By Samanth Subramanian

The QFI

Grandmaster Quiz2014

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The Battle of Marignano, fought in September 1515, pitted a powerful Frencharmy against the Confederacy, on a battlefield near Milan. The French wonoverwhelmingly, losing just 3,000 or so men, compared to 14,000 on the otherside.

The French gained Milan, ending forever the Confederacy’s aspirations in theregion.

What was the other long-lasting outcome of this battle?

Swiss neutrality.

The Swiss Confederacy in 1525 – a decade after the battle – declared itsneutrality, having “learned its lesson” about war from the Battle of Marignano.

Fill in the blank and explain these origin myths that were later called intoquestion:

Dalek, the villains from Doctor Who.

As Frank Baum once claimed that the name of Oz came to him from a filingcabinet that ran from O-Z, Terry Nation, the Doctor Who writer, once claimedthat the word “Dalek” was taken from a volume of the dictionary that ran from“Dal to Lek.”

This English word comes to us from an Arabic root word that means “holy site”or “inviolate place,” signifying how entry to a sacred space is forbidden orrestricted.

Interestingly, while the Arabic root word has these connotations of the pure andsacred, the English derivative is quite the opposite. The only common thread isthe fundamental reference to a space into which entry is restrcted.

What are the two words?

Haram and Harem

The birthplace of the US military aviation was Fort Sill, deep in Oklahoma – aninstallation that dates back to the regional battles of the 1860s.

A particular unit of military aviation was born here as well, and to honour FortSill’s location (and the people living in the vicinity), a system of nomenclaturewas started.

The system is still in vogue today, although it’s often called into question,simply because of the martial associations that come with the army / air force.

What system?

Military helicopters being named after Native American tribes / people: theApache, the Comanche, the Chinook, the Black Hawk, etc.

Before 1918, tsarist Russia permitted no Polish nationalism, so nationalist fervorin Warsaw silently collected around this object in the Holy Cross Church. It wasnearly lost in the German occupation during World War II, but it found refugein the HQ of a brutal Nazi commander.

After the war, the commander made a show of returning the object to Polishhands, hoping to earn some goodwill. At the key moment, though, thespotlights failed, and the Nazi commander’s propaganda spectacle flopped.

What object was at the heart of all this propaganda?

CHOPIN’S HEART

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