Internet scavenger hunt

1. What did Alan Turing wear while riding his bicycle around Bletchley Park?

A: He wore a gasmask while riding around because of his hayfever -http://www.historyarticles.com/enigma.htm - A simple search on Alta Vista found this.

2. On what date did two computers first communicate with each other? Where were they?

A: This one was a bit more annoying, I had to actually bother doing a proper search to find the answer and ended up having to mess with keywords and filters. But the answer to my knowledge is Sept. 2, 1969. It occurred in Stanford

3. What is Bill Gates’ birthday and what age was he when he sold his first software?

A: Piece of cake, a quick search lead me to his biography on the microsoft site that stated his birthday was Oct. 28, 1955. I couldn't find the exact date as most searches simply brought up fake ad sites but I believe he released his first piece of software while he was still at Harvard in 1975. So he was twenty.

4. Where was the World Wide Web invented?

A: I gave a quick search via Altavista with the keywords "Birthplace of the world wide web" and I picked up the name CERN, which I added to the Keywords which brought me to here. So it seems the WWW was invented in a European Physics lab... I guess it is sort of different to the original military internet that I believe was made in the U.S.

5. How does the power of the computer you are working on now compare with the power of a personal computer from 30 years ago?

A: Bit of a pain for a simple question but whatever. Had to use a lot of filters to get rid of crap about power plants and the site I inevitably found was on 'fortunecity' which is nearly as bad as geocities but still. It had the info I needed. Pretty obvious stuff. Everythings smaller and faster due to multitasking and all that jazz, it's less emphasis on the actual physical power of the machines and more so on the versatility. http://members.fortunecity.com/niazi/it.htm

6. What is the weight of the largest parsnip ever grown?

A: What? Uh, this one was annoying because majority of results were either telling me how parsnips can help you lose weight and something about vegetables on steroids(???) but I ended up finding the page I needed eventually: http://www.vintageassessments.com/vd/rawf_2003.html - It weighed Eight pounds Six ounces. The hell is that thing and what does it want from us?

7. When did Queensland become a state and why is the Tweed River in New South Wales?

A: Lack of wikipedia made this annoying but I found a random Yahoo site with the answer to this, the year was 1859 but something more interesting was the idea that New Zealand was originally going to be a state of Australia...http://www.geocities.com/nzstatehood/index.html I really couldn't find the answer as to why the Tweed River was in New South Wales, in fact the only info I could find contradicts this and claims that the north part thinner part of the river is 'queensland' wild the southern wider part is in NSW. Whatever.


8. What was the weather like in south-east Queensland on 17 November 1954?

A: I recongized the date at first and its quite obvious that it referred to some sort of natural disaster and because Queensland sure loves its floods I did a search in Altavista for the 'History of floods in Queensland' and I was correct. It was quite wet in November 1954!

9. Why is is Lord Byron still remembered in Venice?

He wrote his most famous poems while there: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/byron_lord.shtml - I dunno why this is a significant reason to remember the guy but apparently he was a cult of personality.

10. What band did Sirhan Chapman play in and what is his real name

Hahahahhahaa so this was the sense of humour they were talking about. The bands name was "The Black Assassin's" and Sirhan Chapman is Stephen's Alter ego. I found this on their myspace page and the uncanny resemblence


(I wanted to stab myself after doing this, I hate Altavista so much. There was a reason I stopped using it when google became useful)