Charlie M Trivia Quiz

Answer: American serial killer and cult leader

'I can see Manson holding me to ransom/Gun to my feet, now he wants to see me dancing' Space sang on 'Charlie M', named after the cult leader and sometime musician. Coming from a troubled background, Manson committed various petty crimes as a child, including arson and theft. During the '60s and the hippy craze, Manson moved to Haight-Ashbury, got heavily into LSD and started a cult, based on a mixture of free love, the Beatles - he believed 'Helter Skelter' was about a race war - the Bible, and the self-help guru Dale Carnegie. Many of his followers were young women. The Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson befriended him, allowing Manson and his acolytes to camp in his house, much to the disgust of the other Beach Boys.

The Manson Family gained notoriety in 1969 when cult members Susan Atkins, Tex Watson and Patricia Krenwinkel murdered actress Sharon Tate and her guests, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski and Steven Parent. Tate was heavily pregnant at the time. Watson, Krenwinkel and Leslie van Houten also murdered Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, after Manson ordered Watson to tie the couple up. Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme, another Manson Family member, attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975. Manson was sentenced to life imprisonment for the Tate and LaBianca murders and the murder of Gary Hinman. While in prison, he gave interviews and continued to make music. He died in prison in 2017.

Answer: Frankish duke and military leader

Charles Martel was the ruler of Francia, a barbarian kingdom spanning what is now France and Germany, from 718 to 714. The bastard son of Pepin of Herstal and his mistress Alpaida, Charles was involved in a battle to succeed his father as Duke and Prince of the Franks, and aligned with Neustrian nobles (Neustria being in what is now northern France) after escaping from prison. He came to power after defeating King Chilperic II at the Battle of Vincy. Although he was unsuccessful in conquering Aquitaine, he did manage to invade Frisia and put various supporters in positions of power in Burgundy, consolidating his power. He also led the Franks against the Umayyad Caliphate, whose territory included northern Spain, during the Battle of Tours in 732.

You may have heard of Charles' grandson, incidentally - he was Charles the Great aka Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor.

Answer: American jazz musician

The fiery, multi-talented Charles Mingus was a bandleader, bassist (although he started out playing the cello), pianist and composer. He began composing in his teens and got his first big break playing with clarinettist Barney Bigard, who had worked with Duke Ellington (of whom Mingus was a fan), before touring with Louis Armstrong in 1943. He worked with a crew of musicians known as the Jazz Workshop, expecting them to be able to improvise and explore music freely; his music contained elements of bebop, hard bop and free jazz. He was at his most prolific in the '50s and '60s, releasing several albums including 'Mingus Ah Um', considered by many to be his masterpiece. Sadly, he became ill with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, aka Lou Gehrig's disease, which eventually prevented him from playing, although he still composed.

Mingus also collaborated with Joni Mitchell on 'Mingus', which turned out to be his final musical project; he died in 1979, five months before its release. Mingus wrote the music for 'A Chair in the Sky', 'Sweet Sucker Dance', 'The Dry Cleaner from Des Moines' and 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat', with Mitchell providing the lyrics.

Answer: Scottish chemist - invented raincoat

The waterproof raincoat known as the Mackintosh, or 'mac', got its name from its inventor. Charles Macintosh was a chemist who experimented with naphtha, a flammable mixed hydrocarbon liquid used in fuel and plastic manufacturing; these experiments led to the creation of a rubberised waterproof fabric. The naphtha was a product of the distillation of coal tar, a dark liquid by-product resulting from the production of coke and coal gas, and Macintosh created the rubberised fabric by dissolving natural rubber in naphtha and sandwiching it between two layers of fabric.

The first Mackintoshes were sold in 1824. Early Mackintoshes smelled bad and melted in hot weather, but the English engineer and clothes manufacturer Thomas Hancock - who had also been experimenting with rubber fabrics as an alternative to leather - patented a vulcanising process that got round these problems.

Answer: Scottish footballer

Centre-back Charlie Mulgrew, a Glaswegian by birth, began his career at Celtic, coming up through their youth system along with Aiden McGeady (who would go on to play for Wigan Athletic and Everton). As a youth player, he won the Scottish Youth Cup against St Mirren in 2005, but did not appear for the first team and was sold to Wolverhampton Wanderers in 2006; however, he missed a large part of his time there due to injury.

He returned to Celtic in 2010 as Neil Lennon's first signing, and had more luck the second time, even scoring the final goal in Celtic's 3-0 win against Motherwell in the 2011 Scottish Cup Final.

He has also played for Dundee United, Blackburn Rovers and Aberdeen. On an international level, Mulgrew was capped 44 times for Scotland between 2012 and 2019, scoring three goals.

Answer: American sniper

Chuck Mawhinney was a Marine and one of the US' most notable snipers, with a confirmed kill count of 103 and 216 more probable kills during the Vietnam War. These took place over a period of sixteen months. Born four years after the end of the Second World War, Mawhinney was a keen hunter and honed his marksman skills shooting deer. He joined the Marines in 1967 and the following year, he was stationed in Vietnam as a sniper in Lima Company 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, aka 'Geronimo'. After he left the Marines, he joined the US Forest Service. He also worked as a public speaker, giving talks to snipers in training.

One of Mawhinney's greatest regrets was missing an enemy at 300 yards, a distance from which he had killed several others. He missed the man several times and the man was able to escape.

Answer: English journalist and biographer

Charles Moore, Baron Moore of Etchingham, wrote an authorised biography of Margaret Thatcher, which was published in three volumes between 2013 and 2019. A graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, he became political correspondent for 'The Daily Telegraph' in 1979 and joined the conservative magazine 'The Spectator' in 1982.

He became its editor until 1990, when he was replaced by Boris Johnson, who Moore had employed (and who would later go on to become Prime Minister of the UK). In 1995, he became editor of 'The Daily Telegraph' and continued to write columns for the paper after leaving the job in 2003.

He was given a life peerage in 2020.

Answer: Irish adventurer

The enigmatic Charles McGuinness called himself 'an Irish Sailor, Soldier, Pearl-fisher, Pirate, Gun-runner, Rum-runner, Rebel and Antarctic Explorer' in his 1934 autobiography, but as he had a habit of embroidering his stories, historians have not always been able to discern how much of his life story is actually true. What is known is that he was a gun-runner during the Irish War of Independence, smuggling weapons over from Germany, and was arrested by the German police. In 1923, he emigrated to the USA, where he joined the crew of Admiral Richard E. Byrd on an expedition to the Antarctic. He also had a short-lived period of smuggling rum into the US from Canada during Prohibition, and was arrested during the Second World War for corresponding with the German Foreign Office, although he was released in 1945.

The circumstances of McGuinness' death are unknown. He was thought to have drowned off the Irish coast in 1947, but this was not confirmed and members of his family later reported sightings.

Answer: American voice actor - 'Super Mario Bros.'

"It's-a me, Mario!" If you've played any of the voiced 'Super Mario Bros.' games, you'll have heard Charles Martinet's voice. Not only does he play Mario, but he also plays his brother Luigi and their evil counterparts Wario and Waluigi. Many fans of the 'Super Mario' games were furious when Chris Pratt was chosen to voice the rotund plumber in 'The Super Mario Bros. Movie', believing that Martinet would have been a better choice.

Martinet started voicing Mario at interactive trade shows while working at Nintendo, and made his video game debut in 1996 in 'Super Mario 64' (though he had previously voiced Mario for a pinball machine based on the games in 1992). He based his voice for Mario on Petruchio from 'The Taming of the Shrew'.

Answer: Belgian politician

Charles Michel is the son of Louis Michel, who served as Belgium's Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1999 to 2004 and was a member of the European Parliament from 2009 to 2019. A law graduate, Charles Michel started out as leader of the Belgian Reformist Movement, a Francophone political party.

He was sworn in as the Belgian Prime minister in 2014, becoming the country's youngest Prime Minister at the time. In 2019, the European Council voted to appoint him as their president, replacing the Polish Donald Tusk.