A friend asked me to answer this question: What's the real first name of the man who fails to fool the US Treasury investigator?, using the article: Arthur "Cody" Jarrett is a ruthless, psychotic criminal and leader of the Jarrett gang. Although married to Verna, he is overly attached to his equally crooked and determined mother, "Ma" Jarrett, his only true confidant. Cody and his gang rob a mail train in the Sierra Nevada mountains (referred to as "the tunnel job"), killing four members of the train's crew. While on the lam, Cody has a severe, instant migraine, which Ma nurses him through. Afterward, Ma and Cody have a quick drink and toast, "Top of the world!" before rejoining the others. The gang uses the cover of a storm to change hideouts and split up.  Informants enable the authorities close in on a motor court in Los Angeles where Cody, Verna, and Ma are holed up. Cody shoots and wounds US Treasury investigator Philip Evans and makes his escape. He then puts his emergency scheme in motion: confess to a lesser crime (the "hotel job") committed by an associate in Springfield, Illinois at the same time as the tunnel job - which was federal crime - thus providing him with a false alibi and assuring him a lesser sentence. He flies to Illinois and turns himself in, where he receives one- to three-years in state prison. This ruse does not fool Evans, however, who plants undercover agent Hank Fallon (aka prisoner Vic Pardo) in Cody's cell in the Illinois State Penitentiary. His task is to find the "Trader", a fence who launders stolen money for Cody. Hank's angle is to become a surrogate "ma" to Cody and get him to talk., what would be the answer ?
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Answer: Arthur


A friend asked me to answer this question: In what year did the African population in the thirteen colonies contribute to 10%?, using the article: In 1670, Charles II incorporated by royal charter the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), granting it a monopoly on the fur trade in the area known as Rupert's Land, which would later form a large proportion of the Dominion of Canada. Forts and trading posts established by the HBC were frequently the subject of attacks by the French, who had established their own fur trading colony in adjacent New France.Two years later, the Royal African Company was inaugurated, receiving from King Charles a monopoly of the trade to supply slaves to the British colonies of the Caribbean. From the outset, slavery was the basis of the British Empire in the West Indies. Until the abolition of its slave trade in 1807, Britain was responsible for the transportation of 3.5 million African slaves to the Americas, a third of all slaves transported across the Atlantic. To facilitate this trade, forts were established on the coast of West Africa, such as James Island, Accra and Bunce Island. In the British Caribbean, the percentage of the population of African descent rose from 25% in 1650 to around 80% in 1780, and in the Thirteen Colonies from 10% to 40% over the same period (the majority in the southern colonies). For the slave traders, the trade was extremely profitable, and became a major economic mainstay for such western British cities as Bristol and Liverpool, which formed the third corner of the triangular trade with Africa and the Americas. For the transported, harsh and unhygienic conditions on the slaving ships and poor diets meant that the average mortality rate during the Middle Passage was one in seven.In 1695, the Parliament of Scotland granted a charter to the Company of Scotland, which established a settlement in 1698 on the Isthmus of Panama. Besieged by neighbouring Spanish colonists of New Granada, and afflicted by malaria, the colony was abandoned two years later. The Darien scheme was a financial disaster for Scotland—a quarter of Scottish capital was lost in the enterprise—and ended Scottish hopes of establishing its..., what would be the answer ?
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Answer: 1650


A friend asked me to answer this question: What is the full name of the person that thought they had purchased an oil sketch prepared by Velázquez?, using the article: In 1692, the Neapolitan painter Luca Giordano  became one of the few allowed to view paintings held in Philip IV's private apartments, and was greatly impressed by Las Meninas. Giordano described the work as the "theology of painting", and was inspired to paint A Homage to Velázquez (National Gallery, London). By the early 18th century his oeuvre was gaining international recognition, and later in the century British collectors ventured to Spain in search of acquisitions. Since the popularity of Italian art was then at its height among British connoisseurs, they concentrated on paintings that showed obvious Italian influence, largely ignoring others such as Las Meninas.An almost immediate influence can be seen in the two portraits by Mazo of subjects depicted in Las Meninas, which in some ways reverse the motif of that painting. Ten years later, in 1666, Mazo painted Infanta Margaret Theresa, who was then 15 and just about to leave Madrid to marry the Holy Roman Emperor. In the background are figures in two further receding doorways, one of which was the new King Charles (Margaret Theresa's brother), and another the dwarf Maribarbola. A Mazo portrait of the widowed Queen Mariana again shows, through a doorway in the Alcázar, the young king with dwarfs, possibly including Maribarbola, and attendants who offer him a drink.  Mazo's painting of The Family of the Artist also shows a composition similar to that of Las Meninas. Francisco Goya etched a print of Las Meninas in 1778, and later used Velázquez's painting as the model for his Charles IV of Spain and His Family. As in Las Meninas, the royal family in Goya's work is apparently visiting the artist's studio. In both paintings the artist is shown working on a canvas, of which only the rear is visible. Goya, however, replaces the atmospheric and warm perspective of Las Meninas with what Pierre Gassier calls a sense of "imminent suffocation". Goya's royal family is presented on a "stage facing the public, while in the shadow of the wings the painter, with a grim..., what would be the answer ?
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Answer:
William John Bankes