and Italy was evolving into old French, old Spanish, and old Italian. They were still close to Latin, but pronunciation was changing as the languages evolved, and even grammar was changing, and many people had begun to speak Latin very differently than had been the case earlier, so much so that "Latin" as spoken in the various countries would be unintelligible to people from a different country. That is, Latin as spoken in Paris would not be understood by someone living in Barcelona, etc.

Charlemagne was very worried about this development and tried very hard to bring back "correct" Latin grammar and pronunciation.

Why? What was his concern?

 

Apparently nobody likes my trivia questions. 25 hours without a post!?!?!? I'll quit asking them. But somebody has to post something before I'll give the answer to the last one.

 

bummer...was out of town...knew the climbing thing. saw a thing on TV on one of the news magazine shows about her...like Dateline or something....something you did not mention that was very prominent in the story was that not only has SHE done something no other man has done before or since, she was female.

as far as the language thing.... Charlemange was a religious ...umm... ahh... person we shall say... i venture to say that moving away from latin which is regarded as being a more religoius language would mean that the people would adopted other languages would be moving away from God. now, i cant remember if ?Pepin? (unsure of spelling here) was the father or the son, but one or the other was a major force in the religious guidance of the day.