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General Information Test
The Nichols Upper School General Information test is a tradition that began in the 1911 Verdian yearbook. It is compiled from questions submitted by Nichols faculty and is given to students in grades 9 through 12 as a measure of general knowledge. This GIT was coordinated by English teacher Dr. Andrew Sutherland, and it is funded through the generosity of Lucy and Sherman Maisel ’35.
1. In 2021, __________________ won the Grammy
Award for Song of the Year with her “Bad Guy,” which she co-wrote with her brother, Finneas
O’Connell. The pair also wrote, “No Time to Die,” which won the Academy Award for Best Original
Song in 2022.
2. Author John Gardner, a native of Batavia, New
York, wrote Grendel and other novels. He may best be remembered, however, as the mentor of __________________, author of What We Talk
About When We Talk About Love and one of America’s most celebrated short story writers of all time.
3. New Zealand filmmaker __________________ won the Academy Award for best director in 2022 for her film The Power of the Dog.
4. __________________, composer of “Eine kleine
Nachtmusik [A Little Night Music]” among over 800 other works, was born in Salzburg, Austria, in 1756.
5. __________________, discoverer of π, was killed by a Roman soldier after the mathematician complained the soldier had trodden upon some circles he was drawing in the sand.
6. Although the weakest of the 4 fundamental forces of nature described by physics, __________________ has an infinite range.
7. Santana popularized Latin rock in the United States in 1970 singing, “Oye como va mi ritmo,” which in
English means, “__________________.” 8. Originally founded in Boston in 1871, 2021’s World
Series champion _________________ may be the oldest continuously running sports franchise in the
United States.
9. In 2022, Ketanji Brown Jackson became the first African-American woman nominated to be a
10. German philosopher __________________ first defined the “Categorical Imperative,” a moral law all persons must follow, regardless of their desires or extenuating circumstances. The idea has become the basis of modern ethics in western societies.
11. MoMA defines __________________ art as, “art that is not representational or based on external reality or nature.”
12. In the formula , S=4 π r squared, “S” represents _________________.
13. In biology, the term __________________ names the process of cell division where a single cell divides into two daughter cells.
14. When Phaëton visits Apollo’s palace and sees the fabulous art, Ovid writes, “Materiem superabat opus,” which means, “__________________.”
15. __________________ played professional basketball in Chicago from 1984 to 1998, except for a break to play minor league baseball for one season from 19931994.
16. Most scientists agree the Earth’s longest river is ____________________.
17. In literary criticism, the term _____________________ means “word choice.”
18. ____________________’s famous painting Guernica depicts the artist’s vision of a terrible bombing of that town during the Spanish Civil War.
19. In music, “___________________,” when two or more musical notes are played at the same time, is the building block of chords.
20. Solve for x: 4x – 8 = 32. ______________________
21. Often used to store start-up routines in a computer,
“ROM” stands for ____________________, a non-volatile memory that cannot be electronically modified.
22. If a French speaker says, “À tout à l’heure!” they are telling you, “________________________!”
23. Each period of regular play lasts ____________________ minutes in professional hockey.
24. In economics, “_______________________” describes the effect of a reduction in the purchasing power of money.
25. In 1780, British General Cornwallis surrendered to
American General ________________________ after the Battle of Yorktown.
26. The literary figure ___________________ occurs when a sound is represented as a word, such as in
Joyce’s Ulysses when a cat says, “Mrkgnao!”
27. In ballet, when a dancer bends at the knees she is performing a ________________________.
28. The American opera _________________________, which features the song “Summertime,” tells the story of a disabled black street beggar trying to rescue a woman from her abusive lover and her drug dealer.
29. Aristotle used the example, “All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal,” to demonstrate a basic logical argument, called a ___________________________. 30. For four weeks last summer, Tom volunteered as a lifeguard. For the first and third weeks, he worked 10 hours each. The second week, he worked 12 hours.
For the final week, he only worked 9 hours. How many hours did Tom work as a lifeguard per week on average? _________________________
31. In chemistry, “organic compound” refers to a large class of chemical compounds in which one or more atoms of ____________________ are covalently linked to other elements, such as oxygen, hydrogen, or nitrogen.
32. The Chinese phrase “Bù kèqì” is equivalent to the
English expression, “_______________________.”
33. An “eagle” in golf is a score of ______________________ on a hole.
34. The novel ____________________, whose protagonist Macon “Milkman” Dead symbolically enacts an African-American folktale about “flying” back to Africa, was cited by the Swedish committee in awarding Toni Morrison the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993.
35. In architecture, a _________________ is a small dome used to crown a turret, roof, or a larger dome.
36. Xavier took a math test and answered 35 questions correctly. If he earned a score of 70%, then how many total questions were there on the test?
37. Insects have six legs and a three-part body consisting of the head, abdomen, and ___________________.
38. _______________________ is Japan’s indigenous belief system. Perhaps its most recognizable symbol is the majestic torii gateway, consisting of two posts made of wood or stone, that marks a boundary where a kami, or sacred spirit, lives.
39. The “_________________________,” a basic component at the top of a lacrosse stick, is itself made up of the “scoop,” “sidewall,” and “throat.”
40. To ensure the separation of powers, the U.S.
Constitution divides the federal government into three branches: the judicial, the executive, and the ___________________________ .
41. Short lines marked by dashes and startling first lines such as, “I’m Nobody! Who are You?” or “My Life had stood –a Loaded Gun—” are characteristics of the poetry of ________________________.
42. In film, a ____________________ is a single image photographed by one camera without interruption. It is the basic building block of all movies.
43. Find the mean in the following data set: 1, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9. ___________________________
44. Find the median for the same data set: 1, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9. ___________________________
45. Find the mode for the same data set: 1, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9. ___________________________
46. Polish mathematician and astronomer ___________________________ published On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres just before his death in 1543. It placed the sun rather than the earth at the center of the universe, marking a major revolution in the history of science.
47. A classic fallacy in argumentation, an _________________________ argument attacks the person rather than his position or idea.
48. According to Fantasy Football Today, quarterback _______ led the 2021 regular season with a remarkable 28 fantasy points per game.
49. The deadliest single-day battle in American military history, called _______, was fought in Maryland on
September 17, 1862. More than 17,000 men were wounded and some 3,500 lost their lives.
50. In 1957, Leon Festinger published one of social psychology’s most important theories, called __________________, which describes the uncomfortable psychological tension created by inconsistency in one’s beliefs or behaviors, especially when confronted by new information.
51. The smallest of the world’s seven continents is
52. A famous three-word sentence, “Call me Ishmael,” opens the novel _________________________.
53. “Epistle” is a synonym for ____________________, especially a formal or elegant one. 54. Artist _______________________ explored subconscious imagery in paintings such as La persistència de la memòria [The Persistence of Memory], in which melting watches adorn a serene landscape.
55. With compositions such as “Blue Train” and “A Love
Supreme,” American saxophonist _______________ ___________________ shaped bebop jazz.
56. Find the width of a rectangle whose length is 6 meters and whose area is 30 meters:
57. In computer science, a ____________________ is the smallest unit of data, one binary digit, either “0” or “1.”
58. Located on the estuary of the Yangtze River, with an urban population of over 28 million, China’s largest city is _________________________.
59. _____________________ is a tactic in racing sports, such as running or cycling, in which one remains close behind a pacemaker to reduce drag and save energy.
60. The First Amendment guarantees the right to petition the government, and it also forbids the government from encroaching on the freedoms of speech, the press, assembly, and __________________________.
61. Among the parts of speech, ____________________ modify nouns or pronouns.
62. A ____________________________ is a kneelength, pleated skirt made of tartan plaid wool, worn by men in Scotland and by Scottish regiments in the
British army.
63. Classical composer ______________________ is perhaps best known for popular chamber music and songs such as “The Trout” and “Ave Maria.”
64. Identify the next number in the sequence: 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, ________________________.
65. ______________________ is a property of matter by which an object in motion will remain in motion or if at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by another force.
66. In Don Quixote, Teresa Panza famously says,
“La mejor salsa del mundo es la hambre,” which means, “_________________________.”
67. _____________________, nicknamed “Rush,” may be the greatest MMA fighter of all time with 13 championship titles across the welterweight and middleweight divisions of the UFC.
68. Civil rights leader _________________ finishes his famous autobiography with the lines, “… all of the credit is due to Allah. Only the mistakes have been mine.”
69. _____________________ begins the final sentence of his Second Inaugural, “With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in….”
70. In English, a verb’s time frame, such as present, past, or future, is called its ______________________ .
71. ________________________ is an athletic style of street dancing that emerged in the 1970s, performed by “b-boys” and “b-girls” to hip hop, funk, or other music featuring drum breaks.
72. Verdi’s opera ____________________________ tells the story of Violetta, a Parisian courtesan, and her doomed relationship with Alfredo, a young man from the country.
73. A cylinder 12 inches tall with a diameter of 4 inches would have a volume of __________________________ (rounding π to the hundredths).
74. Modern humans are the only surviving species of the genus ____________________________.
75. A signature dish of southern France is ____________________________, which is a coarse stew of eggplant, zucchini, and bell pepper cooked in a garlicky tomato sauce.
76. With 122 million Facebook followers and 241 million followers on Instagram, Portuguese soccer player ___________________________ of
Manchester United may be the world’s most popular athlete in 2022. 77. Called the “Father of Europe,” ________________ was crowned the first Holy Roman Emperor on
Christmas Day in the year 800, becoming the first ruler to unite western and central Europe centuries after the fall of the classical Roman Empire.
78. The ______________________ mountain range includes the continental United States’ highest peak,
Mt. Whitney.
79. One who is “feckless” is ______________________.
80. English romantic poet ______________________ joined the Greek War for Independence and died while fighting a campaign against the Ottoman
Empire, for which he remains a folk hero in Greece.
81. Although nominated for best director several times, beginning in 1964 for his film Dr. Strangelove, _________________________ never won that
Academy Award.
82. With Time Magazine, the BBC, and
The New York Times all dubbing it the anthem of Generation X, Nirvana’s single
“____________________________” topped music charts in countries around the world in 1991 and 1992.
83. In a regular pentagon, an interior angle is 108 degrees and all interior angles add up to _____________________________ degrees.
84. A majority of Earth’s volcanoes and earthquakes occur along the ____________________________, also called by scientists the Circum-Pacific Belt.
85. According to legend and Shakespeare, among Julius
Caesar’s last words was this three-word recrimination in Latin posing as a question: __________________ ________________ .
86. The NCAA “Final Four” in men’s basketball for 2022 came down to Duke vs. North Carolina and
Villanova vs. the number-one ranked ____________ ____________________ .
87. _____________________________, located along the Dnieper River in northern Ukraine, is its country’s most populous city at 2.9 million people.
88. Former Republican President __________________ was shot in the chest prior to a scheduled campaign speech on October 14, 1912. The bullet was slowed by the manuscript in his vest pocket, so he decided to give his speech anyway before going to a hospital to have the bullet removed from where it was lodged against a rib.
89. ____________________________, author of
“Those Winter Sundays,” became America’s Poet
Laureate in 1976.
90. ____________________________ irony occurs when the audience knows more than a character, whose words and actions then take on a meaning he or she does not understand.
91. The _________________________, discovered by one of Napoleon’s officers during his campaign in Egypt in 1799, features ancient Greek and hieroglyphic copies of a decree issued by a pharaoh in 196 B.C., which led to the modern deciphering of hieroglyphics.
92. _________________________, the home designed and built by Thomas Jefferson, is among America’s greatest architectural achievements and has been featured on the nickel nearly every year from 1938 to the present.
93. ___________________’s “Pomp and Circumstance,
March No.1 in D” has been played for graduation ceremonies around the country since the early 20th century. 94. If Kerry reads 10 pages every 15 minutes, how long will it take her to read 80 pages? ______________
95. Enlightenment scientist ______________________ first charted the Gulf Stream, completing his study in 1775 while crossing the Atlantic on diplomatic missions.
96. __________________________, whose name means “Red Bird” in Lakota, published her major work, American Indian Stories, in 1921.
97. The longest-serving U.S. senator in history,
Democrat _________________________ , served from 1959-2010, but began his public life by organizing a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in 1940.
He later called his KKK involvement, “The worst mistake I ever made.”
98. While “grammar” refers to classes of words and their relationships in sentences,
“___________________________” simply means
“word order.”
99. The Middle English chivalric poem _____________ was adapted into a critically acclaimed epic fantasy film with a similar name by David Lowery and released in the summer of 2021.
100.In professional hockey, a regulation _____________ must weigh between 5.5 and 6 ounces.
The answer key for the GIT can also be found at www.nicholsschool.org/alumni/general-information-test
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