Alan Edgar (Eggy1948)

1. What was the surname of the character played by Clint Eastwood in the Dirty Harry films? Answer = Harry Callaghan 2. In which English county is Welwyn Garden City? Answer = Hertfordshire 3. What is the principal chemical found in diamonds? Answer = Carbon 4. What name is given to the indentation on a brick which holds the mortar? Answer = Frog 5. What was the favourite food of Paddington Bear? Answer = Marmalade Did you know that Paddington, like the queen, has two birthdays - Christmas Day and June 25th. 6. Which of these countries does NOT drive on the left: New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, Cyprus? Answer = Sweden 7. In which sport would you compete for the America’s Cup? Answer = Yacht race 8. What colour is the spot in the middle of the Japanese flag? Answer = Red or is it Crimson or is it Crimson Red? 9. Which of the Seven Wonders of the World was created by the sculptor Phidias about 430BC? Answer = Zeus 10. Which football club is nicknamed The Canaries? Answer = Norwich City AND Barrington CP 11. Who was the first British woman to take a seat in the House of Commons? Answer = Nancy Astor 12. Where would you find cerumen in the human body? Answer = Ears = earwax I’ll bet you didn’t know …. Bagpipes were played in Persia, Egypt and Greece long before the Scots adopted them from the Romans. Answer = Yes – my uncle Larry (Irish) , played the bagpipes in the Pride Of Murray Pipe Band, was always telling us it wasn’t the Scots.

On the Facebook group - Bygone Bedlington - Ron Jones commented - no 10 is my uncle Ronnie Hemsley

@wdmytrenko - names updated

@Symptoms - All NI cards were delivered from the benefit offices to Longbenton where they were sorted and delivered to the 100 NI sections. The number of NI Stamps, or Credits, for each year, on a workers NI card were entered clerically onto each workers NI Record Sheet by the Clerical Officers (CO's) in the 100 NI sections on the Longbenton site. So the NI clerical records for 1948 to 1970 were added to the first NI Recording System = ICL 1906A mainframes by 'Punch Card' operators.The Punch Card sections recieved the clerical record sheets and typed the data from the Record Sheets into the Punch Card machine and a Punch Card was output. All the Punch Cards were 'Batched' and sent to the Mainframe where to cards were fed into a Punch Card Reader that read the data and and the data was written to Magnetic Tapes (MTs) and the MTs were read into various data validation programs and then written to the relevant persons NI record that was held on MTs = either 2 or 3 reels of 6260bps, 2400 foot of MT for each NI section. And the NI Main File (MF) was created. Following that massive exercise the yearly NI contributions paid were delivered to the National Insurance Recording System (NIRS) on every type of media that an employer used = MTs (9 Track or 7 Track) - computer Discs (Amstrad - ICL - IBM etc. etc) or paper. There was an Input Program that read all formats of MTs. Anything that wasn't sent in on MT's was converted by the Punch Card Sections to MTs. The Input program that read all the records coming into the system was named FORTAP = FOReign TAPe and it passed the converted data onto a set of additional input programs that would sort all the records into NI order to be passed forward to be added to the MF records held on the 2 to 3 hundred MT reels.

No problem HPW - my mistake -jumped into me fading memory after I had closed down and I meant to correct it the next day - but I forgot.. I've updated the info below so it now has MPNI - DHSS - DSS - DWP and HMRC.

1. Which household appliance was patented by Cecil Booth in 1901? Answer = Vacuum cleaner 2. In bookmaker’s slang what odds are denoted by ‘double carpet’ Answer = 33/1 3. Who did Bjorn Borg defeat in 1976 to win his first Wimbledon singles title? Answer = Ilie Năstase 4. What is the more common name of the chemical Ethylene Glycol? Answer = (CH2OH)2 - antifreeze 5. In what year were dog licences abolished in Britain? Answer = 1987 6. On a Monopoly board, which property clockwise is situated after the Water Works? Answer = Regent Street = UK Marven Gardens = Canada Sturplan = Sweden 7. In which part of the British Isles would you find bailiwicks? Answer = Channel Islands 8. In which war was the battle of Gettysburg? Answer = American Civil War Lasting three days in 1863, from July 1-3, Gettysburg was the bloodiest battle ever fought on American soil, with up to 10,000 Union and Confederate troops dead and another 30,000 wounded. But surprisingly, this tremendous battle was a purely unplanned accident that grew out of a desperate need for soldiers' shoes! 9. By what name is the plant Lonicera better known? Answer = Honeysuckle 10. Which Archbishop of Canterbury seized the devil’s nose in a pair of red-hot tongs? Answer = Dunstan Dunstan immediately seized the devil's nose with his redhot tongs, causing the devil to leap the eight miles to cool his proboscis in the Tunbridge spring, thus lending the water its celebrated chalybeate qualities. 11. What is the longest river in Scotland? Answer = Tay 12. What is the medical name for Rabies? Answer = before I jumped into the cold water at Humford Baths I had Hydrophobia. I’ll bet you didn’t know …. In 1877 a wealthy widow promised Russian composer Tchaikovsky a generous annual allowance – on condition that they never met. Answer = I didn’t. Does that mean that Tchaikovsky and Władysław Pachulski invented Texting?