Answers to quiz #4 [LITERATURE]

1) Birds of the West Indies is the book by ornithologist James Bond that was on Ian Fleming's shelf when he was looking for a plain-sounding name for the main character of Casino Royale, the debut appearance of Agent 007.

2) "Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus" is the motto of Hogwarts (latin for "never tickle a sleeping dragon") in the Harry Potter series of books by J.K. Rowling.

3) "What mighty contests rise from trivial things" is the quote by poet Alexander Pope that appears on the box of the original Genus Edition of the board game Trivial Pursuit.

4) "This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which is dying fast" is the opening line of Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions.

5) The Wreck of the Titan is the 1898 novelette by Morgan Robertson that is eerily prophetic of the 1912 sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic. The English-built, "practically unsinkable" Titan was "the largest craft afloat," had insufficient lifeboat capacity, and sank after ramming into an iceberg during a transatlantic voyage.

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