Greenpeace Turns Forty

Nalaka Gunawardene and Vindana Ariyawansa

Greenpeace is an internationally active and highly visible environmental organisation whose goal is to ‘ensure the ability of the Earth to nurture life in all its diversity’. Having started small in a coastal Canadian city 40 years ago, Greenpeace now operates offices or national affiliates in over 40 countries around the world and has an international coordinating body located in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Over the past four decades, Greenpeace has promoted a new brand of radical environmentalism that directly campaigns against certain policies, technologies and products that its members believe to be harmful to the environment and people. Not everyone agrees with their positions or arguments, but despite this, many people admire their headline-grabbing strategies that are innovative, sometimes confrontational and always media savvy.

Today’s Wiz Quiz starts off with a few questions about Greenpeace that just turned 40. In the rest of our questions, we salute the Nobel Peace Prize winning environmentalist Wangari Maathai who just passed away.

1. Greenpeace evolved from the peace movement and anti-nuclear protests in the West the late 1960s and the early 1970s. The origins can be traced to an anti-nuclear group in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada in the early 1970s. On 16 September 1971, this group sent a chartered ship Phyllis Cormack, renamed Greenpeace, from Vancouver Harbour to oppose American testing of nuclear devices in Amchitka, Alaska. What was the name of this group that later adopted the name Greenpeace?

2. Greenpeace today consists of Greenpeace International based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and 28 regional offices operating in 45 countries as at August 2011. The regional offices work largely autonomously under the supervision of Greenpeace International, whose executive director is elected by its board members. The current director of Greenpeace International is a South African human rights activist, who is the first African to hold that post. Who is he?

3. In 1978, Greenpeace acquired a former British government trawler and used it in their high profile action campaigns related to marine issues, such as those against seal hunting, whaling and nuclear weapons testing during the late 1970s and early 1980s. On July 10, 1985, the ship was sunk whilst in harbour in the port of Auckland, New Zealand, by operatives of the French intelligence service (DGSE) killing one of the activists. This was to prevent her from interfering in a French nuclear test in Moruroa atoll in the Pacific. What was the name of this activist ship?

4. Mother Teresa (1910 - 1997) was born as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in a European country, but she became known and admired as a Roman Catholic nun of Indian citizenship who founded the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, in 1950. For over 45 years, she attended to the poor, sick, orphaned and dying, while guiding the Missionaries of Charity’s expansion, first in India and then in other countries. Following her death, she was beatified by Pope John Paul II and given the title Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. What was Mother Teresa’s country of birth, where Mother Teresa day celebrated every year on October 19?

5. Mansoor Ali Khan, also known as ‘Tiger Pataudi’, who died on 22 September 2011 aged 70, is considered by many as the greatest Indian cricket captain. He lost the sight of one eye when he was 20 years old, but continued to play cricket and performed well at highest level, and became the youngest Indian to have been test cricket captain. He was also the last Nawab of Pataudi (traditional ruler) until 1971, when India abolished royal entitlements through the 26th Amendment to the Constitution of India. In December 1969, Mansoor married actress Sharmila Tagore, great-grandniece of Rabindranath Tagore. Their eldest son is a Bollywood superstar. Who is he?

6. This 20th Century American mathematician developed theories that were later used in a variety of real world applications — market economics, computing, evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence, accounting, politics and military theory. He shared the 1994 Nobel Prize for Economics for his work on his game theory and has battled paranoid schizophrenia for many years. His life story was made into the movie ‘A Beautiful Mind’ (2001) directed by Ron Howard, where Russell Crowe played the mathematician’s role. Who is this genius?

7. Which British athlete, born in 1958, was the first to be Commonwealth, European, Olympic, World Champion and world record holder in his event all at the same time? Clue: he excelled in the decathlon, a combined event in athletics consisting of ten track and field events.

8. What is the medical term given to the study of the cause and treatment of abnormal tissue growth in human body?

9. Who is he? Hailing from a prominent Dutch Burgher family, he studied at Richmond College, Galle and Cambridge University in the UK. A Shakespearean scholar, author, playwright and critic, he was the first Professor of English of the University of Ceylon in 1936, and later became the first Dean of Arts in the newly established University in Peradeniya in 1952. He adapted and produced a number of classics of Western drama in pre and post independent Ceylon and inspired a whole generation of local dramatists and actors. Upon retirement to England in 1956, he wrote several books on history and culture.

10. The Lake House (2006) was a romantic drama film written by David Auburn and directed by Alejandro Agresti that starred Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock - acting together for the first time since Speed (1994). It is a strange story about an architect living in 2004 and a doctor living in 2006 who meet via letters left in a mailbox at the lake house they have both lived in at separate points in time. The film is, in fact, a Hollywood remake of a South Korean movie. What was the original movie?

11. October is when the winner of the Nobel Prizes is announced every year. In the entire 110-year history of the Nobel Peace Prize, only one person has been awarded the Prize posthumously, having been nominated before his tragic death. Who is this person, who won the Prize in 1961 and about whom then US President John F Kennedy said: “I realise now that in comparison to him, I am a small man. He was the greatest statesman of our century.”

12. 2011 marks 60 years since the world’s first commercially marketed computer was released in the United States. It was designed principally by Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the inventors of the ENIAC which was the first general purpose electronic computer but whose applications were limited to military purposes. The commercial version, built by the Remington Rand Corporation and unveiled in March 1951 was first used by the US Census Bureau in June 1951. It was used for inventory, payroll, insurance and other business applications. It was not exactly compact: it was 14.5 feet long, 7.5 feet wide and 8 feet high - large enough to fill a room! Originally priced at US Dollars 159,000, it rose in price until they were between $1,250,000 and $1,500,000. A total of 46 systems were built and delivered. What was the name given to this computer?

13. Kenya’s Nobel laureate Professor Wangari Maathai died on September 25, 2011 in Nairobi, Kenya, while undergoing cancer treatment at the age of 71. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for promoting environmental conservation, women’s rights and transparent government. She was the first African woman to get the award. What is the name of the women-led conservation organization she founded in 1977 in Kenya, which has spread cross Africa and has planted 20 to 30 million trees on that continent?

14. The first Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations headquarters in New York was appointed in early 1956 after the country (the Ceylon) was finally admitted to the inter-governmental body as a member in late 1955. He served in this position from February 1956 to April 1958. Who was he?

15. Michael Ondaatje’s 1992 novel, The English Patient, was adapted into a critically acclaimed Hollywood film under the same name in 1996. The film won nine Academy Awards for the year 1996, including Best Picture and Best Director. Who wrote the screenplay and also directed the film?

Last week’s answers

1. In the Westminster Central Hall in London, UK
2. Hamilton Shirley Amerasinghe (1913 - 1980)
3. Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld (1905 - 1961)
4. Purahanda Kaluwara (Death on a Full Moon Day) (1998) directed by Prasanna Vithanage
5. Punchi Palle Gasavena
6. Charita Tunak
7. Sofia Coppola
8. Theodor Seuss Geisel
9. Freida Pinto
10. World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) UK
11. Mars Exploration Rover - Opportunity
12. Southern Tanzania
13. Barry Unsworth, for his novel Sacred Hunger
14. Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)
15. Columbia University in New York City