Random trivia

IronDuke said:
Is it that disk someone found in Crete with what they assume is Minoan or earlier writing on it?
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No, it's not so ancient, and it's a book. ;)
It is told that a Holy Roman Emperor once owned this manuscript; he was a great lover of art and sciences and some famous astronomers and alchemists were in his court.
 
ABandOn said:
I fear I'm not good enough to make interesting questions...but I'll try  ;)

Who was supposed to be the author of the most famous ancient manuscript whose code isn't still deciphered? The supposition (nowadays discarded) was made by the owner who gave his name to the manuscript, as we know it today.
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Abandon, you need to clarify your question.

First of all, does the manuscript contain a code or a language? There is a significant difference. IronDuke is correct - the most ancient language which no one has been able to translate is Linear A, an ancient form of writing found on Crete and believed to be a written form of the ancient Minoan language. However, the Minoan language has been lost to the mists of time, so both the code (i.e. the written form of Linear A) and the language remain undeciphered.

Second, your question describes the manuscript as "most famous". This is a relative term, dependent upon the reader's knowledge of arcane documents. Obviously, both Duke and myself have heard about Linear A, so who is to say that the Duke is wrong? If you mean to ask about a different manuscript, please be more specific in your clues i.e. objective not subjective.
 
Ok, forget about my previous question (and sorry for giving you too generic and misleading suggestions).
all I ask now is only the name of the manuscript.
According to many people that studied it, it's written in an unknown script or code (the set of characters or graphemes), as you prefer to call it, and with a language whose structure seems very different from all of the known languages (or, anyway, a cipher that nobody, including the cryptographers that worked successfully on the "Enigma code" breach in 2nd World War, has managed to decipher).
Some experts have also supposed that it's a hoax, and that the author would have used an encryption instrument known as "Cardan grille" to produce the text.
It has many illustrations, including strange plants, naked bodies, astronomy objects, that helped to make some suppositions about the content: there can be found six sections, each one covering a different matter...astronomy, biology, herbal, and so on.
Now the manuscript is in Yale university.
 
Quick question: What do the endings .fm, .nu, .tv, .vu and .tk really stand for?
 
These are Internet country codes and are meant to represent the web-sites base country and are Federated States of Micronesia, Niue, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Tokelau respectively.

Though I doubt www.last.fm and www.gm.tv are actually based in those countries.
 
That's correct. As a matter of fact, small countries like Tuvalu make quite a lot of money with their ".tv" ending.
 
Perun said:
Are you looking for the Voynich Manuscript?
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How the bloody... do you know that stuff :blink:I consider myself knowledgeable in many subjects but these questions here are just  :uhm:

I'm impressed by all of you :blush:
 
Anomica said:
How the bloody... do you know that stuff :blink:I consider myself knowledgeable in many subjects but these questions here are just  :uhm:

I'm impressed by all of you :blush:
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I only know about that by chance, because I accidentally found that in a bookstore and thought it'd be a good birthday present for my dad ;)
 
Urizen said:
What about the next question?
I believe Albie should think of something, since he answered the last one.
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I have to admit, I was glad of Perun's question as it is one of those I could answer - as stated before, history is not my strongest subject.

I do have a sports related one:

Who was that last male 100 metre gold medal winner in either the Olympics or the Commonwealth games who won without the use of starting blocks? And it is not that long ago.

This athlete won gold in both Olympics and the Commonwealth within two years of one another, but he may have been forced to use starting blocks to win his Olympic gold. Apparently, he was allowed to not use the blocks (which have been obligatory for quite a while now) as his coach argued he got a better start with his knees closer to his chest.
 
Allan Wells? He was gold in both Moskow 1980 Olympic and 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games, never used starting blocks until their use was declared compulsory in Olympics starting by Moskow 1980.
 
ABandOn said:
Allan Wells? He was gold in both Moskow 1980 Olympic and 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games, never used starting blocks until their use was declared compulsory in Olympics starting by Moskow 1980.
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That is the one, but he won the gold in the commonwealth in '78 without the blocks (although he did win gold in '82 as well). I believe he may have been forced to use the blocks in Moscow 1980, but this I cannot confirm.

Edit: Sorry, he won Silver in the 100 and Gold in the 200 in 1978 Commonwealth Games. I pretty much cocked the whole question up really. Luckily AbandOn got there.
 
Albie said:
Edit: Sorry, he won Silver in the 100 and Gold in the 200 in 1978 Commonwealth Games. I pretty much cocked the whole question up really. Luckily AbandOn got there.
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Yeah, I read it on wikipedia, but I couldn't confirm it...my first Olympics memories go back to Seoul '88 :D

Here's another question for you:
Tell the names of the first two animals that returned alive on Earth after an orbital spaceflight.
Hint: They weren't the only animals on that flight, other 42 animals were with them!
 
I think one of them was a dog named Laika. Not sure about the other one, though- was it a chimp?
 
Perun said:
I think one of them was a dog named Laika. Not sure about the other one, though- was it a chimp?
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Actually, Laika was the first animal to do an orbital flight, but unfortunately there was no planned way to carry the poor dog on Earth.
They were both dogs anyway, and you guessed well their "nationality" and the specific space program to which that satellite belonged. ;)
 
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