Quiz # 36: It's business time
We hope you are enjoying our quizzes. We think you'll find them tougher than others but also more rewarding.
The Quizmaster is away, so we have asked some RNZers to set a quiz. This week it is the turn of Gyles and Jono from RNZ Business.
Click on each question to reveal the answer, or click on the 'Show all the answers' link to see how you went and to learn more. Let us know any suggestions you have for improving the quiz by emailing quizmaster@radionz.co.nz.
Q 1 One of the founders of modern economics was Adam Smith who wrote The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. He looked at business processes and the division of labour by studying what sort of factory?
A A. A pin making factory. (The Pin Factory is in the background of the face of the British 20 pound note.)
Q 2 It's an urban myth that the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey was named as a jibe at what American corporation?
A B. IBM. (The computer is a HAL 9000 and it's long been falsely put about that HAL was chosen because it was one letter ahead of IBM. HAL stands for Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer)
Q 3 What started as Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web ?
A B. The search engine YAHOO was founded by Stanford University engineering graduates Jerry Yang and David Filo. (It's said the name is an acronym for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle, but the pair also claim it comes from Gulliver's Travels where it was used to mean "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth.")
Q 4 Most economies measure their growth by gross domestic product (GDP). But which country also has Gross National Happiness?
A C. The small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. The measure was brought in in the 1970s when the fourth King Jigme Singye Wangchuck declared "Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product".
Q 5 It's hard to believe, but there are two countries where Coca Cola is not marketed or sold (at least not officially) - where?
A A. Cuba and North Korea, which are both under long-term US trade embargoes - Cuba since 1962 and North Korea since 1950, although Coke is optimistic the recent thaw in US-Cuba relations will lead to an end to the ban.
Q 6 Which clothing company took its marketing slogan from the last words of a convicted killer before he was executed?
A A. Nike. The 'Just Do It' phrase was inspired by 'Let's do it', uttered by Gary Gilmore, who demanded to be executed for two murders he had committed. They were his last words before he was shot by a firing squad in Ohio in 1977. Advertising executive Dan Wieden picked up the phrase for Nike.
Q 7 History is littered with examples of people who threw away the big business opportunity. What mistake did Ronald Wayne make?
A C. The third founding shareholder in Apple, Mr Wayne sold his shares for $800. If he'd stayed in, he'd now be worth around $62 billion
Q 8 But Ray Kroc didn't make the same mistake - what smart decision did he make?
A C. He bought out the McDonald brothers' hamburger operation in 1961 for $2.7 million. The McDonalds family never had ambition and were happy to be small scale. When Kroc bought them out they agreed to take an annual royalty of 1.9 percent, because they thought 2 percent sounded greedy.
Q 9 Who, what or where is Bretton Woods?
A C. The New Hampshire town hosted the 1944 conference, which resulted in an agreement which led to the formation of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which remain key institutions of the global financial and economic system.
Q 10 A bad advertising slogan can be bad for profits in a foreign tongue. Which company found its Chinese slogan was "We'll Eat Your Fingers Off"?
A B. Kentucky Fried Chicken 's first restaurant in Beijing in 1987 found "Finger-lickin' good" had been turned into a threat. Coca Cola also had problems finding an appropriate Chinese slogan: an early and quickly discarded try was "Ke-kou-ke-la," meaning "Bite the wax tadpole" and "female horse stuffed with wax," depending on the dialect. Coke ended up with a phrase meaning "happiness in the mouth".
Q 11 And one local one for good luck .. (because 11 is auspicious in some cultures) Who delivered the mother of all New Zealand budgets?
A A. National government finance minister Ruth Richardson in 1991. She borrowed the term from Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein who used it in connection with his invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. Her budget had significant cuts to social welfare benefits, and reversed National's 1990 election promise to remove the tax surcharge on superannuation.
