Ups and Downs!

Otis free-fall safety demonstration in 1853.
Wikipedia

All of the following relate to today, 23 March.

  1. On 23 March 1857 the first commercial elevator was installed in a New York City department store, it was powered by…
    • Steam
    • Electricity
    • Water
  2. Born today in 1910, a Japanese film director who according to Encyclopædia Britannica ‘won worldwide acclaim with subtle, brilliantly composed films, such as Rashōmon (1950) and
    Seven Samurai (1954), that combined Japanese historic themes with a Western sense of action and drama”; he was…
    • Yasujirō Ozu
    • Ishirō Honda
    • Akira Kurosawa
  3. On this date a nationwide television address in the US announced a space based defence system against nuclear attacks which came to be known as “Star Wars”; the address was made by…
    • President Jimmy Carter
    • President Ronald Reagan
    • President George HW Bush
  4. On this day in 1998 Titanic won 11 Academy Awards equalling the record set by…
    • All About Eve (1950)
    • Ben-Hur (1959)
    • The Godfather (1972)
  5. The space station Mir returned to Earth on 23 March. It had been launched by the Soviet space agency in 1986 with a design life expectancy of five years. In what year did it re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere?
    • 1991
    • 1996
    • 2001
Approach view of the Mir Space Station viewed from Space Shuttle Endeavour during the STS-89 rendezvous. A Progress cargo ship is attached on the left, a Soyuz manned spacecraft attached on the right. Image ID: STS089-340-035
NASA/Wikipedia

Good luck! I will post the answers later today.

Unknown's avatar

Author: Quizologist

As a retired trivia writer, editor and quiz compiler, I wholeheartedly agree with Bertrand Russell’s quote: “There’s much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.” Trivia of all sorts has always fascinated me, and for many years, I’ve written and compiled trivia for various media, including traditional TV and radio quiz shows, newspapers and magazines, apps, and other digital platforms.

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