Great Western Coffee Shop

2020 has been a year like no other ... and I expect this Advent to be an advent like no other too.  In recent years, I could count the number of weeks I have not travelled on a bus or train outside Wiltshire on one hand.   This year, after mid March I could count my journeys out of the county on one had - with two of those journeys being just the 10 miles into Bath.

And so ... an advent quiz like no other you have seen - I will set some sort of quiz most days (other days, guset setters are welcome) and I will look for variety and for things that are more than just a single answer.

For today, over the years many things have happened on 1st December - but in which year?  Let's start with one convention we've learned over the years - one answer only each please at least until midnight when we'll be getting ready for the next quiz. Should you make an incorrect guess and I tell you, by all means have another go.

Coffee Shop Advent Quiz - 1st December 2020

1. In violation of segregation laws in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger. She was arrested, sparking a 381-day bus boycott led by Martin Luther King, Jr.

2. Tunnel links UK and Europe.  Britain and France are joined for the first time in thousands of years as the last wall of rock separating two halves of the Channel Tunnel is removed.

3. 1st White House telephone installed

4. The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) is calling on the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) and its subsidiary National Rail Enquiries to publish a code of practice for access to its database of real time train information.

5. 1st US helium-filled dirigible makes 1st flight

6 Captain Bill Compton brings Trans World Airlines Flight 220, an MD-83, into St. Louis International Airport bringing to an end 76 years of TWA operations following TWA's purchase by American Airlines.

7. Earliest traceable patient, a 55-year-old man, develops symptoms of a novel coronavirus (Covid-19) in Wuhan, China

8. "I contacted GWR and asked for the date of the next Meet The Manager session at Paddington.  This is on 1st December between 16:00 and 19:00"

9. Inquest before G Sylvester esq - At Melksham Forest, on Joseph Pegler, aged 5 years. The deceased resided at the Lock House, on the Wilts and Berks canal, and went daily to school at Melksham; not returning as usual in the evening, search was made, and the body was found in the morning, in the canal.  As reports in the Reading Mercury on 1st December - but in what year?

10. United States presidential election: Since no candidate received a majority of the total electoral college votes in the election, the United States House of Representatives is given the task of deciding the winner in accordance with the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

11. December meeting online in a Zoom chatroom of Great Western Coffee Shop members (first time in December)

No.1 Rosa Parks 1955.

Correct.  Sixty Five years ago today.  Read more about Rosa Parks on Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks . 'The United States Congress has called her "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement"'

No.6. December 1st 2001.
(I flew TWA into St Louis Lambert Field on November 30th, accompanied by a tearful cabin crew who were about to lose all their hard earned seniority in the transfer).

Yes ... that was the year.  I too recall the era of TWA and PanAm ... and seem to recall companies that has grown and then levelled off, leaving them with what felt like a surfeit of senior staff ...

No. 10    1824   John Quincy Adams elected by House of Representatives

According to the TV news item I'm watching (because it's a big birthday), no. 2 was 1990.

It was ... thirty years ago today.  Big birthday and big breakthrough.


"In 1802, Albert Mathieu-Favier, a French mining engineer, put forward a proposal to tunnel under the English Channel, with illumination from oil lamps, horse-drawn coaches, and an artificial island positioned mid-Channel for changing horses.".   It took until 1990 for it to be broken through. First (freight) train ran on 1st June 1994, and the first passengers a month or two later.  So 192 years from concept to first passengers.  And we thought that Portishead was taking a long time ...

7. would be 2019 rather than the 2519 I would have prefered

It would ... and, my goodness, what a year it's been!

No 3 appears to be 1878 but the day seems to be disputed some say May 1877 not December. The Engineer installing it was Alexander Graham Bell himself.

In the absence of a prompt like that, there's a problem with this sort of quiz question. These are things I might come across, or think of, outside a quiz as "I know that" ... but really mean "I can just about remember when I knew that". Then I'd be quite likely to just check quickly on Google, not seeing that as searching so much as calling on my backup memory (exomemory).

The contract for this function is currently held by Google, though they usually subcontract in turn to the likes of Wikipedia. This is not really outsourcing, since exomemory using older technology (books etc.) was almost useless, especially for speed. It used to be pretty much a case of if you can't find it in endomemory, forget it. (Or rather you had.)

I guess the best quizzes are where all the good search terms are part of the answer, not the question.

Indeed.  But with a quiz every day of the month, we can't start with the best, can we?   Havre to have something to improve to rather than being downhill all the way - after all, this is not skiing.

I will pass on 11. Too obvious as I was there ;D

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/hap1dec.jpg)

Here they all are - in chronological order

1824: United States presidential election: Since no candidate received a majority of the total electoral college votes in the election, the United States House of Representatives is given the task of deciding the winner in accordance with the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

1849: Inquest before G Sylvester esq - At Melksham Forest, on Joseph Pegler, aged 5 years. The deceased resided at the Lock House, on the Wilts and Berks canal, and went daily to school at Melksham; not returning as usual in the evening, search was made, and the body was found in the morning, in the canal.  Reading Mercury - 01/12/1849

1878: 1st White House telephone installed

1921: 1st US helium-filled dirigible makes 1st flight

1955: In violation of segregation laws in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger and was arrested, sparking a 381-day bus boycott led by Martin Luther King, Jr.

1990: Tunnel links UK and Europe
Britain and France are joined for the first time in thousands of years as the last wall of rock separating two halves of the Channel Tunnel is removed.

2001: Captain Bill Compton brings Trans World Airlines Flight 220, an MD-83, into St. Louis International Airport bringing to an end 76 years of TWA operations following TWA's purchase by American Airlines.

2009: The Office of Rail Regulation (ORR) is calling on the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) and its subsidiary National Rail Enquiries to publish a code of practice for access to its database of real time train information. http://www.passenger.chat/5808

2016: "I contacted GWR and asked for the date of the next Meet The Manager session at Paddington.  This is on 1st December between 16:00 and 19:00"  http://www.passenger.chat/17624

2019: Earliest traceable patient, a 55-year-old man, develops symptoms of a novel coronavirus (Covid-19) in Wuhan, China

2020: December meeting online in a Zoom chatroom of Great Western Coffee Shop members (first time in December)

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2020 - we met yesterday evening with an interesting discussion on the history of Reading including the listing of the Three Guineas, and contrasting the use of web pages versus (or with) Facebook pages for smaller organisations including those of community based groups in the passenger public transport arena.

Some of the dates are a bit woolly - an individual day as shown above tends to be a stepping stone in a long process, and an unveiling may be one day, but installation tends to be over a  period and then allocated to a day for history remembrance purposes.

Many of the above were very easily research indeed - some quizzes as we on up to Christmas will be harder, but I suspect that our core members will get most of them in seconds or minutes - the intent is not to occuply you for hours in researching every one of them, but to have a bit of quick fun, and provide nuggets of new knowledge to our wide readership.  With travel having fallen off a cliff this year, our forum is quieter than it once was - but our monthly reach has still been to some 3,000 different visitors, 13,000 sessions, six pages viewed on an average session ... with some 98% of those pages being in the UK which rather confirms targetting success.