As India Business Quiz enters its ninth year, we are happy to present a few champion quizzers posting questions as Guest Quiz Masters in this Anniversary month . Here is a special on US Businesses. All questions relate to well known companies and businessmen from USA.

Q1. The hotel was built in 1926 and was named after the former president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. It was financed by a group that included Louis B. Mayer, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Sid Grauman. In what way did it become famous in 1929?

Ans. The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel which hosted the first Academy Awards ceremony on May 16, 1929. At the time, the “Oscar” nickname for the award had not yet been invented (the nickname would be introduced four years later).

Q2. It is a fictional metal found in the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien and is described as resembling silver but being stronger and lighter than steel. The name comes from two words in Tolkien’s Sindarin language— “grey” or “mist” and “glitter”. Which investment firm founded by Peter Thiel is named after the metal?

Ans) Mithril Capital.

Q3. The earliest known occurrence of the full phrase appears as the punchline of a joke related in an article in the El Paso Herald-Post of June 27, 1938, entitled “Economics in Eight Words”. What phrase?

Ans.There ain’t no such thing as free lunch. Economist Milton Friedman increased the popularity of the phrase by using it as the title of a 1975 book, and it is used in economics literature to describe opportunity cost.

Q4. Often dubbed as the ‘deadliest hot dog stand’, where was this located in US?

Ans) This is Cafe Ground Zero located in the centre of The Pentagon, headquarters of the United States Department of Defense in Virginia.

Q5. What company founded in  1999 gets its name from a variation of the Spanish word for “shoes”?

Ans) Zappos (now owned by Amazon). Zapatos is the Spanish word for shoes.

Q6. If this souvenir item sold annually were laid out end to end, they would stretch over 175 miles; more than 80 million of them have been sold since Disneyland opened in 1955. What item which has become quite the badge of honor?

Ans) Mickey Mouse ears hat

Q7. In pre-animation days, this device produced the illusion of motion by displaying a sequence of drawings or photographs showing progressive phases of that motion. What American film studio name founded by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas did this device inspire ?

Ans) The device is Zoetrope and the film studio is American Zoetrope.

Q8. Shown here is a US coin from 1925. Why does the coin have the mintmark M (to the left of 1925)?

Ans) M stands for Manila. A branch of the U.S. mint (Manila Mint) was established in 1920 in Manila in the Philippines, which was then a U.S. colony. To date, the Manila Mint is the only U.S. mint established outside the continental U.S. and was responsible for producing coins for the colony

Q9. Which group of people had this as their mascot in the 1920s?

Ans) This was the mascot of the “hog boys”, who raced on their Harley Davidson bikes. The group had a live hog as their mascot. Following a win, they would put the hog on their Harley and take a victory lap. This eventually became Harley Davidson’s NYSE ticker symbol – HOG.

Q10. What two names are missing from the cartoon?

Ans) Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) and Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and created by Congress. They perform an important role in the nation’s housing finance system – to provide liquidity, stability and affordability to the mortgage market.

• Compiled by Guest Quiz Master G.Sreekanth – G.Sreekanth is a National level Business Quiz Champion. He works and lives in Singapore