September 20th: Matches, Hatches, Dispatches Quiz

Answer: Dudley Moore

Each of the four people mentioned was a member of "Beyond The Fringe", a revue written and performed by the four Oxbridge graduates, beginning in 1960. It was hugely popular in its day but its value is appreciated beyond its stage and TV life thanks to the inspiration it provided to future comedians and satirists. Whilst Bennett was to find future success as the writer of such plays as "The Madness of George III" and "The History Boys" and Miller became a leading director of opera, Moore and Cook, or Pete 'n' Dud as they became known, continued as comedy performers. Their two-hander sketch show, "Not Only... But Also" was one of the most popular comedy series of the 1960s in Britain. It led to movie opportunities, the best of which were "Bedazzled" and "The Wrong Box".

Moore and Cook finally split in the mid 1970s as Moore struggled to deal with Cook's alcoholism and Moore moved to Hollywood to concentrate on his movie career. After '10' made him a star, Moore achieved his biggest hit with 'Arthur', for which he received an Oscar nomination and Golden Globe win as Best Actor.

Moore became afflicted with progressive supranuclear palsy in 1999 and the degenerative physical nature of the disease led to numerous complications. One of these, pneumonia, led to his early death in 2002 at the age of 66.

Answer: Arthur Tudor

Arthur Tudor was the son of Henry VII and brother of Henry VIII. His wife was Catherine of Aragon, who married the younger Henry after Arthur's death. When Catherine failed to produce a son for Henry, he used the fact of her previous marriage to Arthur to engineer an annulment of the marriage, which precipitated a break from Rome for the English church.

The cause of Arthur's death is not known for certain but it came quickly and unexpectedly. The two most likely suspects are the sweating sickness, a virulent disease that caused many deaths during Tudor times, and tuberculosis, the Tudor family disease. TB was also responsible for the death, aged 15, of Edward VI in 1558.

Answer: Jacob Grimm

The brothers Grimm began their dictionary in 1838 and by the time of Jacob's death in 1863 the project had only reached the letter F. Wilhelm, the younger of the brothers, had died four years previously, so the project was continued by a number of institutions, with the last volume published in 1961.

The brothers Grimm published their first edition of "Children's and Household Tales" in 1812. The tales were transcribed from stories told to them by people from all across Germany. The first volume contained 86 tales, such as "Hansel and Gretel" and "Rapunzel", and was criticised as being too academic in tone and inaccessible to children. By the time of their death, they had issued seven editions of the tales, totalling 211 tales and also a special collection for children of 50 of the stories.

Answer: Thermos flask

Dewar was a physicist and chemist who achieved many things beyond the invention of the Dewar flask. Amongst his great experiments was to demonstrate that the so-called permanent gases, such as hydrogen and helium, were anything but by reducing them to a low enough temperature to liquefy.

His flask was a by-product of this research as he sought a way to keep the substances liquid for long enough periods to be able to examine their properties in this state. Sadly, for Dewar, he didn't patent his invention and lost a court case against the Thermos company of Germany when he tried to prevent his design from being copied.

Answer: Finlandia

Sibelius is an important cultural figure in Finland and his image graced the Finnish 100 mark bill (before the introduction of the Euro). After giving up the law to concentrate on music, he wrote seven symphonies, his style progressing from Wagnerian to Romantic over their course. His use of the orchestra was highly influential and he has been described as "arguably as important to early 20th-century music as Ezra Pound was to literary modernism".

"Finlandia" was written in 1899, the last of seven musical pieces written to be performed together in front of a backdrop of artworks depicting the glories of Finnish history. The performance was part of a series of celebrations, recognising the role of the Finnish press in maintaining national identity in the face of increasing censorship from the ruling Russian elite.

Part of "Finlandia" was re-written as a stand alone piece called the "Finlandia Hymn" that became a national song after Finland's independence was gained in 1917. Curiously, the western African breakaway nation of Biafra, which briefly attempted to gain independence from Nigeria in the late 1960s, used this tune as its national anthem.

Answer: Al Jolson

The film was "The Jazz Singer" (1927) and the first words of dialogue, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain't heard nothin' yet," came a quarter of an hour into the film. As he also preferred to do on stage, Jolson performed the song and dance sequences in the film made up in blackface.

Despite how this may appear to modern sensibilities, Jolson was respected for his fight against discrimination against black performers in the USA.

Answer: Thomas Hardy

Whilst his place in popular history rests entirely on his presence at Nelson's scene of death, Sir Thomas Hardy had a distinguished military career of his own. He played a significant role in engagements in Portugal and the War of 1812 against the United States. By 1830, he had risen to head the British navy as the First Naval Lord and when he died, in 1839, he was rewarded with burial in the Royal Naval College in Greenwich.

Thomas Hardy, the novelist, was responsible for such masterpieces as "The Mayor of Casterbridge" and "Far From the Madding Crowd".

Answer: Jelly Roll Morton

"Jelly Roll Blues", first composed in 1905, was published in 1915 and was an undoubted first in jazz, a musical form that had hitherto been based around free-form improvisation of tunes learned by ear. A less certain pioneering claim that Morton made for himself was that he had invented jazz itself. However dubious this claim may be, he was certainly a key figure in its development and its growing popularity.

He began his career as a pianist in a brothel, and was inspired by the ragtime tunes played by his peers. When his family discovered where he was playing, he was kicked out of his home in disgrace and started life as a travelling musician. He started composing and through his travelling, he helped introduce the sound of New Orleans to other parts of the United States.

Answer: Fiorello La Guardia

La Guardia came to power in New York City at a time when the nation was suffering the Great Depression. Despite being a Republican, he was a fervent supporter of President Roosevelt's New Deal initiative and, as a consequence, secured significant government funding for the city. Much of this money was invested in public works; roads, tunnels, bridges and taking the subway system into public hands.

The final key to his transportational plan was to construct a commercial airport within the city's limits, a plan inspired through annoyance at having to land at Newark in New Jersey in order to access the city. In 1937, development began to transform a small airfield in Queens, known as North Beach airport, into a airport capable of taking commercial airliners. It was opened in 1939 as the New York Municipal Airport. Just three months before LaGuardia's death, the airport was renamed in his honour.

Answer: Sophia Loren

Loren was born Sofia Scicolone and made her first movie appearance, aged 16, in the 1951 Hollywood adaptation of Henryk Sienkiewicz's novel "Quo Vadis?". A year later, she changed her stage name to Loren and embarked on a film career in her native Italy. Five years later she returned to American films with "Boy on a Dolphin" and signed a contract with Paramount. However, her first award-winning role came when she returned to Italy to make "Two Women", a film about a mother trying to protect her daughter from the ever-present dangers in war-torn Italy.

Loren became one of the world's most famous and most photographed women of the 1960s, inspiring admiration and desire amongst hundreds of men. One of those men was Peter Sellers, who reportedly left his first wife due to his love for Loren, even though Loren did not have reciprocal feelings.