Quizzically Yours

Identify the poem by Lord Afred Tennyson, whose first stanza is given below. It describes an attack at Balaclava during the Crimean War. There is a more famous poem describing another attack in the same war, having similar name.

The charge of the gallant three hundred, the _______ !
Down the hill, down the hill, thousands of Russians,
Thousands of horsemen, drew to the valley -and stay'd;
For Scarlett and Scarlett's three hundred were riding by
When the points of the Russian lances arose in the sky;
And he call'd, 'Left wheel into line!' and they wheel'd and obey'd.
Then he look'd at the host that had halted he knew not why,
And he turn'd half round, and he bade his trumpeter sound
To the charge, and he rode on ahead, as he waved his blade
To the gallant three hundred whose glory will never die-
'Follow,' and up the hill, up the hill, up the hill,
Follow'd the _______.

Sparky is correct

Its the "Charge of the Heavy Brigade". The more famous poem is the "Charge of the Light Brigade".

The foundation of the X as well as that of modern Indian poultry industry was laid back in 1971, when Padmashree Dr. BV Rao gave shape to his vision by setting up Y - the flagship company of the Z, a Rs. 1300 crore conglomerate.

W was initially known as Western Hatcheries Limited and was established in 1976, mainly to produce day-old layer and broiler chicks for the dense poultry markets of North India.

W has over 30 units spread across India. The company's Specific Pathogen Free Egg unit is among four such units in the world and the only one of its kind in the developing world.

The Forbes business magazine ranked W as 67th among the 100 best global small companies in the year 1999-2000. Russian tennis player Elena Dementieva, also sports the W logo on her outfit. W is also a part of Z.

Id W, X, Y and Z. Tell me why they are in the news.

Nabarun is spot on...
Z=VH group
Y= Venkateshwara Hatcheries
W= Venky's

In the news because of the Blackburn Rovers takeover

Regarding the first pic, which is the poster of a movie, this is what the director had to say:

"We planned several topics to shoot about, like black horses, _____, gambling, misjudges, terrorism and hooligans. And we chose to shoot the _______ when the amazing prophet X appeared,” said Xiao Jiang, the director. X is the lead actor in the movie but passed away about two months after the release.

Taking the current situation into account, come up with a phrase/line to connect the two

Sparky is partly correct..
themasterhimself gets it fully correct

"Paul is Dead"

This is a pic of Boulevard du Temple, in Paris. It was taken in spring of 1838 by Louis Daguerre, the inventor of the Daguerrotype process of developing photos. The pic shows a man standing in an otherwise empty boulevard, getting his shoes shined. Why is the pic significant?

Sparky is spot on
This pic is the first photograph of a person. More here.

The country _____ changed their flag, national anthem and their name recently. The changes were outlined in a new constitution proposed in 2008. The government ordered that the old flags be burnt after being lowered by a person born on a Tuesday. The new flags were to be hoisted by a person born on a Wednesday. The pic shows the new flag of _____.

In 1989, the then rulers changed the English translations of many places, including the name of the country itself to _____. This prompted one scholar to coin the term _____ to refer to the top-down programme of political and cultural reform in the context of which the renaming was done.

Fill the blanks. All the blanks need not be the same.

Prasanna gets this one
It's Burma or any variations of the name. The word is 'Myanmarification'. More here.

In the 1970s, the government of India introduced new regulations for a certain product. The product was so popular that you had to wait around 6 months to get your hands on one. The company, thinking these regulations would lead to higher (and un-necessary ) production costs refused to budge and lost market share heavily.
Sadly, the popularity of this product faded with time and production stopped in 2009.
Stating on the emotional moment of the last day of its production, its makers famously proclaimed that the product had lost relevance in this new age just like ___________.Till date it has sold more than 10 million units.
What product and what was the regulation that killed it?

Prasanna is right....
Bajaj Scooters it is.. The regulation was introduction of indicators.

The title of this cult movie suggests that it is a part of a series of films, but it is actually a 3 in 1 film. Part I runs for about 9 minutes from the start. Part III runs for about 1 minute towards the end just before the credits are shown. The remainder of the movie is Part II, hence the movie was titled ____. Ramesh Sippy, Coen Beothers, Tarantino, RGV are acknowledged as inspirations. It marked the debut of Shashanka Ghosh as director. Name this movie which has 3 singers making cameos too.


The Thinker gets it ....

Waisa Bhi Hota Hai Part 2

Id the building, the location of which is shown in blue in the second pic.

Prasanna and Sparky get this one
Its the 7 World Trade Center

The first plan was proposed in 1832, to be set up near Chintadripet Bridge but it never materialised. In 1836, an experimental setup was established. The East India Co. tried to bring in private investors for this purpose. The companies were to work under a 99 year lease.

Later two companies were set up, GIPR and EIR in Bombay and Calcutta to establish experimental setups there. The first successful instance of the completed project occurred on 22 December 1851.

What?

Sparky gets it...

Indian Railways

Ciphers were exchanged between London and New Delhi and between New Delhi and Fort St George in Madras. Ultimately, the governor of Madras agreed to take personal responsibility for the project. He selected two reputed and loyal ____ manufacturers of  _____.They were sworn to utmost secrecy to produce the best quality ____ for a ‘burra’ sahib in England. To handle the affair, the governor required an intelligent English-speaking person as an assistant. He needed to have knowledge about _____; in fact, he had to be a ____. The normal process of post creation would not suffice. Nothing could be disclosed about the project. Hence by exercising his special powers under the Defence of India Rules, the governor created a post of an assistant, naming it CCA. It was located in the chief secretary’s secret cell. No one but the governor, the chief secretary and the incumbent knew the real meaning of CCA, and an aura of mystique came to surround the post. Many thought it stood for chief confidential assistant who dealt with ultra-secret matters.

Sparky gets it.
Its the Trichinopoly cigars.

Pls note that the pics do not make an exhaustive list. Some older instances involve King George III and the Shah of Iran.

Connect the pics and give the most popular instance missing from the funda.

Okay, it was a little arbit. All these statues were pulled down after the downfall of the leaders.
From right to left: Enver Hoxha, Saparmurat Niyazov and Stalin. The famous instance is that of Saddam's bronze statue

The government of India gets about 200,000 requests per year for X. It has an alloted quota of only 171,000 though.
The cost of X has been fixed by the government as Rs. 12,000 per person since 1994 but the actual cost is about Rs. 48,000 (2007)
The government spent Rs. 7 billion on this subsidy in 2008. This subsidy is controversial as it is seen as "appeasement" as well as "charity".

Give X.

Trishul gets it right. But since he got the spelling wrong he misses the million dollar cash prize.
Its Haj Pilgrimage indeed.

X coined the term ___ from the Latin for "broken" and is used to refer to "a rough or fragmented shape that can be split into parts, each of which is a reduced-size copy of the whole". He passed away recently. He had actually built on and popularised the work done by Y under whom he studied early in his life. Y was involved in World War I and lost his nose in the a fight. After unsuccessful attempts to rejoin the nose, he resigned to wearing a mask for the rest of his life.

Identifying X and the word would do .

manish cracks this

The guy is Benoit Mandelbrot and the word is fractal. FYI, Y is Gaston Julia.

This is the story of a company X and a product Y.

X manufactured Y for the first time in 1923, but these weren't very popular then.

In 1944 a ship called the SS Fort Stikine carrying cotton, gold, ammunition and Y caught fire in Bombay Port. One of the few things to survive the resulting explosion was Y.

For India's first Parlimentary Elections in 1951, this company won the tender to supply the government with 1.7 million ballot boxes.
After the elections were done, the government decided it no longer needed these boxes and promptly returned them to the manufacturer.
The manufacturer in turn converted them into Y.

Give X,Y.

No one gets it. The company is Godrej and the product is obviously bureaus.

Connect all of them.


Nobody guesses this too!! All of them have contested for Presidential Elections but ended up losing.

We have all seen him in famous movies sharing the screen with the likes of Superstar and Ulaga Naayagan. But apart from all those he is famous doing something of great historical importance...what?



Nanda cracks this..
Poornam Viswanathan anounced India's independence on All India Radio.

"I arrived in Bogota from New York about two days after the volcanic eruption. The area I needed to get to was very remote. It involved a five-hour drive and then about two and a half hours walking. I reached the town of Ameroyo at dawn about three days after the explosion. There was a lot of confusion - people were in shock and in desperate need of help. Many were trapped by debris. I met a farmer who told me of this young girl who needed help. He took me to her, she was almost on her own at the time, just a few people around and some rescuers helping someone else a bit further away.

She was in a large puddle, trapped from the waist down by concrete and other debris from the collapsed houses. She had been there for almost three days. Dawn was just breaking and the poor girl was in pain and very confused. The rescuers kept coming back to her, local farmers and some eople who had some medical aid. They tried to comfort her.

When I took the pictures I felt totally powerless in front of this little girl, who was facing death with courage and dignity. She could sense that her life was going.

At the time, I didn't realise how powerful the photograph was - the way in which the little girl's eye connect with the camera. I felt that the only thing I could do was to report properly on the courage and the suffering and the dignity of the little girl and hope that it would mobilise people to help the ones that had been rescued and had been saved. By this stage, X was drifting in and out of consciousness. She even asked me if I could take her to school because she was worried that she would be late.

I gave my film to some photographers who were going back to the airport and had them shipped back to my agent in Paris. X died about three hours after I got there. ”

-----as said by Frank Fournier, photographer.

Funda?

Sparky gets it correct...

X is Omayra Sanchez. More here.