How Have You Been Philately? Trivia Quiz

Answer: Because I could not stop for Death

Although Emily Dickinson wrote almost 1800 poems, only ten of them were published during her life. Her sister Lavinia discovered a cache of poems Dickinson had written in a locked chest after her death, and the first collection of her poetry was published in 1890, edited by the writers Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd. Dickinson did not title her poems, so they are either known by number (as assigned in the collection published by Thomas H. Johnson in 1955), or by the first line. She also had a habit of using multiple hyphens as punctuation that were often edited out (e.g. 'I'm Nobody! Who are you?/Are you - Nobody - too?')

'Because I could not stop for Death' was given the title of 'The Chariot' by Higginson and Todd. ('Leaves of Grass' is by Walt Whitman, 'The Road Not Taken' is by Robert Frost and 'Daddy' is by Sylvia Plath.)

Answer: Yakov Sverdlov

Yakov Sverdlov was an early supporter of Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Arrested and imprisoned in Yekaterinburg, Sverdlov spent his time in jail reading Marxist literature; while in exile in Siberia, he met Joseph Stalin, then going under the name of Iosep Dzughashvili. He met Lenin in 1917 and became secretary and then chairman of the Central Committee of the Party, and was involved in planning the October Revolution. Later that year, he was elected Chairman of the All-Russian Executive Committee, essentially making him head of what was then known as the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (the USSR would not exist until 1922).

Sverdlov was also a major player in the persecution of both the Cossacks and the kulaks (peasants who owned a certain amount of land) and, according to some historians, either ordered the murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his family, or was ordered to carry it out by Lenin; Leon Trotsky also claimed similar in his diaries. When Fanny Kaplan tried to assassinate Lenin, Sverdlov oversaw her interrogation and execution, and ordered for her corpse to be burned. He died in 1919 and Yekaterinburg was renamed Sverdlovsk in his honour until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.

Answer: Wine

Although we associate the term 'pasteurisation' more commonly with milk, it was actually wine that helped Louis Pasteur develop a method for preserving liquids by heating them. He had originally been approached by the father of one of his students, who wanted to make beetroot alcohol without the risk of it turning sour. Pasteur, a proponent of germ theory, noted that certain microorganisms in wine would turn it sour by producing lactic acid. On holiday in Arbois in 1864, he heated wine to the temperature of 50-60°C in order to kill microbes and prevent the wine from becoming acidic while ageing. He patented the process the following year.

The idea of pasteurising milk did not catch on until several decades later; while the German chemist Franz von Soxhlet von proposed in 1886, that milk should be pasteurised to stop it spoiling, many countries still consumed raw milk despite it often being riddled with bacteria. In 1910, chemist and Health Commissioner Ernest Lederle made it mandatory for milk to be pasteurised in New York City. Over the 20th century, other states followed suit.

Answer: Football/soccer

Henrikh Mkhitaryan is an Armenian footballer who began his career at Yerevan club Pyunik in his homeland, where he won four Armenian Premier League titles. After a spell in Ukraine at Metalurh Donetsk (now defunct) and Shakhtar Donetsk, he signed for Borussia Dortmund in 2013 and won the DFL-Supercup the following year. Mkhitaryan became the first Armenian to play in the English Premier League when he signed for Manchester United in 2016, making his debut against Wigan Athletic and scoring his first United goal in a Europa League game against Zorya Luhansk. In 2017, he won the Europa League with United under Jose Mourinho, becoming the first Armenian to do so.

Mkhitaryan signed for Arsenal in 2018 in a swap for Chilean striker Alexis Sánchez. Under Unai Emery, Arsenal made it to the Europa League final in Baku in 2019, but Mkhitaryan was unable to play due to fears for his safety over political tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan. He left for the warmer climes of the Serie A in 2020, signing for Roma, then Inter Milan in 2022. In 2012, he was made an Honorary Citizen of Yerevan.

Answer: Argentina

William Brown, also known as Guillermo Brown, is a naval hero not only in Ireland, but in Argentina as well. After travelling to Uruguay and settling with Montevideo, where he worked as a merchant, he travelled between Uruguay and Argentina for trade purposes, until the Spanish government intervened and destroyed his schooner, Industria, seeing him as a threat to Spanish trade. In the Argentinian War of Independence, Brown was put in charge of the Argentinian fleet. Even when his leg was broken by a Spanish cannonball, he continued to give orders while lying on deck. Brown also fought for the United Provinces of South America against the Spanish Empire in the Battle of Martin García in 1814.

After retiring from the Navy, Brown settled in Argentina and took up farming. He died and was buried in Argentina in 1857, with full military honours. Several Argentinian warships have been named after him, such as the Almirante Brown destroyers.

Answer: Turkmenistan

Saparmurat Niyazov was born in Gypjak, on the outskirts of Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan. A former member of the Communist Party, he became the first President of Turkmenistan following the country's independence in 1991. His reconstruction of Ashgabat turned it into a city full of white marble, nicknamed the City of the Dead for its eerie appearance and lack of people (many inhabitants being forced to live on the outskirts due to the cost of living). Calling himself 'Turkmenbashi', or 'Father of Turkmen', Niyazov introduced multiple festival days, renamed months and days of the week after himself and other Turkmen figures, and had multiple monuments built to honour him, including a giant version of the Ruhnama, his guidebook that was mandatory reading for Turkmen citizens, and a revolving statue of himself that always faced the sun. He also banned opera, ballet, circuses, beards, make-up for women on television, video games, car radios, and owning more than one cat or dog.

While Niyazov's eccentricities might sound funny, they were no laughing matter for the many people who suffered under his dictatorship; Turkmenistan had no press freedom and the lowest life expectancy in Central Asia, not least because Niyazov ordered all hospitals outside Ashgabat to be closed in 2005, forcing people to travel to the capital for medical treatment. Libraries outside Ashgabat were also closed. Doctors had to swear a Hippocratic Oath to him and devout Muslims were so disgusted by text from the Ruhnama being inscribed on the Türkmenbasy Ruhy Mosque that they refused to attend it. Niyazov died in 2006 and his successor, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow - himself a dictator - revoked some of his more eccentric measures.

Answer: Radio

Guglielmo Marconi was an electrical engineer from Bologna who was privately educated at home as a child. Since childhood, he was interested in science and electricity, and began conducting experiments with radio waves in the attic of his home when he was in his twenties. He used an early type of radio receiver called a coherer, a glass tube with two electrodes separated by metal filings, in his experiments. After experimenting with transmitters and receivers, he had a breakthrough in 1895 when he discovered that raising the system's antenna increased its range. Marconi travelled to England to seek funding and support, and patented his new communication system in 1896. In 1897, he sent his first wireless communication across a sea, from Flat Holm Island off the Welsh coast to Cardiff.

Of note, Marconi's discoveries played a role in the rescue of survivors of the Titanic disaster; the Titanic's radio operators, Jack Phillips and Harold Bride, were employed by the Marconi International Marine Communication Company and managed to send an SOS signal to the RMS Carpathia, a ship 58 miles away. Bride survived the sinking, but Phillips died. (Marconi himself had been invited on the Titanic, but declined and took the Lusitania three days earlier instead.)

Answer: Democratic Republic of the Congo

If you've read Barbara Kingsolver's 'The Poisonwood Bible', you may remember that Patrice Lumumba appears in it, giving a speech. Lumumba came from a farming background and was a keen reader and polyglot; he worked as a postman and was arrested on charges of embezzlement. On his release in 1958, he founded the Mouvement National Congolais party and became its leader. When the Belgian Congo declared independence from Belgium and became the Republic of the Congo (it changed its name four years later), a general election was held on 22nd May 1960 and Lumumba's faction won the most seats.

However, Lumumba's period as Prime Minister only lasted three months. Joseph Kasa-Vubu clashed with Lumumba over whether or not the government should be centralised, and suspected Lumumba of Communist sympathies. He subsequently dismissed Lumumba and dissolved his government. Lumumba was arrested by Colonel Mobutu - who would later go on to overthrow Kasa-Vubu as well - in 1960 and imprisoned at the military barracks in Camp Hardy, where he was then moved to the breakaway state of Katanga. He was shot by firing squad and his body was exhumed and dissolved in acid by the Belgian gendarmerie, for fear that a burial site would be created.

Answer: Akihito

The Emperor Akihito was the son of the Emperor Hirohito and married Michiko Shouda, who he met on a tennis court in 1957, in 1959; it was the first imperial wedding to be shown on TV in Japan, with 15 million viewers tuning in. He ascended to the Chrysanthemum Throne following Hirohito's death in 1989, and his reign was known as 'Heisei', meaning 'peace everywhere'. When Akihito became Emperor, Japan was experiencing an economic bubble, which ended in 1991 and was followed by a period of stagnation known as the Lost Decades. Although Akihito was essentially a figurehead, he did issue several statements of remorse to countries who had suffered under Japanese occupation during the Second World War, including China.

Akihito abdicated in 2019, having announced his plans to retire eventually three years earlier, and his son Naruhito became the new Emperor of Japan.

Answer: George VI

George VI was the father of Elizabeth II, one of Britain's longest-reigning monarchs, and younger brother of Edward VIII, who abdicated due to his marriage to the American divorcée Wallis Simpson. (Charles III was his grandson and George V, his father.) He was King of the United Kingdom during the Second World War and was in Buckingham Palace, together with his wife Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, when it was bombed during the Blitz. As anyone who's seen 'The King's Speech' will know, he had a stutter and employed Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue to help correct it. He was also a heavy smoker, which led to his death at the age of 56 in 1952. Elizabeth II succeeded him as Queen.

George VI relinquished the title of Emperor of India in 1949 following India's independence, and became Head of the Commonwealth instead. Jamaica, a former territory of the British Empire, is one of the Commonwealth States.