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

1. in 1924:

1. Whence was a saint ousted, until 1991?
2. What, at Chamonix, would later be declared the first of its kind?
3. Where did 125,000 become citizens all at once?
4. Who did not write a letter ordering sedition in the United Kingdom?
5. What flew from Croydon to Purley, prompting a public inquiry?
6. Whose remote engine-stopper failed to impress the War Office, or anyone else?
7. Who stayed for two months in a forbidden city?
8. How would Lamont Jr, born in New York City, later be known on his one (gold-certified) record?
9. Which actor was born, to die a hundred years later, best known for his two seasons on a children's educational programme?
10. Who was born in Warsaw, who would later inspire a generation of computer-rendered art in the 1980s?

2.

1. What lost its abbey and convent to iconoclasm, which didn't help with the third wipers?
2. What requires stinging nettles for authenticity?
3. Which Cambridgeshire village names a product that has never been made there?
4. Why might you wear protective goggles in Sardinia or Corsica?
5. What was first made from waste prpducts and no longer contains iron, though for a while its addition was mandated?
6. Which brine-cured product takes its name from a Crusader city?
7. What so commonly passed on brucellosis that the disease became known as that country's fever, until an archaeologist put a stop to it?
8. Where did the Westphals settle and borrow its name for their product, which is now produced in lots of other places but not there?
9. What was apparently not inspired in shape by Napoleon's explots in the Mediterranean, though it was invented at about the right time?x
10. Where would you find arachnids as a vital ingredient?

3. Who

1. fought in court for the underdog (in reality and in his books) and ended up a popular crossword answer?
2. wrote Brown, Loving and Miranda?
3. ran away to Townes and plays with the Dukes?
4. was the second to be first, having changed party after a quarrel with his brother?
5. was praised by Dizzy and the Count, and spent several years as Mr Capone's piano man?
6. spent most of his career out of power and as a commoner, but dedicated to victory over France?
7. popularised a banjo style, toured with Joan Baez and crashed his plane?
8. cost $79 million of damage in 1998, and $250 million in 2016?
9. probably didn't bigod the Duke of Wellington?
10. became a psychic prodigy after colliding with a tram, but opened the 20th century in depressingly widely repeated style?

4. in 1774:

1. Who inherited a job from his father than he wouldn't pass on to his son?
2. Who named Palmerston, Caledonia and Norfolk?
3. What was discovered for the third time, though this time the discoverer published, and it wouldn't be named for another three years?
4. Which popular Swedenborgian began his life in Leominster?
5. Which Norfolk man arrived in the colonies to stir up trouble?
6. Where did a town pick up and move out of the flood zone?
7. What law was introduced to prevent the tactical use of pads?
8. Who was said to be helped to his eternal reward by a bilocating saint?
9. Where was a blockade started on account of the brown water?
10. Which future utopian and Balliol man got his start in the West Country?

5.

1. What would tempt Peter, the son of Jan?
2. What have both Shirley Temple and Arnold Palmer got?
3. What have a Roman emperor, an Indian Emperor and a Dutch painter in common?
4. Who has undeserved eponymous credit for a culinary invention?
5. Whose daughter was Tootsie and why was this important?
6. Who foolishly said that he was a cider drinker, and scored a Royal first?
7. What intoxicating sticky sweet gained fame for the author of a book in which it is mentioned?
8. What is to Logan as Logan is to Boysen?
9. What oleracea gave its name to one of the families who took it with them to America?
10. Whose big heart was briefly commemorated as a confection, though in the end it would kill him?

6. Who

1. was told by Adam and Eve that sex was the root of all evil, and was considered to be all the perfection of God?
2. fought the spread of communism in Asia, but funded North Korea's nuclear bomb programme?
3. severed Mary's arm with a hammer?
4. sang in the style of Jacques Brel and later sold human cloning?
5. expanded on self-taught chiropractic with winter lake bathing, and incorrectly prophesied that he would become president?
6. worked as a clerk, then reinvented himself as a Knight of Malta among other things?
7. had visions after failing an exam and eventually started a 14-year war that killed at least twenty million?
8. turned the world inside-out after an alchemical shock?
9. was sacked from the BBC, joined the Greens, and then went turquoise?
10. moved from acupuncture to Taoism to extortion to chemical warfare?

7.

1. For what is there no light at the end of the tunnel?
2. What body of water would have given hope to Noah?
3. Would one of those set one of these, at an Oxbridge college?
4. What did Beatrix Potter buy in 1929 before selling half to the National Trust?
5. You would be unlikely to encounter one of these in this, though it might be all around it.
6. Where has a god associated with thieves received a valuable gift from the Empress of Japan?
7. Where did George's shirt end up, much to George's chagrin and everyone else's mirth?
8. Where did a wizard, a goblin and a firefly forgather for a working holiday?
9. To do this would be more likely for an eagle than for one answer.
10. Where would you be when the steward fell in the soup tureen?

8. in 2024:

1. Which former president, and murderer of another president, died in office as a senator? (All of the same country.)
2. Where did the banner no longer wave after the loss of a supporting pier?
3. How was a letter permanently removed to make ZZ?
4. Which UK political party, having failed to negotiate an alliance with the Greens, was dissolved by a popular vote of its members?
5. What British charity, founded in 1987, closed after the government stopped paying it to lobby the government?
6. Where was a larger-than-expected conurbation from 500BCE discovered?
7. Where did ingenuity finally fail?
8. Which UK television channel closed down with a mendacious announcement that it would be back soon?
9. Who was forced to call a halt after 28 studio albums, the last to chart having been released in 1979?
10. Whose soldiers marching towards a war memorial entered the public domain?