Tag: literature

The answers to my earlier post are shown in bold below..

1. True—Male platypuses have spurs on their hind feet that deliver painful venom making them one of only a few species of venomous mammals.
   

   

2. False—Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in Litchfield, Connecticut. Stowe, an American writer and philanthropist, is best known for her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which significantly impacted public opinion against slavery and is considered a contributing factor to the American Civil War. Growing up in a family of intellectuals and abolitionists, Stowe’s experiences in Cincinnati, Ohio, and her interactions with fugitive slaves deeply influenced her writing.
   

   

3. False—Yogi first appeared on Hanna-Barbera’s The Huckleberry Hound Show in 1958.
   

   

4. True—a bat mitzvah is a solemn ceremony held in some synagogues where a girl of 12 to 13 years of age is formally accepted as an adult member of the Jewish community. It is equivalent to a boy’s bar mitzvah.
   

   

5. True—Roadrunners, or chaparral birds, are two species of fast-running ground cuckoos found in deserts across the southwestern and south-central United States, Mexico and Central America. The roadrunner, popularised by Warner Bros. cartoons, is depicted as faster than coyotes, but in reality, coyotes are twice as fast. The cartoons also perpetuate the misconception that roadrunners say “meep, meep”.
   
   

   

6. False—Sequoia is a genus of redwood coniferous trees. Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, is a large, hairy mythical creature said to inhabit forests in North America. It holds significant cultural importance in American and Canadian folklore.

Spaghetti tree

Why Spaghetti Tree? The BBC’s 1957 April Fools’ Day hoax, broadcast on the current-affairs programme Panorama, featured a convincing three-minute segment showcasing a family in southern Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from “spaghetti trees”. The report, which claimed the eradication of the dreaded spaghetti weevil had resulted in a bumper crop, was given credibility by being voiced by respected journalist Richard Dimbleby. At the time, spaghetti was relatively unfamiliar to the British public, prompting many viewers to contact the BBC for tips on cultivating their own spaghetti trees. This cleverly executed prank has since been hailed by CNN as

“undoubtedly the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled.”

—CNN.

April 1. Some of these may be true, indeed they may all be, but on the other hand they may, some or all, be false. Don’t be fooled!

1. True or false: a platypus, aka a duck-billed platypus, is a venomous mammal.
2. True or false: novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama?
3. True or false: Yogi Bear made his television debut in The Bugs Bunny Show.
4. True or False: A bat mitzvah is a coming-of-age ritual in Judaism.
5. True or false: The roadrunner is one of two species of fast-running ground cuckoos.
6. True or false: Sequoia is another name for Bigfoot, the legendary creature from the forests of North America’s Pacific Northwest.

Good luck! I will post the answers later today.