In the spirit of the King William's College General Knowledge Paper, released each December for completion over the Christmas break, I offer my own set of questions for the holidays.

While you are welcome to answer these questions from your own knowledge, it is intended that you may use any means of research available to you.

You still do not get a bonus mark for knowing which Princess Charlotte.

There is no prize. Please don't post answers here, to avoid spoilers for other quizzers. I shall release them in January.

Many thanks again to my wife for having a collection of obscurities that overlaps with mine.

1. In 1922:

1. What did President Harding bring into the White House, the first time this had been done?
2. Who was born, only to be killed by an adder in 1945?
3. What was redenominated, with 10,000 of the old buying one of the new?
4. Who first played a role he'd reprise sixteen years later with Flynn?
5. Which future SOE liaison and heavy metal vocalist was born in Belgravia?
6. What first near Grandvilliers would all seven people involved rather had not happened?
7. Which child star would never grow up?
8. Who sought harmony (and money) near Fontainebleau?
9. What protest against pay cuts was only ended by making protest illegal?
10. Which short-lived joint venture by Metropolitan Vickers, GE, Thomson-Houston and others was formed, later to give rise to a longer-lasting institution with the same initials?

2.

1. Whose attempt to breathe compost would be bad news for the geranium cuttings?
2. If you're going to plant two fusées and throw another one through the window, why do you need a fourth?
3. Why did shampoo cause a fractured skull?
4. How did the sheikh die at the party in the marquee?
5. Whose life was endangered by luminous paint and his own instructions?
6. Whose murderous ambition was revealed through the difference between a rabbet and a raceway?
7. Whose father chose to drive a metallic coffee-coloured Range Rover with silver and gold coloured flowers along the sides?
8. Who progressed from a telephone tap on a country chimney, via a film-editing suite in Hammersmith, to a stun-gun in a Curzon Street restaurant?
9. How did the wrong sort of blue pictures lead to multiple murders?
10. Who discovered that flame and a dog-whistle worked when dope didn't?

3. In 1822:

1. Who was fatally let down by the great lover?
2. What voted, after nearly two hundred years, to urbanise?
3. What successful pilot project was expanded to build a full-sized item, only to be abandoned twenty years later?
4. Why did people complain of the decline of moral standards in Edinburgh?
5. Which non-sufferer from yellow-green colour-blindness was born in Silesia?
6. What ban was rescinded in Sweden, after the fifth and final attempt?
7. Where was a first attempt at independence forcibly suppressed by the tailor's son?
8. Where did a church gruesomely burn at Pentecost, killing more than a hundred?
9. Who deciphered what using Bouchard's crib?
10. Where did the president of the Royal Society of Literature start a college to improve the education of Welsh priests?

4. Who…

1. carefully avoided Vietnam, then directed three other wars, but only personally shot one person (as far as we know)?
2. had his hajj go awry when he forgot to squat?
3. commanded a Yankee Clipper on his second and final voyage?
4. became king by default after a sermon by the Bishop of Bath and Wells?
5. was born in Huntingdon, inherited a job he didn't want, and resigned after eight months?
6. watched Trinity without dark glasses but steered clear of Orion?
7. quintuply named, went bankrupt with debts of over a million pounds?
8. worked on tyre rationing, and later started the first War On An Abstract Concept?
9. went by Palmer and was hanged for horse theft?
10. single-handedly created the legend of the above?

5.

1. In heraldry, what has three distinct forms: with horns and tail, with tail but no horns, and with neither?
2. What term now used generally in share trading originally meant a fraudster buying on credit that couldn't be repaid?
3. What animal's body design is so successful, on land and in fresh and salt water, that there's a term for unrelated animals evolving to be more like it?
4. What, apart from acting, links Linda Hamilton, Scarlett Johanson, and Marilu Henner?
5. What tree-climbing herbivore is used for military medical training?
6. What did the 17th-century mathematician from near Beauvais contribute to commerce?
7. What acronym may have inspired a secret recognition sign?
8. What did Gunnar want from his wife, that she didn't give him?
9. What order of animals is universally fluorescent, and uses zinc compounds for their mechanical strength?
10. What did the Silesian painter and writer successfully release?

6. In 1952, apart from the accession of Elizabeth II:

1. Where did Mike exceed ten?
2. To compete with the previous year's World in London, something bigger was held; where?
3. How were letters to Kitty first translated into English?
4. Who was the first heartless man?
5. What was divided at 5,000 pounds empty?
6. What was the first to benefit from the Dead Sea Scrolls?
7. Where were four and a half minutes heard for the first time?
8. Which future president was arrested for his supposed part in an unpopular uprising?
9. Whose ship would be so small for the next 18 months?
10. Where did Indonesia, Israel, the People's Republic of China, the USSR and West Germany compete for the first time?

7.

1. What rose from ashes, then survived a series of fires only through superhuman efforts?
2. Where might you walk in less than a minute from the Mediterranean to the tropics?
3. Which thirty-year-old offered protection from Katrina?
4. What is bicoloured and, although the largest of its kind in the country, is somewhat overshadowed by a famous tower?
5. What cast iron replacement was not actually damaged in 2021, though other things were?
6. What has been described as appearing to be made of sweets, but in fact contains nine onions?
7. What, although of the same colour, is by the alteration of one letter not half as old as time, but on the contrary only just older than this century?
8. What, unique in its civilisation and still holding a size record, is made from travertine, terracotta, tufa and pumice?
9. Where did an Englishman redesign what the Soviets had destroyed half a century earlier?
10. A picture of what, on a banknote, went viral in 2017?

8.

1. Whose shoes were made by the group from Nottingham from 1960 until 1995?
2. Which ex-Nazi scientist was simultaneously the leader of the free world and a legendary root, but not a photogenic ape?
3. Which Great White Father of 1966 was immortalised in song, though he went unrecognised at the time?
4. Who set out to commit ten vengeful murders on a biblical theme, and finally got away in a boat?
5. Who was sceptical of witchcraft and, like Hercules, aspired to be immortal?
6. Whose first teacher was a parrot?
7. Whose training in chemical engineering was most profitably applied to doughnuts?
8. Who was saved from death because his heart was on the right side of his body, but was killed in the end by guano?
9. Who adapted the work of a noble Englishwoman abroad, and applied it at home to fight an ancient scourge?
10. Who was present for two of the three destructions of Atlantis?

9. In 2022:

1. Which Kenyan pilot, photographer and politician, though not a magician, no longer needed his artificial limbs?
2. Who needed some help with that, defending their sexual harrassment, employment discrimination, and retaliation lawsuit?
3. Who wouldn't get the chance to reveal what part of his body hurt the most?
4. Which World Heritage Site lost its doughnuts and gained middle C?
5. What was finally recognised, 180 years late?
6. Which former combine harvester driver, the first recipient of an award later given to Billy Graham, Rudy Giuliani, Bob Hope, and Volodomyr Zelenskiy, died after two years in hospital?
7. Which English team brought back memories of 1966?
8. What led to a postponement for cavies?
9. Which organisation became reluctantly involved in the murder of the former prime minister?
10. What reached 8, a mere eleven years after reaching 7?