The "Madman's Library" Round

 Absent from "The Year In Rehash" was any mention of my old London Dungeon crew's fortifying fortnightly quizzes, but only because I knew another one was happening tonight, and now it has happened and I love them all and so here's my round! It may not seem particularly seasonal, but all questions are based on information found in this excellent Christmas present I received from Uncle Martin and Aunty Veronica, so thank you Martin and Veronica, and any factual inaccuracies should be considered the fault of Edward Brooke-Hitching – sorry, Eddie. Obviously this is just the shallowest of skims into histories and cultures worth a lifetime's immersion, but that's quizzes for you. Answers as ever will be posted in the comments. Fun!

 

1.  Which of the following was the first commercially available typewriter?

    a) The Hansen

 

    b) The Victor

 

    c) The Lambert

 

 

2.

This image is from a Japanese scroll entitled He-Gassen, which roughly translates as... 

    a) "The Story of a Devil"

    b) "The Master of Winds"

    c) "The Fart Competitions" 

 

 

3.

 

 These registered markings from the sixteenth centrury prove the ownership as granted by the Crown of what (into which they were cut)?

    a) Trees

    b) Bees

    c) Swans

 

 

 4. 

 

This is an advert for the Boston Planchette, but what was it supposed to help you do?

    a) Trace images accurately from life

    b) Make drawings of nudes without having to look at them

    c) Communicate with the dead

 

 

5. 

 

 Five different animals were used to make the cover of this eighteenth-century Nepalese jhänkri (shaman) manual. Name three of them.

 

 

6.

 

 Dr. Orville Ward Owen built the above "Cipher Wheel" in an attempt to prove what?

    a) That The Bible was less than a hundred years old.

    b) That The Complete Works of Shakespeare were written by Francis Bacon.

    c) That all English people were ghosts.

 

7.  

 

 This unallowed Qu'ran was allegedly printed using 57 pints of what?

    a) Coca Cola

    b) Saddam Hussein's blood

    c) Angel's blood

8.

 

This is the largest existing medieval manuscript, the "Codex Gigas". It is said to be the work of a monk who, charged with diabolic power,...

    a) Wrote it in a single day.

    b) Wrote it over a period of a hundred years.

    c) Pulled it out of a bear.

 

9.

 

 This drawing of an "air loom" as imagined by James Tilly Matthews was produced as evidence that he should be kept in Bedlam. What did Matthews think the air loom could do?

    a) Stop time.

    b) Control people's minds using "pre-magnetism".

    c) Produce human beings using the power of love alone, without recourse to sexual intimacy, hence the barrels.

 

10. And finally... possibly to be read aloud...

 

 True or False?

 This is an actual sentence in Latin from a fourteenth-century Gothic manuscript, and reads "Mimi numinum niuium minimi munium unimium uini muniminum imminui uiui minimum volunt."