Monday, June 13, 2011

Question 664: Who's scared of her?

The Dreadnought Hoax, perpetrated by Horace De Vere Cole involved Cole and five friends—writer __X__,  brother Adrian Stephen, Guy Ridley, Anthony Buxton and artist Duncan Grant—who disguised themselves with skin darkeners and turbans. The disguise's main limitation was that the "royals" could not eat anything or their make-up would be ruined. Adrian Stephen took the role of "interpreter".

In Weymouth, the navy welcomed the princes with an honour guard. An Abyssinian flag was not found, so the navy proceeded to use that of Zanzibar and to play Zanzibar's national anthem.

Thus began one of the most famous hoaxes in history, which exposed the incompetence of the British Navy.
The "royals" inspected the fleet. To show their appreciation, they communicated in a gibberish of words drawn from Latin and Greek; they asked for prayer mats and attempted to bestow fake military honours on some of the officers. This was origin of the phrase __Y__

So:

1) ID the missing person
2) WHat phrase, which gained notoriety in the past 2 years, finds its origins here.

ID the person on the extreme left.



Question 663 : Farms of Steel


Pre Script: Scores will be updated!

What's being talked about?
It has been estimated that, for every square metre of territory on the front from the coast to the Swiss border, a tonne of --------------- fell. One shell in every 4 (some sources say one in every 3 did not ------ 
Given the swamp-like conditions of trench warfate in the period, the weapons - in the form of ___________________________- buried themselves on impact or were otherwise quickly swallowed in the mud. As time passes, construction work, field ploughing and natural processes bring the rusting s____ to the surface. Most of the __X__ is found during the spring planting and autumn ploughing.

In Belgium, X discovered by farmers is carefully placed around field edges, or in gaps in telegraph poles, where it is regularly collected by the Belgian army for disposal by controlled explosion at a specialist centre near Houthulst.
Gas canisters and grenades need greater care as the gas remains poisonous and volatile long after many explosives have perished. The town of Vimi and the villages of Farbuf, Willerval, Acheville and Arleux-en-Gohelle were evacuated in April 2001 when mustard started to leak from X that had been gathered by the French Département du Déminage for disposal
Belgium has a disposal facility that can deal with most kinds of ---- at Poelkapelle, built after ocean dumping of stopped in 1980. Once extracted by the army, the gas chemicals are burned and destroyed at high temperatures at specialized facilities -----