The questions

1 What financial nickname first features in a 1797 Gillray cartoon?

2 Which soul singer said, “Ostend is my orphanage”?

3 The Reconstruction followed which conflict?

4 Which seal preys on penguins and other seals?

5 In 2003, what came within 35m miles of Earth?

6 Which writer had six brothers and a sister called Cassandra?

7 Which business is named after a teetotal teacher?

8 What number’s square root equals the sum of its digits?

What links:

9 Hadean; Archean; Proterozoic; Phanerozoic?

10 Pernambuco; silver; Equator; Christopher Columbus; Simon Bolivar?

11 By fall; by technical superiority; by points?

12 Innocence; Anxiety; Reason; Surveillance Capitalism?

13 Santa Pod in Bedfordshire and RuPaul?

14 Kushinagar (Uttar Pradesh); Hebron; Jerusalem; Medina?

15 Cesar Romero; Jack Nicholson; Heath Ledger; Jared Leto; Joaquin Phoenix?

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The answers

1 The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street (Bank of England).

2 Marvin Gaye.

3 American Civil War.

4 Leopard seal.

5 Mars (on average 140m miles).

6 Jane Austen.

7 JD Wetherspoon pub chain.

8 81 (as well as 0 and 1).

9 Four eons of geologic time.

10 Name origins of South American countries: Brazil(wood); Argentina; Ecuador; Colombia; Bolivia.

11 Results in Freestyle/Greco-Roman wrestling.

12 The Age of… works: Edith Wharton novel; WH Auden poem; Sartre novel; Shoshana Zuboff non-fiction book.

13 Drag racing: major venue and host of TV series Drag Race.

14 Death sites of prophets/religious founders: Buddha; Abraham; Jesus; Muhammad.

15 Played the Joker.