Odds And Ends Trivia Quiz

Answer: Diana Vreeland

Diana Vreeland was born in Paris, France, in 1903. She spent much of her career at "Harper's Bazaar" magazine (1936-62), but left to join "Vogue" in 1962, becoming editor the following year. She died in New York in 1989, aged 85.

Anna Wintour became "Vogue's" editor in 1988 (and was still there 35 years later). The actress Juliet Stevenson portrayed Vreeland in the film 2006 film "Infamous", about Truman Capote. Jacqueline Kennedy was married to John F. Kennedy from 1953 until his death in 1963.

Answer: Oberlin College

Oberlin College is in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest co-educational college in the USA, and first admitted women in 1837 - a total of four, three of whom successfully graduated.

Vassar was founded in 1861 as a college for women only. Both Yale and Princeton were founded much earlier - Yale in 1701 and Princeton in 1746 - but both only began to admit female undergraduates in 1969.

Answer: Psycho

Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) was a British-born film director who directed some of the best-known and most influential suspense and thriller films of the twentieth century. "Psycho" is one of his best-known works, although on its release some critics felt it was excessively violent and gruesome.

Norman Bates is the owner of a seedy motel, where secretary Marion Crane stops for the night after stealing $40,000 from her employer. Up until then, the film seems like a straightforward crime thriller, but events soon take a surprising turn. Special mention should be made of the musical score by regular Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Herrmann, which is an integral part of the film's atmosphere.

Answer: Flycatcher

A flycatcher is a small insect-eating bird, of which there are many hundreds of distinct species around the world.

A fedora is a soft-brimmed hat with a dent in the crown. It is named after the title character of the 1882 play "Fédora" by Victorien Sardou, because in the play's first production the character, played by Sarah Bernhardt, wore a version of the hat. It thus first became popular among women, although it is now better known as the favoured headgear of such masculine film heroes as Indiana Jones and Freddy Krueger.

The deerstalker is a tweed hat with flaps that can be either tied down under the chin to keep the ears warm, or up at the sides with a bow on the top. It is popularly associated with Sherlock Holmes, because he is shown wearing it in some of the original illustrations by Sidney Paget. Experts on Victorian fashion have pointed out that he would only have worn it when visiting the country, and never in London.

A porkpie hat has a small brim and a flat top, which makes it look a little like a pork pie, hence the name.

Answer: Perle Mesta

Perle Mesta (1889-1975) is largely forgotten now, but during the 1940s and 50s she was famous for her lavish Washington parties, attended by politicians, film stars and entertainers. She married the steel tycoon George Mesta in 1916, and inherited his considerable fortune when he died in 1925. Moving to Washington in 1940, she became a generous supporter of Harry Truman, and in 1949 he rewarded her with the post of U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg. The Black Russian cocktail (vodka and kahlua) was apparently created in her honour in 1949 by the barman at a Brussels hotel.

To "cast pearls before swine" is a proverb, warning against wasting something valuable on someone who wouldn't appreciate it.

Answer: Federico Garcia Lorca

Federico García Lorca lived from 1898 to 1936. "The House of Bernarda Alba" was his last play, which he completed shortly before his death during the Spanish Civil War. The title character is a domineering woman who controls the lives of her five daughters and the play is notable for having an all-female cast.

Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681), Lope de Vega (1562-1635) and Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) were all writers and playwrights from the so-called Spanish Golden Age of art and literature, which lasted from around 1490-1660.

Answer: Henry VII

He was the first Tudor monarch.

Answer: London Bridge

The London Bridge in question was constructed in 1831 and carried traffic across the River Thames for over 130 years. But by the 1960s it was no longer strong enough to carry the quantity of traffic using it on a daily basis, and the City of London decided to replace it with a new one. An American businessman named Robert P. McCulloch brought it, and had it transported to Lake Havasu in Arizona, to serve a new settlement he was building. In fact, he only made use of the exterior granite blocks, which were reconstructed around a modern core of reinforced concrete.

The historic set of twelve bells from St Martin-in-the-Fields church were sold to the State of Western Australia in 1988 and rehung in a specially built campanile in Perth. Only a few excavated foundations remain of the Tudor Globe Theatre, although a replica was constructed nearby by the American actor Sam Wanamaker, which opened in 1997. The Euston Arch was constructed in 1837 as the grand entrance to Euston Station, but controversially demolished in 1962 when the station was redeveloped.

Answer: Edward Albee

"Three Tall Women" had its premiere at the English Theatre in Vienna, Austria, in 1991 but had to wait until 2018 to be performed on Broadway, two years after Albee's death at the age of 88. It features three female characters who are named only as "A", "B" and "C". "A", a woman aged 92, is generally regarded to be based on Albee's mother, with whom he had a strained relationship. "B" and "C" represent both a caretaker and a lawyer attending on "A", as well as (in the play's second act) younger versions of "A".

Albee, who was born in Washington D.C. in 1928, is best known for his play "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", which was first performed in 1962. He is generally judged not to have fulfilled this early promise, although "Three Tall Woman" did win the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Answer: The Battle of the Bulge

The so-called "Battle of the Bulge" began on 16th December 1944, and lasted into January 1945. It was an unsuccessful attempt to push the Allies back through Belgium to Paris. More formally known as the Ardennes Offensive, it got its nickname from the "bulge" formed by the advancing German forces into Belgium.

The Siege of Tobruk took place in North Africa in 1941, while the Battle of Britain was the name given to the 1940 air assault by the German Luftwaffe on the United Kingdom. The Normandy Landings formed the Allied invasion of France in June 1944, being a major seaborne assault on five beaches in Normandy.