TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.
PROBLEM: Passage: Sandringham is recorded in the Domesday Book as "sant-Dersingham" and the land was awarded to a Norman knight, Robert Fitz-Corbun after the Conquest. The local antiquarian Claude Messent, in his study The Architecture on the Royal Estate of Sandringham, records the discovery of evidence of the pavements of a Roman villa. In the Elizabethan era a manor was built on the site of the present house, which, by the 18th century, came into the possession of the Hoste Henley family, descendants of Dutch refugees. In 1771 Cornish Henley cleared the site to build a Georgian mansion, Sandringham Hall. In 1834, Henry Hoste Henley died without issue, and the estate was bought at auction by John Motteux, a London merchant. Motteux was also without heirs and bequeathed Sandringham, together with another Norfolk estate and a property in Surrey, to the third son of his close friend, Emily Lamb, the wife of Lord Palmerston. At the time of his inheritance in 1843, Charles Spencer Cowper was a bachelor diplomat, resident in Paris. On succeeding to Motteux's estates, he sold the other properties and based himself at Sandringham. He undertook extensions to the hall, employing Samuel Sanders Teulon to add an elaborate porch and conservatory. Cowper's style of living was extravagant—he and his wife spent much of their time on the Continent—and within 10 years the estate was mortgaged for £89,000. The death of their only child, Mary Harriette, from cholera in 1854 led the couple to spend even more time abroad, mainly in Paris, and by the early 1860s Cowper was keen to sell the estate.

SOLUTION: What is the first name of the person who bequeathed Sandringham, together with another Norfolk estate and a property in Surrey, to the third son of his close friend?

PROBLEM: Passage: From the time of his earliest recordings in the 1960s, Bowie employed a wide variety of musical styles. His early compositions and performances were strongly influenced by rock and rollers like Little Richard and Elvis Presley, and also the wider world of show business. He particularly strove to emulate the British musical theatre singer-songwriter and actor Anthony Newley, whose vocal style he frequently adopted, and made prominent use of for his 1967 debut release, David Bowie (to the disgust of Newley himself, who destroyed the copy he received from Bowie's publisher). Bowie's music hall fascination continued to surface sporadically alongside such diverse styles as hard rock and heavy metal, soul, psychedelic folk, and pop.Musicologist James Perone observes Bowie's use of octave switches for different repetitions of the same melody, exemplified in his commercial breakthrough single, "Space Oddity", and later in the song "Heroes", to dramatic effect; Perone notes that "in the lowest part of his vocal register ... his voice has an almost crooner-like richness."Voice instructor Jo Thompson describes Bowie's vocal vibrato technique as "particularly deliberate and distinctive". Schinder and Schwartz call him "a vocalist of extraordinary technical ability, able to pitch his singing to particular effect." Here, too, as in his stagecraft and songwriting, the singer's role playing is evident: historiographer Michael Campbell says that Bowie's lyrics "arrest our ear, without question. But Bowie continually shifts from person to person as he delivers them ... His voice changes dramatically from section to section." In a 2014 analysis of 77 "top" artists' vocal ranges, Bowie was 8th, just behind Christina Aguilera and just ahead of Paul McCartney. In addition to the guitar, Bowie also played a variety of keyboards, including piano, Mellotron, Chamberlin, and synthesizers; harmonica; alto and baritone saxophones; stylophone; viola; cello; koto (in the Heroes track "Moss Garden"); thumb piano; drums (on the Heathen track "Cactus"), and various percussion instruments.

SOLUTION: What is the first name of the person who employed a wide variety of musical styles from the time of his earliest recordings?

PROBLEM: Passage: The fall of the inner German border came rapidly and unexpectedly in November 1989, along with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Its integrity had been fatally compromised in May 1989 when the Hungarian government began dismantling its border fence with Austria. The government was still notionally Communist but planned free elections and economic reform as part of a strategy of "rejoining Europe" and reforming its struggling economy.Opening the Hungarian border with Austria was essential to this effort. Hungary was at that time a popular tourist destination for East Germans; West Germany had secretly offered a much-needed hard currency loan of DM 500 million ($250 million) in return for allowing citizens of the GDR to freely emigrate. Pictures of the barbed-wire fences being taken down were transmitted into East Germany by West German television stations. This prompted a mass exodus by hundreds of thousands of East Germans, which began in earnest in September 1989. In addition to those crossing the Hungarian border, tens of thousands of East Germans scaled the walls of the West German embassies in Prague, Warsaw and Budapest, where they were regarded as "German citizens" by the federal government, claiming "asylum".Czechoslovakia's hardline communist government agreed to close its border with East Germany to choke off the exodus. The closure produced uproar across East Germany and the GDR government's bid to humiliate refugees by expelling them from the country in sealed trains backfired disastrously. Torn-up identity papers and East German passports littered the tracks as the refugees threw them out of the windows. When the trains passed through Dresden, 1,500 East Germans stormed the main railway station in an attempt to board. Dozens were injured and the station concourse was virtually destroyed.The small pro-democracy Monday demonstrations soon swelled into crowds of hundreds of thousands of people in cities across East Germany. The East German leadership considered using force but ultimately backed down, lacking support from the Soviet Union for a violent Tiananmen Square-style military intervention. Reformist members of the East German Politbüro sought to rescue the situation by forcing the resignation of the hardline Party chairman Erich Honecker, replacing him in October 1989 with the marginally less hardline Egon Krenz.The new government sought to appease the protesters by reopening the border with Czechoslovakia. This, however, merely resulted in the resumption of the mass exodus through Hungary via Czechoslovakia. On 8 November 1989, with huge demonstrations continuing across the country, the entire Politbüro resigned and a new, more moderate Politbüro was appointed under Krenz's continued leadership.

SOLUTION:
What did refugees throw out the window?