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    Christophe

    Old Contemptible
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    Everything posted by Christophe

    1. Hi again Jim, ... And you can rely on me. Cheers. Ch.
    2. Hi Jim, Thanks for this "funeral" message... We (you, me, a few others) tried several times to give a second life to the Quiz (remember the one I launched in 2005...). This kind of "game" can work only if we are a sufficient number of players. If not, it becomes quickly time and energy consuming. As an example : there have been 31 questions asked in 2012. If you look at them in detail, you will notice that, except for the 1st one asked by you on 1st January (I was travelling at that date and could not answer), I have answered correctly to ALL questions. The other points have been got by winners of questions I had asked. My message : we needed more players, as this kind of game can take a lot of time (15 questions to invent, and 15 questions to answer, in my personal case)... I thank you Jim and the others (UB, Dan and Lukasz) for having tried to give a new birth to the Quiz. As you said : "Perhaps some comrade or other will set the ball rolling once again, if the quiz is missed"... Wait and see... Cheers. Ch.
    3. UB, you win !!! Congrats !! Vasiliy Ivanovich Alekseyev (Russian: Василий Иванович Алексеев; January 7, 1942 village of Pokrovo-Shishkino, Ryazan Oblast - November 25, 2011 Germany) was a weightlifter from the Soviet Union.He set 80 world records and 81 Soviet records in weightlifting and won gold medals at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich and the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. Alekseyev began practicing weightlifting at age 18. Alekseyev was trained at Trud Voluntary Sports Society by his coach Rudolf Plyukfelder until 1968, when he began to train there solo. In January 1970 Alekseyev set his first world record, beginning a series of 80 world records the weightlifter set between 1970 and 1977. He was unbeaten and held the World Championship and European Championship titles for those eight years. He was the first man to total over 600 kg in the triple event. However, Alekseyev's performance in the Moscow Olympics of 1980 was a disappointment. In the snatch he set his opening weight too high and was unable to lift it, scoring zero kilograms as the result. He retired from weightlifting after the Moscow Olympics. In 1987, Alekseyev was elected to represent the Ryazan District for the Soviet Union's Congress of People's Deputies. Alekseyev worked as a coach between 1990 and 1992. Under his leadership the Unified Team earned ten medals in weightlifting at the 1992 Summer Olympics, including five golds In 1999, in Greece, Alekseyev was acknowledged as the best sportsman of the 20th century. He was also awarded Order of Lenin (1972), Order of Friendship of Peoples, Order of the Badge of Honour (1970), Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1972). In 1993 he was elected member of the International Weightlifting Federation Hall of Fame. Since 1966 he has lived in Shakhty. In 1971 Alekseyev graduated from the branch of the Novocherkassk Polytechnical Institute in Shakhty. Alekseyev featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated on April 14, 1975, titled "World's Strongest Man". Alekseyev died on 25 November 2011 in Germany in a clinic where he had been sent due to serious heart problems. He was 69. The Russian Weightlifting Federation reported his death and called him a "Soviet sports legend" and "one of the strongest people in the world". Impressive picture, no ? UB, your turn for Question #32... Ch.
    4. Question #31 : Who am I ? I am no more alive. If I was, I would be exactly 70 years old. I have got several careers. The first one made me world famous. I have been covered by medals from several countries, including some prestigious Soviet orders : Order of Lenin, Order of Friendship of People, Order of the Badge of Honor, Order of the Red Banner of Labour... The second one was political. I have been elected to represent my birth place in the USSR Congress of People's Deputies. When I died, some called me a "legend"... 1. Who am I ? 2. Please, post a picture of me with my medals. The winner will be the first one to correctly answer both questions. Good hunt and good luck... Ch.
    5. As Jim did not surface recently... SCORE UPDATE: 15 points - Christophe 8 points - UB6365 6 points - Hauptmann 1 point - Lukasz Gaszewski Question 31 to follow, as soon as I have 2 minutes...! Ch.
    6. Timo, I'm sure of this. I meant the group could have been broken at the time or before you purchase this booklet. Cheers. Ch.
    7. Could he be : Baron Roman Nikolai Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg (adopted Russian name: Роман Фёдорович фон Унгерн-Штернберг, which transliterates as Roman Fyodorovich fon Ungern-Shternberg) (December 29, 1885 – September 15, 1921) was a Russian Yesaul (Cossack military rank), Lieutenant-general, and a hero of World War I. He commanded troops during civil wars in both Russia and Mongolia between 1918 and 1921. Ch.
    8. Hi Timo, Did you get it alone (without the order) ? Was it part of a group ? Cheers. Ch.
    9. Thanks Paul. I have found this in "Arabic media" : "On 26 April 2004 the Iraq Interim Governing Council announced a new flag for post-Saddam Iraq. designed by Rifat al-Chadirchi. The flag was intended to be a temporary replacement for the red, black and green banner. The parallel blue lines represent the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the yellow line represents the Kurds, while the crescent is a symbol of Islam. Strongly criticised, the flag did not see the light of the sky. " Ch.
    10. Thanks Paul for posting it. What was the meaning of the colours ? Cheers. Ch.
    11. Excellent, UB. You win !!!! Pravda (Russian: Правда, "Truth") was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991. The Pravda newspaper was started in 1912 in St. Petersburg. It was converted from a weekly Zvezda. It did not arrive in Moscow until 1918. During the Cold War, Pravda was well known in the West for its pronouncements as the official voice of Soviet Communism. (Similarly Izvestia was the official voice of the Soviet government.) After the paper was closed down in 1991 by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin, many of the staff founded a new paper with the same name, which is now a tabloid-style Russian news source. There is an unaffiliated Internet-based newspaper, Pravda Online, run by former Pravda newspaper employees. A number of other newspapers have also been called Pravda, most notably Komsomolskaya Pravda, formerly the official newspaper of the now defunct Komsomol and currently the best-selling tabloid in Russia. The first issue of Pravda was published in Saint Petersburg on April 22, 1912. It continued publishing legally, although subject to government censorship, until it was shut down in July 1914 by the government at the beginning of World War I. Due to police harassment, the newspaper had to change its name eight times in just two years Рабочая правда (Rabochaya Pravda, Worker’s Truth) Северная правда (Severnaya Pravda Northern Truth) Правда Труда (Pravda Truda, Labor’s Truth) За правду (Za Pravdu, For Truth) Пролетарская правда (Proletarskaya Pravda, Proletarian Truth) Путь правды (Put' Pravdy, The Way of Truth) Рабочий (Rabochy, The Worker) Трудовая правда (Trudovaya Pravda, Labor’s Truth) The overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II by the February Revolution of 1917 allowed Pravda to reopen. The offices of the newspaper were transferred to Moscow on March 3, 1918 when the Soviet capital was moved there. Pravda became an official publication, or "organ", of the Soviet Communist Party. Pravda became the conduit for announcing official policy and policy changes and would remain so until 1991. Subscription to Pravda was mandatory for state run companies, the armed services and other organizations until 1989. On August 22, 1991, a decree by Russian President Boris Yeltsin shut down the Communist Party and seized all of its property, including Pravda. In 1997, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation recovered the newspaper, and it became an organ of the CPRF. Pic : the frontpage of Pravda, today. UB, your turn, now... Ch.
    12. Question #29 : I am born in 1912, in St Petersburg. When I was 6, I moved to Moscow. All my life, I told the truth. Because of difficulties with the police, I changed my name several times. I disappeared in 1991. I have got successors using my name, but they are quite different from me... I have been awarded 3 Soviet orders. Question : 1. Who or what am I ? 2. What are my 3 Soviet orders ? The winner will be the first one correctly answering both questions. Good hunt and good luck... Ch.
    13. Thanks Dan !! Will shortly come back to all of you with a new challenge... Ch.
    14. They are the Paratroopers. Method : They mainly (except examples given below : Vyazma and Dniepr) fought as regular infantry in all the major battles of the Great Patriotic War. The Russians were the first to have paratroopers, which they exhibited in 1935. The Allies did not catch up until 1940, when the Central Landing School opened near Manchester. Paratroopers are soldiers trained in parachuting and generally operate as part of an airborne force. They are used for tactical advantage as they can be inserted into the battlefield from the air, thereby allowing them to be positioned in areas not accessible by land. It is one of the three types of "forced entry" strategic techniques for entering a theater of war; the other two are by land and sea. This ability to enter the battle from different locations allows paratroopers to evade fortifications that are in place to prevent attack from a specific direction, and the possible use of paratroopers forces an army to spread their defences to protect other areas which would normally be safe by virtue of the geography. Another common use for paratroopers is to establish an airhead for landing other units. This doctrine was first practically applied to warfare by the Italians and the Soviets. During World War II, however, the two countries' ground forces were often overstretched, leaving their elite paratroopers to be employed as regular infantry. Russian Airborne Troops were first formed in the Soviet Union during the mid-1930s and arguably were the first regular paratrooper units in the world. It can also be mentioned that during the Soviet counter-offensive for the Defence of Moscow at Vyazma, 27th January 1942, the Soviet 4th Airborne Corps began a series of night drops of paratroopers in the German rear. Forty civilian and twenty-two military aircraft, escorted by limited numbers of fighters and ground attack aviation, supported the landings. From the beginning, the operation did not go well. After, six nights, only 2,100 men from the 10,000-man airborne corps had been dropped in. Because of bad weather and the pilots' inexperience with night navigation, most of these troops landed twenty kilometers south of the intended drop zone. Also, the failure to conceal the buildup of troops at the airborne fields led to the closing of one of them by German bombers. The remaining two fields provided only two to three sorties per night. The paratroops that landed, however, did succeed in interdicting lines of communication in the German rear area for almost three weeks, in part because of their linkup with the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps on 6 February. A second series of night landings occurred near Yukhnov between 17 and 23 February. The paratroops were again spread out over a large area because of inaccurate drops, and many supplies were lost. Some of the paratroops eventually joined partisan groups in the area, while the main body restricted itself to night operations because of its lack of artillery and air support. A planned two- to three-day operation extended to almost five months, but despite incredible problems, the remnant of the 4th Airborne Corps managed to break through two encirclements (with the help of a battalion of reinforcements dropped into the area on 15-16 April) and to reach friendly lines by late May. Although it had created considerable havoc in the German rear, the corps was decimated. It had not accomplished its mission of preventing a German withdrawal to the west, because German counterblows had halted the main Russian advance. Later on in the war the Soviet Union again used Desaniki in the summer of 1943 during a massive offensive in the Ukraine. Despite the problems encountered in the paratroop operation at Vyazma in 1942, the Soviets attempted a second night drop of an entire airborne corps on 24-25 September 1943 to seize a bridgehead at the Bukrin Bend on the Dnieper. Although the concept was excellent, the planning, timing, and execution of the operation produced results similar to those in 1942. The landing of the first two brigades, scheduled for the night of the twenty-third, had to be delayed a full day because of bad weather and the failure of all military transports to arrive at the three designated airfields. The Germans shot at the parachutists while they were still in the air, thus forcing them to begin fighting before they hit the ground. The Soviets had gambled in conducting this operation at a time when bad weather precluded aerial reconnaissance of the target area. The result was a fiasco, which led Stalin to prohibit similar night operations. Those are the two main occasions where the Soviets conducted airborne operations; however the Desantniki also fought as regular infantry in all the major battles of the Great Patriotic War. Ch.
    15. Dan, Take your time... Cold as well, here in France... )) Cheers. Ch.
    16. Thanks Dan !! :jumping: I felt alone these last days... You are right and the winner !! The exact answer for subquestion 1 was the Kremlin clocks (we are four...). The answer for subquestion 2 is fully correct. And, no, Spassky Tower is not shown on reverse of the 800th Anniversary of Moscow medal... Congrats again !!! :jumping: Your turn, now... Ch.
    17. Hint #3 : Above us, the Red Star, below us the icon of Savior Smolensky. Ch.
    18. Hint #1 : We are the 4 same sides of a square... Ch.
    19. Question # 27 : We are four, making all together one world famous sight of Moscow. For more than 400 years, History has given us a lot of occasions to be damaged (1626, 1737, 1812, 1917) and to be restored (1706, 1767, 1851, 1913, 1918, 1932, 1974, 1999). Russian and Soviet leaders, including Peter the Great, Lenin, Stalin, Yeltsin... always paid us a special attention. One of us is depicted on 4 Soviet awards : fully visible on 3 awards, and partially shown on 1 award. Question : 1. Who or what are we ? 2. Please, post a picture of these 4 Soviet awards. The winner will be the first one to give right and complete answer to both questions. Good hunt and good luck... Ch.
    20. I am Dunno, or Know-Nothing (Russian: Незнайка, Neznayka; from the Russian phrase "не знаю", don't know) is an anti-hero created by the Soviet children's writer Nikolay Nosov. Dunno, recognized by his bright blue hat, canary-yellow trousers, orange shirt, and green tie, is the title character of Nosov's world-famous trilogy, The Adventures of Dunno and his Friends (1954), Dunno in Sun City (1958), and Dunno on the Moon (1966). There have been several movie adaptations of the books. The "other" world is the moon. Dunno on the Moon Znayka discovers that his moon rock (that he obtained from his previous travel to the Moon) creates a no gravity zone when interacting with a magnetic field. He uses this knowledge to build a rocket ship that will go to the moon much more easily because of being virtually weightless. However, Dunno and Ponchik are not allowed to go; Dunno , because of his undisciplined behavior, and Ponchik, because of his inability to cope with non-gravity effects. The night before the rocket launch, Dunno and Ponchik sneak into the ship and accidentally launch the rocket. When they arrive on the moon, Dunno and Ponchik become separated and Dunno falls through a cave and discovers a whole separate society of mites living inside the moon. However, unlike on Earth, these mites do not have "giant food" (that is, their fruit and vegetables are sized in proportion to the mites, rather than to normal humans like on Earth). The moon society is a corrupt capitalistic state: the millionaires control all the factories and squander their money away on unnecessary luxuries, the police is violent, corrupt, and stupid, everyday citizens struggle to survive and live in rat infested barracks. Dunno gets thrown into jail for not having money to pay for his meal at a restaurant and is mistaken for a wanted criminal by the stupid police officers. In jail he meets Miga - a fast-talking schemer, and Kozlik - a poor, gentle worker. Upon getting released from jail, Miga introduces Kozlik and Dunno to Zhulio - another con man, and the four decide to start a company selling stocks to raise money to get "giant seeds" from Dunno's rocket ship and plant them on the moon. The stocks sell well and soon the four friends have lots of money. However, some of the local millionaire businessmen are worried that giant food will mean that poor workers can get richer and the millionaires may lose money. Their leader, Spruts, convinces Miga and Zhulio to steal the money and run leaving Dunno and Kozlik jobless and penniless. Meanwhile, Ponchik finds the same cave and also goes inside the moon. However, he quickly discovers salt and opens his own business making and selling it. He becomes a millionaire but then becomes bankrupt when the price of salt becomes too low. Then Ponchik becomes an average worker. Dunno and Kozlik work odd jobs but are still starving and living in poverty in a rat infested basement. Kozlik gets bit by a rat and becomes sick. Just then, Dunno gets a job as a dog nanny for a rich woman and makes enough money for a doctor for Kozlik who slowly recovers, but the rich woman finds out that Dunno took her dogs to the rat infested basement and fires him. Dunno and Kozlik then end up living on the street. Since Kozlik has lost his hat and Dunno lost his shoes they are breaking the law and get sent to Fool's Island which has a toxic gas that turns all the people there into sheep which are then sheared for their wool. Later Dunno's friends come to Moon with giant seeds, which results in elimination of poverty and establishment of a communism-like economical system. Movies : Dunno goes to school, a 1961 movie Dunno in Sun City, a 1977 movie Dunno from our neighborhood, a 1983 movie Dunno on the Moon, a 1997 movie Dunno on the Moon 2, a 1999 sequel to the 1997 movie Dunno and Barrabass, a 2004 movie that combines two previously unrelated characters into an original story. Ch.
    21. UB, excellent !!! :jumping: You win !!! Ivan Ivanovich Dubasov (Russian: Иван Иванович Дубасов) (30 November 1897, Odintsovo, Moscow Oblast – 15 March 1988, Moscow) was a Russian artist active in the Soviet Union. He was the head artist of the Goznak from 1932 to 1971 and was made an Honored Artist of the RSFSR in 1959. He developed sketches and designs for multiple Soviet banknotes, stamps, orders, medals, awards and decorations over several decades. Ivan Dubasov was awarded the Order of Lenin (1945), the Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1951), the Order of the Badge of Honour and a number of other medals and decorations. The famoous shadow portrait of Lenin has been designed on 27 January 1924, and - amongst others - used for stamps... More details in the Russian Wikipedia : ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Дубасов,_Иван_Иванович UB, your turn, now... Ch.
    22. Hint #2 : The famous shadow portrait of Lenin has been made on the occasion of his death in 1924. Ch.
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