Which number should replace the question mark?

I am the black child of a white father, a wingless bird, flying even to the clouds of heaven. I give birth to tears of mourning in pupils that meet me, even though there is no cause for grief, and at once on my birth, I am dissolved into air. What am I?

A new Engineering building containing 100 offices had just been completed. John was hired to paint the numbers 1 to 100 on the doors. How many times will John have to paint the number nine (9)?

It was a dark stormy night and a couple were in a car driving madly to a city. The car broke down and the husband had to go get help from someone who spoke his language. He was afraid to leave his wife alone in the car so he locked the car before leaving. When he came back, the car was in the same state as he had left it but his wife was dead, there was blood on the floor and there was a stranger in the car. What happened?

One day, I thought of ways that can be used for creating a palindrome. So I decided that I will turn into a larger number by adding the reversed digits to the original number and keep doing it till I finally obtained a palindrome.

I am not sure if this process will always result in a palindrome eventually but I was able to produce a four-digit palindrome. Can you guess my starting number?

A bridge is about to collapse. There are four people P, Q, R and S on one of the sides. Before the bridge collapses, they want to cross it. Now since the bridge is too weak, it can only stand the weight of two people at a time. Also, it is night time and nothing is visible. They have just one torch with them.

Now P takes one minute to cross the bridge, Q takes two minutes to cross, R takes five minutes to cross and S takes ten minutes to cross.

The bridge will collapse in seventeen minutes. How will they be able to cross the bridge before it collapses?

A mules travels the same distance daily.
I noticed that two of his legs travels 10km and the remaining two travels 12km.
Obviously two mules legs cannot be a 2km ahead of the other 2.

The mules is perfectly normal. So how come this be true ?

What is common among 11, 69, and 88?

Two prisoners Jack and Jill are locked in a cell.
There is open window approx 40 feet above the ground of the cell.
They are never able to reach there.

Then they plan to escape by a tunnel and they start digging out.
After digging for more than 20 days, Jill comes with the different plan and they escaped.

what was the plan ?

You have a roll of cloth 1km long. You have a machine which cuts this roll into pieces of 10-meter-long cloth.

How long would it take for the machine to cut the roll if each cut took 4 secs?