US PRESIDENTS
Which president was elected as the 46th president of the US?
Joe Biden
A painting by this artist shows a home he shared with Paul Gauguin and is called The Yellow House. A cypress tree and swirling clouds feature in a nightscape he painted in an asylum. What Dutch-born painter who mostly worked in late 19th-century France created Starry Night?
Vincent Van Gogh
This was the first war in which the U.S. funded its military by selling liberty bonds. During this war, the A.E.F. was commanded by General “Black Jack” Pershing. The sinking of the Lusitania by Germany was a factor leading the U.S. to enter what global war in 1917?
World War I
Obelus is the name for the mathematical symbol that has a horizontal line with a dot above and a dot below it. Which arithmetic operation is the sign used for?
division
Chrysus was a minor god of this substance. The Hesperides guarded a tree that produced fruit made of this substance. Dionysus gave a king of Phrygia the ability to turn objects into this substance. Being touched by Midas turned objects into what precious metal?
gold
Before this president’s inauguration, his life was threatened in the Baltimore Plot. This man won the presidency by defeating John Breckinridge, the southern Democrats’ nominee, and his old Illinois rival, Stephen Douglas. What 16th president led the Union in the Civil War?
Abraham Lincoln
A man in this play states that “our little life / is rounded with a sleep” after musing, “We are such stuff / as dreams are made on.” In this play, the spirit Ariel and the monstrous slave Caliban serve the sorcerer Prospero. What Shakespeare play begins with the title storm?
The Tempest
The first man-made probe to land on the Moon, Luna 2, was launched in 1959 by what Communist country that also launched Sputnik?
Soviet Union (USSR)
What part of the brain deals with hearing and language?
Temporal lobe
This force balances the centrifugal force at Lagrange points. General relativity explains this force as the warping of spacetime. On Earth’s surface, this force causes an acceleration of 9.8 meters per second squared. Name this attraction between objects with mass.
gravity
Which president served in Congress after his time in office and suffered a fatal stroke on the floor of the House Chamber?
John Quincy Adams
Opera singer Joan Sutherland had the “coloratura” type of this vocal range. Name this highest of the four standard vocal ranges.
soprano
What state, where Denmark Vesey planned a slave rebellion, was the first to secede from the U.S. and is home to Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor?
South Carolina
A location on this body that was named after Octavia Butler in 2021 is within the Jezero crater. A vehicle that has been on this body for more than 300 sols carried the robotic helicopter Ingenuity. In 2021 NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on what “red planet”
Mars
What character, who was named for Nintendo’s lawyer, is a native of Planet Popstar who often fights King Dedede and is able to inhale his enemies?
Kirby
Which president worked to save football from being banned in the United States?
Theodore Roosevelt
This character sees a group of men playing “nine-pins” who may be part of Henry Hudson’s old crew. This man is surprised to discover that villagers no longer honor George III and that his beard is a foot long. What character in a Washington Irving story sleeps for 20 years?
Rip Van Winkle
In 1903 this country declared independence from Colombia. Name this Central American country that immediately authorized the building of a namesake U.S.-controlled canal.
Panama
The “societies” of this class of animals were the subject of a 1971 book by biologist E. O. Wilson. Within this class, eusociality is characteristic of orders like Hymenoptera and can be seen in their colonies. What class of six-legged invertebrates includes bees and ants?
insects
What layer of the atmosphere from which Joseph Kittinger made a 20–mile-high skydive in 1960 lies above the troposphere and contains the ozone layer?
stratosphere
Which President was a Rhodes Scholar who studied at Georgetown and Yale Law School?
Bill Clinton
What composer of The Thunderer, Fairest of the Fair, and Semper Fidelis was nicknamed the “March King,” and also composed The Stars and Stripes Forever?
John Phillip Sousa
This emperor began building the Domus Aurea on the Oppian Hill. This Roman emperor’s suicide in AD 68 began the “Year of the Four Emperors” and may have been accompanied by the line “what an artist dies in me.” What Roman emperor legendarily played his fiddle while Rome burned?
Nero
This function of n is the number of permutations of n distinct items. For the integers from 1 to 5, this function outputs 1, 2, 6, 24, and 120. What function denoted by an exclamation mark gives the product of 1 times 2 times 3 times 4 and so on up through the input?
factorial function
What daughter of Zeus, celebrated with her mother in the Eleusinian mysteries, ate pomegranate seeds that obliged her to leave each year for Hades?
Persephone