h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm going to go for Chaucer. Of course, it is probably the other. And as for the "aawful place" one, then I have no idea. Somehow I feel better knowing that I at least got close...

Dave "The Anchovy" P, you can get my e-mail address from my personal space, (but don't tell Duncan 'Patron of the Arts' Jones, or he'll be really cross!!).

Ha - just because its Sunday you think I won't be in work and therefore able to read this

Oh, No!!

I declare an absolute despair on my part to answer any of these fiendishly difficult questions correctly, however I have followed the progress of others with interest and I was just wondering if there will ever be a full list of answers available, I'd love to know what some of them were.

Clive

Actually - I agree...I'd like to see the answers, but given that both myself and my mother frequent this site I think that giving the answers out before Christmas might mean we'd have to find something else to tax our turkey-fed minds

2001! I have to wait until 2001! to get the....oh yeah he-he. hmmm. yes.

Chaucer! Correct! He was the first buried at Poets Corner. Well donw!

You will all be interested to know that I now have an answer to the cat phobia thing.

Only 3 I don't have answers for now.

Dave

Which questions are left?

The ones to which *I* don't have answers are:

16. Who is the only British athlete to win a gymnastics medal at the Olympics?

21. Jeremiah Lagden of Little Abington plied his trade on Newmarket Road. What was his profession?

22. "He is for the gallows in this world and the fires of hell in the nexr" were reputedly the words of the midwife. To whom was she referring?

And I now know who Jeremiah Lagden was. Two to go!!

A complete guess at Jerimiah Langdon...

Around the town where I live there is a shire horse that pulls an old cart and the council use him to collect rubbish. This is supposedly a throwback to an old tradition. Newmarket? Hasn't that got something to do with horse races? "Originally plied his trade..." So it's something he did some time ago?

Was Jerimiah an olden-day cart oulling horse of Little Abington?

22. "He is for the gallows in this world and the fires of hell in the nexr" were reputedly the words of the midwife. To whom was she referring?

I'm confused by the use of the definite article in this question; that is, "the midwife." I wasn't aware that there was a "the" midwife - there are thousands in the USA alone; my Mother is one of them herself. Is this some way of referring to a character in a play or other work of fiction? Say, perhaps, Shakespeare ... ? It seems to me, though, that it would be written more like "the Midwife" instead, but that's just me. Either way, it doesn't help to explicitly answer the question but it could lead to the answer if we knew which midwife this quote is attributed to.

I would take "the midwife" to mean "the midwife who assisted at his birth". It seems a very unlikely thing for such a midwife to say, so I would guess that it happened long ago and the story about the midwife was made up. This would suggest someone along the lines of Julius Caesar or CHarles I rather than Adolf Hitler.

It may not be such an odd thing to say - a friend of mine gave birth to a little boy (who was unbelievably ugly). As the baby popped out, the midwife took one look at him and said "Oh, my God, he looks like a road digger!!" - the Mother was devastated....

Hmm, I sadly can´t remember a similar story with a midwife I know. Damn.

But there is a question that I believe hasn´t been answered yet. Who was the daughter of a famous poet that had a programming language named after her. Considering this is a computer-place you would tuin more people knew that. But it can be no other than Lady Lovelace, daughter of Percey Shelley. She is often referred to as the very first programmer.

Ok. This is tenuous, but the programming language...is it Delphi?

I assumed the reason no-one answered about the programming language was because we all knew it. As Xanatic says, it is Ada.

Why Ada? I don't get it?