Second Helpings — Answers

Today’s Answers

Today’s questions are all about seconds.

One

In what decades did the following three events featuring ‘seconds’ take place?

• Second War of Schleswig: the Treaty of Vienna is signed, resulting in Denmark ceding one province each to Prussia and Austria.
• The Bosphorus Bridge in Turkey has been finished, linking Europe and Asia across the Bosphorus for a second time.
• Quebec citizens narrowly voted, 50.58% to 49.42%, to remain a province of Canada in their second referendum on national sovereignty.

Answers: 1860s, 1970s and 1990s.

• 1864: Second War of Schleswig.
• 1973: The second Bosphorus Bridge.
• 1995: Quebec’s second referendum on national sovereignty.

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Two

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is the second woman to hold Argentina’s presidency?

Answer: Argentina.

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (born 1953) was president of Argentina from 2007 to 2015 and vice-president from 2019 to 2023. A Peronist and progressive, she pursued state intervention in the economy and nationalised the energy company YPF. In 2022, she was sentenced to six years in prison for corruption involving public works contracts, a conviction upheld by Argentina’s Supreme Court in 2025. Since 2024, she has led the Justicialist Party.

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Three

How long, to the nearest year, is one billion seconds?

Answer: 32 years

• 1,000,000,000 Seconds ≈ 31.688739 Years
• 1,000,000,000 Seconds ≈ 380.26486 Months
• 1,000,000,000 Seconds ≈ 1,653.4392 Weeks
• 1,000,000,000 Seconds ≈ 16,666,667 Minutes All results rounded. Results from calculateme.com

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Four

According to a nursery rhyme’s second line, which Peter ‘had a wife but couldn’t keep her’?

Answer: Peter Peter pumpkin eater

Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,
Had a wife but couldn’t keep her;
He put her in a pumpkin shell
And there he kept her very well.

Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,
Had another and didn’t leave her;
Peter learned to read and spell,
And then he loved her very well.

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Five

Arthur M Schlesinger won his second Pulitzer for A Thousand Days, his book about whose US presidency?

Answer: John F Kennedy.

A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, a nonfiction book by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. about John F. Kennedy’s presidency. Schlesinger, who served as a special assistant to the president, provides an insider’s view of the administration’s policies, politics, and personalities, with a particular focus on Kennedy’s cabinet. Published in 1965, the book won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

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