A Time To Be Born, A Time To Die Quiz

Answer: William Shakespeare

Though Shakespeare's exact date of birth is unknown, we do know his baptism date - April 26th, 1564. In keeping with regular British church tradition at the time, his baptism would have come no more than a week from his birth and a three day period seems reasonable. Shakespeare passed on, leaving this world some of its most amazing and memorable literature. He also left his wife their "second best bed".

The incorrect choices are kind of a cheeky wink, as all of them have been proposed as the "real" authors of the Shakespeare works by toffee-nosed stuck-ups who can't imagine a "peasant" writing true literature.

Answer: Ingrid Bergman

Though an amazing a versatile actress, Ingrid Bergman will probably be best remembered as Humphrey Bogart's opposite, Ilsa Lund, in the movie "Casablanca" (1942). She was in three Hitchcock movies, "The Bells of St. Mary's" (1945) where she starred alongside Bing Crosby, and the Albert Finney version of "Murder on the Orient Express" (1974).

A true polyglot, Bergman spoke five languages (Swedish, English, German, Italian and French) and acted in movies where she used each one.

Answer: Betty Friedan

Betty Friedan seems to have come out of the womb an activist. As a young girl in Peoria, Illinois, Friedan was an activist in Jewish and Marxist causes. She was turned down as a columnist by her school newspaper and so went and founded a competing magazine. She went to Smith College and later attended Berkley. She stayed active in Marxist and labour groups, but was forced to retire from the labour newspaper because she was pregnant.

Furious and at the same time mired in the middle-class mediocrity that comes with "simply" being a housewife, Friedan channeled her frustration into her seminal work, "The Feminine Mystique" (published 1963). This got her near superstar status in the feminist community and within three years of its publication she had helped found NOW, the largest equal rights organization for women in the USA.

Answer: Walter Diemer - Bubble gum

Yep, bubble gum was invented by an accountant. Walter Diemer, who worked for the Fleer corporation, had a hobby - playing with gum recipes. He would go down to the factory floor in his off time an fool around with the product. One day, he accidentally made a gum that was less sticky than the normal gum and therefore more elastic.

He was excited and wanted to try out its marketing possibilities right away. He threw the only color dye the factory had in the mix, an ugly pink that is still what we think of as the colour of bubble gum today, in the machine, wrapped it up and took it around to local candy stores.

It sold out in a day, and the first bubble gum was born under the name "Dubble Bubble". (chewing gum and bubble gum is banned in Singapore)

Answer: Merle Haggard

Merle Haggard is lauded by the Country Music Hall of Fame as "with the arguable exception of Hank Williams, as the single most influential singer-songwriter in country music history." Haggard was a country outlaw, that was actually an outlaw. He robbed a roadhouse, was sent to prison, tried to escape and was then transferred to the infamous San Quentin. While there, he started a prison hooch operation, which sent him to solitary.

Prison, and the execution of one of his fellow escapees, changed Haggard and he turned to music as his outlet for the frustrations of being a poor working man. His songs were deeply rooted in the soil of the American proletariat, and while Woody Guthrie comparisons are apt, he is Woody if Woody hadn't been so nice.

Answer: Sidney Bechet

Sidney Bechet was an amazing jazz sax player who also excelled on the clarinet, being born in New Orleans didn't hurt either. Like most prodigies, he started performing at the age of 6, had a meteoric rise that saw him playing with the London philharmonic by the age of 22, and a star in France a year later. His fortunes did take a small dip when he shot a man in a bar fight, spent 11 months in a Paris jail and was deported from France back to the USA. By 1951, however, bygones were bygones and he moved to France permanently dying 8 years later on his birthday.

In 1924, he beat the much more famous Louis Armstrong to the recording studio by several months, with a recording of "Shreveport Blues". The record has been uploaded to YouTube. Go check it out!

Answer: Jean Piccard

Born in Switzerland, Jean moved to the USA where he attended the University of Chicago, meeting his wife Jeanette *and yes, Good Grief, they were actually a loving couple named Jean and Jeanette*. She was also a balloon enthusiast and together they designed both the first plastic balloons and also clustered high altitude balloons. She and her husband went up in one of their contraptions to a height of 17.5km, making her (depending on how you count it) the first woman in space.

The joke of the other names is that they are all bastardizations of characters from "Star Trek, The Next Generation" (tv series 1987-1994). The main character and captain, Jean-Luc Picard's famous saying was, "Make it so."
P.S. Sorry about the "airlock" dig, I couldn't resist.

Answer: Swede Risberg

Swede Risberg left school after the third grade, but became one of the better pro-ball players of the early era. By age 18 he had started a pro-career and was soon picked up by a second-tier team, the Venice Tigers, as a pitcher. Kicking around in the Pacific Coast League for a few years got him noticed by the Majors and by 1917 the Chicago White Sox had optioned him as a shortstop. He was with the Sox later that year when they won the World Series. With WWI on, Risberg left baseball and joined the crew of a shipyard returning to baseball almost as soon as the war ended.

He was one of the eight that were eventually banned from baseball forever for taking bribes to throw the 1919 World Series. After the end of his baseball career, Swede went into farming and owned a bar. The "turnip" crack is because "swede" is one of the words our British brethren call what USAers call a turnip.

Answer: Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr.

FDR Jr. served as a naval reservist in WWII at both the Battle of Casablanca and also the invasion of Sicily, where he won a Silver Star for carrying a wounded soldier to safety while under fire. After the war he retired from service and went into law practice before running for and winning the 20th congressional seat for New York in 1949, 1950, and 1952 as a member of the Liberal Party, not a Democrat as his father had been.

He became the Undersecretary of Commerce and later chairman of the EEOC under Kennedy and LBJ respectively, before finally retiring from politics and going into the car business. Married five times and with five children, he finally passed away in 1988 after a battle with lung cancer.

Answer: Raphael

Raphael, one of the three grand masters of the Renaissance (with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci), was the youngest of them to pass away. Even being so young he ran a large workshop and was the client of many nobles and two popes. One of his best known works is "The School of Athens" (started 1509 finished 1511), a fresco in the Apostolic Palace.

It shows a collection of the best minds of antiquity together in an imaginary school, speaking and presumably debating. Raphael left us early after a severe infection complicated by heavy blood-letting.

The other two of the triumvirate lived much longer - Leonardo until 67, and Michelangelo about 75.