Problem: Vacuum:

In 1654, Otto von Guericke invented the first vacuum pump and conducted his famous Magdeburg hemispheres experiment, showing that teams of horses could not separate two hemispheres from which the air had been partially evacuated. Robert Boyle improved Guericke's design and with the help of Robert Hooke further developed vacuum pump technology. Thereafter, research into the partial vacuum lapsed until 1850 when August Toepler invented the Toepler Pump and Heinrich Geissler invented the mercury displacement pump in 1855, achieving a partial vacuum of about 10 Pa (0.1 Torr). A number of electrical properties become observable at this vacuum level, which renewed interest in further research.

What year was the Toepler Pump invented?
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A: 1850


Problem: Tristan da Cunha:

The 1961 eruption of Queen Mary's Peak forced the evacuation of the entire population via Cape Town to England. The following year a Royal Society expedition went to the islands to assess the damage, and reported that the settlement of Edinburgh of the Seven Seas had been only marginally affected. Most families returned in 1963.

What returned to the island by 1961?
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A: unanswerable


Problem: Napoleon:

The settlements at Tilsit gave Napoleon time to organize his empire. One of his major objectives became enforcing the Continental System against the British. He decided to focus his attention on the Kingdom of Portugal, which consistently violated his trade prohibitions. After defeat in the War of the Oranges in 1801, Portugal adopted a double-sided policy. At first, John VI agreed to close his ports to British trade. The situation changed dramatically after the Franco-Spanish defeat at Trafalgar; John grew bolder and officially resumed diplomatic and trade relations with Britain.

After the Franco-Spanish loss at Trafalgar, John VI resumed relations with what nation?
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A: Britain


Problem: Affirmative action in the United States:

Richard Sander claims that by artificially elevating minority students into schools they otherwise would not be capable of attending, this discourages them and tends to engender failure and high dropout rates for these students. For example, about half of black college students rank in the bottom 20 percent of their classes, black law school graduates are four times as likely to fail bar exams as are whites, and interracial friendships are more likely to form among students with relatively similar levels of academic preparation; thus, blacks and Hispanics are more socially integrated on campuses where they are less academically mismatched. He claims that the supposed "beneficiaries" of affirmative action – minorities – do not actually benefit and rather are harmed by the policy. Sander's claims have been disputed, and his empirical analyses have been subject to substantial criticism. A group including some of the country's lead statistical methodologists told the Supreme Court that Sander's analyses were sufficiently flawed that the Court would be wise to ignore them entirely. At the same time many scholars have found that minorities gain substantially from affirmative action.

What was a negative effect of affirmative action according to Richard Sander?
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A:
high dropout rates