Quiz time

[RETIRED]

'bout time someone got it.

[Cliff Rogers]

Actress Jayne Mansfield accidentally exhaled her breast out of her dress during the telecast of the Academy Awards in 1957. :eek:


Good on ya H, was it a guess or did you find it somewhere?

[HappyHammer]

Eventually found it but it wasn't easy.

OK, In which years have West Ham United won the FA Cup? nice easy one for .

HH.

[silentC]

That's a trick question. West Ham United have never won the FA Cup.

[Iain]

Does that mean the answer is FA :confused:

[HappyHammer]

No it's not a trick question but you get marks for winding me up.

HH.

[Cliff Rogers]

They have won the F.A. Cup three times in 1963-64, 1974-75 and 1979-80.

[HappyHammer]

Correct and they were runners up in the first ever FA Cup final at Wembley in 1923 when they lost to Bolton Wanderers 2-0. The ground was designed to hold 127,000 but when it filled up the crowd rushed the gate and an estimated 200,000 fans squeezed into the ground :eek: but no-one was reported injured, this is the largest attendance at a football match in the UK.

HH.

[simon c]

they were runners up in the first ever FA Cup final at Wembley in 1923 when they lost to Bolton Wanderers 2-0

I'd forgotten it was West Ham - people only remember the winners normally.

I found some good picks of the crowd:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/755000...ntrance150.jpg

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/755000...tehorse300.jpg

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/940000..._crowds300.jpg

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/soc...embley_all.jpg

Simon

[Cliff Rogers]

The name of the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey was a tongue-in-cheek reference to IBM.

What was it's name & what was the connection to IBM?

[silentC]

Too easy: HAL. One letter to the left of IBM.

[Cliff Rogers]

Yeap, too easy.

[HappyHammer]

Apparently Arthur C Clarke said this was a coincidence not intentional.

HH.

[silentC]

Apparently. Or...

The author of 2001, Arthur C Clarke emphatically denies the legend in his book "Lost Worlds of 2001", claiming that "HAL" is an acronym for "Heuristically programmed algorithmic computer". Clarke even wrote to the computer magazine Byte to place his denial on record.

But Clarke's protestations are unconvincing in the extreme. For one thing "Heuristically programmed algorithmic computer" is a contrived name that does not properly form the desired acronym. For another, most of the working drafts of the 2001 story had HAL named "Athena", and it would have remained so had not Clarke deliberately rechristened it. The chances of him randomly fastening on to the one name that mimics the worlds largest computer company are one in seventeen thousand.

Why would Clarke deny it if it were true? I can think of several reasons: perhaps Clarke invented it as an in-joke that became too public, and he didn't want to risk offending IBM who had provided much technical help for the film. Perhaps, human nature being what it is, he is having an elaborate charade with us, as did George Plimpton with his fictitious cobra bite [recorded in Harpers Magazine earlier this year]. Perhaps like Terry Nation, he just got sick of people asking about it.

[bitingmidge]

silent,

It's your turn to ask a question.

P