Shiny Rocks
This, the hardest natural substance.
Diamond
This, the capital of the autonomous Xinjiang region
Urumqi (Wulumuqi)
What do the following celebrities have in common? David Bowie & Imam, Samuel Jackson & LaTanya Richardson, Kevin Bacon & Kira Sedgwick, Tom Hanks & Rita Wilson.
Married for over thirty years.
The Seventh planet is unique because it rotates on its side, as if rolling.
Uranus
This reality TV show purchased a $5 painting at a flea market, later revealed to be a lost Renoir worth over $100,000.
Antiques Roadshow
Named for a Russian Tsar, an extremely rare greenish stone that turns red in incandescent light.
Alexandrite
The historical trade network between China’s western trade lands like Kashgar and the West
The Silk Road
What do these actors have in common? Errol Flynn, Ava Gardner, Rihard Burton, Tony Curtis, Peter Sellers, Johnny Depp.
Never won an Oscar.
Alongside Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, this moon orbits Jupiter, and is the most volcanically active body in the solar system.
Io
This actor blew $150 million on castles, dinosaur skulls, and exotic artifacts, before nearly filing for bankruptcy.
Nicolas Cage
Developed in 1812, the scale used to rank mineral hardness.
Mohs Scale
The highest altitude and largest plateau on Earth, often called the Roof of the World.
Tibetan Plateau
Where was Wyatt Earp living when he died?
Los Angeles
This mysterious, non-luminous substance is estimat4ed to account for about 85% of the mass of the universe.
Dark matter
James Howells bought 5,000 of these nearly two decades ago for nearly nothing, promptly lost the hard drive, and discovered they were worth millions years later.
Bitcoin
Found only in the foothills of Kilimanjaro.
Tanzanite
The Qinghai Railway, the world’s highest altitude rail system was specifically built to connect Xining to this regional capital.
Who received the most votes for Best Actor in the 1929 Academy Awards, but was denied the Oscar?
Rin Tin Tin
Sometimes called failed stars because they are too large to be planets, but not massive enough to sustain the nuclear fusion of hydrogen in their cores.
Brown dwarfs
Mel Fisher located a long-lost one of these, said to contain hundreds of millions in gold and emeralds.
Shipwreck (Nuestra Senora de Atocha)
Shiny, rainbow-colored, organic gem forming in the fossilized shells of ancient marine mollusks.
Ammolite
This range of mountains splits Southwestern China in half, between the Tarim and Qinghai Basins.
Kunlun Mountains
This New York-born accountant and tax specialist made his name in the Northern Virginia tennis scene.
Barry Hermann
These super-magnetized, rapidly rotating neutron stars emit beams of electromagnetic radiation from their poles, which appear as blips to us here on Earth.
Pulsars
(NO ERIN) Lillian Thomas Pratt, a Virginian Russan history fanatic, spent years collecting five of these after the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917; they now sit in the VMFA.
Faberge Eggs