Christmas quiz: Round one – The news that made 2022

1. Who are these people, and how did they make the news in 2022?

2. What final report did Sue Gray deliver in May?

3. Who did Stella Moris marry in Belmarsh Prison in March?

4. In March, what did researchers discover in the Antarctic? It had been lost since 1915.

5. How were Girl With a Pearl Earring by Vermeer, Sunflowers (Van Gogh), The Scream (Munch), Massacre in Korea (Picasso), Sistine Madonna (Raphael), The Hay Wain (Constable) and the Mona Lisa (Da Vinci) linked this year?

6. What was the name of the Russian flagship that was destroyed by Ukrainian missiles 80 nautical miles south of Odesa in April? And what explanation did the Russians give for its sinking?

7. The WHO announced that after a transitional year monkeypox will be known by a new name following racist and stigmatising language online. What is its new name?

8. Who did Yair Lapid succeed as prime minister of Israel in July?

9. In August, China conducted its biggest-ever military exercises near Taiwan – apparently in response to a visit to the island by whom?

10. Who in April scored his 100th Premier League goal, more than 18 years after he scored his first.

11. Which two musicians, one of them long dead, duetted virtually at Glastonbury?

12. Where was Bob Chan roughed up in October?

13. According to Google’s annual Year in Search statistics, the UK’s three top-trending topics concerned a puzzle game, a death and a sports event. What were they?

14. In September, a prize was awarded to a Polish team of researchers who found that “when patients undergo some forms of toxic chemotherapy, they suffer fewer harmful side effects when ice cream replaces one traditional component of the procedure,” What was the prize?

15. In September, Chrissie Heerey of the RAF and Sima Mansouri, a financial saleswoman, met in London. They told reporters they would be “friends forever”. Where did they meet?

16. How did Liz Truss outdo George Canning?

17. In August, which American company closed all its Italian outlets after nearly seven years operating in the country?

18. Who did PR Week name the year’s best communicator? He was born into an Irish Catholic family in London in 1962.

19. What did Elton John, Shonda Rhimes, Toni Braxton, Whoopi Goldberg, Gigi Hadid, Marina Sirtis, all do this year?

20. In December, Elon Musk briefly lost his title of the world’s richest person, following his purchase of Twitter and a fall in the value of Tesla. To whom?

ANSWERS

1. A) Imran Khan was deposed as prime minister of Pakistan in April; in August he was charged under anti-terror laws, and in November he survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Punjab.

B) Vinice Mabansag was born in Manila in November, and was named by the UN as the nominal 8 billionth person on Earth,

C) Ketanji Brown Jackson became the first African American to be appointed to the US Supreme Court.

D) Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was freed in March after nearly six years’ detention in Iran.

E) Sanna Marin, the prime minister of Finland, was forced to defend herself after images of her partying were leaked. Following allegations that drugs had been present, she took a drugs test, which proved negative.

F) Ron Desantis convincingly won the November gubernatorial election in Florida, placing himself in prime position as a rival to Donald Trump in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

2. The senior civil servant delivered her report into “Partygate”.

3. Julian Assange.

4. Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance, which had sunk in the Weddell Sea in November 1915.

5. They were among more than a dozen paintings attacked by climate activists.

6. The Moskva; Russia claimed that it sank in stormy weather following an onboard fire.

7. Mpox.

8. Naftali Bennett, who became the de facto deputy prime minister, no party having an overall majority.

9. Nancy Pelosi, who became the highest-ranking American official to visit since the 1990s.

10. Cristiano Ronaldo.

11. Paul McCartney sang “I’ve Got a Feeling” alongside film of John Lennon singing it during the Beatles’ famous rooftop gig in 1969.

12. The protestor outside the Chinese consulate in Manchester and set upon by diplomatic officials. In December, six envoys were recalled by the Chinese government.

13. Wordle, the death of the Queen and the men’s football World Cup. The other two topics in the top five were Ukraine and lateral flow tests.

14. The 2022 Ig Nobel Prize, given annually to “achievements that first make people laugh, and then think”.

15. They were the last two people in the queue to see the Queen lying in state.

16. She became the shortest-lived British prime minister, serving for 44 days; George Canning, the previous record-holder, served for 119 days, from April 1827 until his death the following August.

17. Domino’s Pizza. “Trying to open Domino’s Pizza in Italy is like trying to sell snow in the North Pole,” one Twitter user wrote.

18. Mick Lynch, general secretary of the RMT.

19. Quit Twitter.

20. Bernard Arnault, of LVMH, the parent company of Louis Vuitton.