Time: The Ultimate Mystery!

#64 Week 14

Author

Sigrun Sørumgård
March 31, 2025

How well do you know the science, history, and concepts of time?

  1. How many time zones are there in the world?

  2. How long does it take for light from the sun to reach the Earth?

  3. Which scientist invented the use of the pendulum as a timepiece, already in the 17th century?

  4. Which planet takes the longest time to orbit the Sun, and thus has the longest year?

  5. What is the Latin word for time?

  6. Which country has the most time zones?

  7. Which American politician, considered one of the Founding Fathers, proposed daylight saving time in an essay as early as 1784?

  8. The world's most famous clock is in London, Big Ben. But what is the real name of the largest of the clocks in the tower of the Palace of Westminster?

  9. When was the last time a leap second was added?

  10. The wristwatch was first produced by the watchmaker Patek Philippe in 1868, in which country was this?

The Wonder Wall

  • The ancient Romans counted time only as the daylight hours in the day. There were twelve of them regardless of the season. But the length of the hours varied from 44 to 75 minutes. So people worked the same number of hours all year round, but still shorter in time in winter.

  • Obelisks: As early as 3500 years before our era, the Egyptians used obelisks to show the time, the shadow from the column served as a pointer. The variation in the length of the shadow allowed them to determine the spring and autumn equinoxes.

  • The cuckoo clock was an immediate success when clockmaker Franz Anton Ketterer invented it around 1730.

Friday´s Questions & Answers

  1. When did the Cold War begin?

    1947. After World War II, disagreements over the future of Europe led to a deep division between East and West, with the Soviet Union's communist control of Eastern Europe worrying the United States and Britain. The division was exacerbated by the Marshall Plan in 1947, which the Soviet Union rejected and responded by establishing Comecon for economic cooperation between communist states.

  2. What was the name of the military alliance that the Soviet Union formed with other countries (the Eastern Bloc), and which the Soviet Union is considered to have led?

    The Warsaw Pact was a defensive alliance between the Soviet Union and the countries of the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. The alliance was formed on May 14, 1955, between Albania, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and East Germany. Its creation was justified as a countermeasure after West Germany had gained full sovereignty and joined NATO on May 5 of the same year.

  3. In what year was the Berlin Wall built, and in what year did it fall?

    August 13, 1961 - November 9, 1989.

  4. Which British Prime Minister popularized the term "Iron Curtain"?

    Winston Churchill.

  5. Which war was fought from 1950 to 1953, with the North and South supported by the Soviet Union and the United States, respectively?

    The Korean War was a war between North Korea and South Korea that lasted from 1950 to 1953. The North Korean attack was accepted by China and the Soviet Union, while South Korea was immediately supported by the United States and the United Nations.

  6. Which American president handled the Cuban Missile Crisis?

    John F. Kennedy

  7. What was the name of the Soviet Union's intelligence service, and its equivalent in the United States?

    The Soviet Union had the KGB (Komitet gosudarstvennoj bezopasnosti, "Committee for State Security") and the United States had the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency).

  8. Who was the last leader of the Soviet Union?

    Mikhail Gorbachev (1931–2022) was a Russian and former Soviet politician, who was the last head of state of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991.

  9. What did "glasnost" mean?

    "Glasnost", which can be translated as "disclosure", "publicity" or "openness", was a slogan during the reform period in the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev (1985–1990). It was aimed at the secrecy and lack of reliable information in Soviet society.

  10. Which author was the first to come up with the term Cold War, this was towards the end of World War II, the author used it as a general term in his essay "You and the Atomic Bomb".

    The British author George Orwell.