Farewell to Old England Trivia Quiz

Answer: Went down on the Titanic

Reverend Bateman was born in 1859 in Bristol, England. He became a stonemason of note but was also an evangelistic Methodist minister. He and his family emigrated to St David's, Ontario, Canada around 1889. He later moved the USA and established himself as an itinerant minister. He continued his missionary work in numerous states, but also worked as a stonemason, building several bridges and a station in Florida and Maryland.

He had returned to the United Kingdom to visit his family in Bristol and, with his widowed sister-on-law, whom he had encouraged to go to the USA to make her home with his family, boarded the Titanic at Southampton. Upon is becoming obvious that the ship was sinking, he saw his sister-in-law safely onto a lifeboat, telling her that he would either see her in this world or the next. His body was recovered and returned to his widow in May 1912. He was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Jacksonville, Florida.

Answer: Plains of Abraham, Quebec, Canada

James Wolfe was born at Westerham, Kent in 1727. His natural ability in generalship and tactics was recognised at an early age - he had entered the army in 1741 aged 14, as a career soldier. Nurtured by more seasoned campaigners he fought at Culloden in 1746 and later in Ireland and Scotland. He developed theories in tactics and improved both the mechanics and use of the bayonets.

He fought in the Seven Years War against the French in Louisbourg in 1758; this led to further recognition of his skills and he was given charge of the action against the French in Quebec. He led his men in a surprise attack against the French who were camped on the Plains of Abraham. Though he suffered a fatal wound, he lived long enough to hear of the success of the engagement, and died in the arms of one his his lieutenants. He was just thirty-two years old.

Answer: Florida, USA

Angela Buxton was born on 16 August, 1934, in Liverpool, England, and was a tennis player. While she was only moderately successful as a singles player (she reached the Wimbledon finals in 1956) it was as a doubles player for which she was best known.

She was the granddaughter of Russian Jews who fled the ethnic cleansing of the early 1900s and settled in the U.K. but as a Jewess she was ostracised; she teamed up with Althea Gibson to play doubles. Gibson the first black woman to win a Wimbledon championship, while as a doubles pair, they won the French Open and Wimbledon in 1956. Buxton continued to encourage Gibson and was recognised for this when she was inducted into the Black Tennis Hall of Fame in 2015.

She was also inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1981.

Answer: Hawaiian (Sandwich) Islands

Captain Cook was born in Marton, Yorkshire in 1728. After he had visited Tahiti to plot the course of Venus in 1778, Captain James Cook was the first European to reach to the Hawaiian Islands and he and his crew were made very welcome. Twelve months later they went back there, where they revictuled and made repairs to their ships.

The Englishmen left Hawaii, but due to a storm were forced to return. Relations with the locals had soured on both sides, and when Cook tried to take a local chieftain as a willing hostage to force the return of a cutter the islanders had appropriated, things turned really nasty. There was a skirmish during which Cook was stabbed. Enormously outnumbered, the English retreated to their ship. Cook, trying to rise, fell into the water and was too weak from the stab wound to rise.

The natives took his remains and prepared it for traditional burial because of the esteem in which they held Cook, despite their differences. The English took some of his remains for formal burial at sea. Despite his untimely end, the legacy of Cook and his crew is amazing. They had circumnavigated the world three times and discovered and accurately charted a significant number of countries and islands, contributing to a growing body of knowledge of the physical world. Cook charted the world's longitudes from the understanding he gained from his and Charles Green's study of the stars. They identified and recorded a huge number of plants and animals previously undocumented.

Answer: California, USA

Elizabeth Taylor was born on 27 February, 1932 in London, England where her parents were residing while setting up an art business. They returned to the United States shortly before the outbreak of World War 2, settling in Los Angeles. Her first movie, "There's One Born Every Minute" was made when she was just ten, with "Lassie Come Home" and "National Velvet" following in successive years.

She was awarded an Oscar for her film "Butterfield 8" in 1960, then another for "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" in 1966.

She was married eight times, and died of congestive heart failure on 23 March, 2011, Los Angeles, California.

Answer: Belgium

Tyndale was born in Gloucestershire, England in around 1494, and became looming figure in the Protestant Reformation. A biblical scholar and linguist, he was responsible for the translation of the Bible into English, thus putting God's Word into the hands of the common people who were not very conversant with Latin. He was said to have believed that everyone, great and small, should have access to the Scriptures.

He paved the way for other protestant scholars such as Martin Luther. Such was his influence that Henry 8th, who became a protestant for an entirely different reason, bought and burned copies of the Tyndale Bible - this is how dangerous he perceived the Gospel to be. Tyndale moved to Europe to continue his translation work. His work was such a threat to the established church that his safety was in peril. He was eventually betrayed and imprisoned in the castle of Vilvoorde, in Belgium. He was found guilty of heresy and in 1536, suffered martyrdom through strangulation, after which his body was burned.

Answer: Christchurch, New Zealand

Kate Malcolm was born 10 March, 1847 in Liverpool, England. She emigrated to New Zealand with her family in 1868 and soon gained a reputation as a suffragette. As a result of her work across many years, New Zealand became the first country to establish universal suffrage in 1893. She died on 13 July, 1934, aged 86, in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Answer: Châlus, France

Richard the Lionheart was born on 8 September, 1157 in Oxford, England. He was the third son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine and given as his inheritance (at the age of 11) the duchy of Aquitaine. Due to his older brothers' untimely deaths, he came to the throne of England in 1189. Not content to stay at home and rule England and his lands in Europe, he followed his dream of participating in a crusade - in 1190 he set sail for the Holy Land. He achieved a truce with Saladin that allowed ingress of Christians into Acre and some of the sites holy to Christians - and then headed home.

After an extended trip home (he was captured and had to agree to a ransom before he could get safe passage home) he crossed into France and picked a fight with the vicomte of Limoges. A peasant on the vicomte's land found a hoard of gold and the vicomte refused to give it to Richard, his liege lord. A skirmish ensued and Richard was stuck in the shoulder with an arrow.
He died on 6 April, 1199, in Châlus of an infection caused by the wound.

Answer: New South Wales, Australia

Mary was born in Middlesex, England in 1775 and was transported to Australia, her sentence of death having been commuted by the King George in celebration of his being cured of porphyria. Mary, who, with another fourteen year-old girl, had stolen a frock, a scarf and a cap was dobbed in when she tried to sell it to a pawnbroker; she was the youngest 'passenger' on the barque, Lady Juliana, which transported an all-female group of prisoners.

The voyage took 11 months. Mary was sent to Norfolk Island for several years; she was then sent back to Sydney and appears to have been freed at this stage though it was later before she received a letter of pardon. She lived with one man who went off whaling; records show that she also lived with a NSW man named Jonathan Brooker, had her own children and cared for numerous others. She died in Wollongong, New South Wales in 1859 at the age of 84, the matriarch of a family of over 300 living descendants.

Answer: Nyeri, Kenya

Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell was born on 22 February 1857 in London, England. He was a British army officer who became a national hero for his 217-day defense of Mafeking against the Boers. He later trained members of the South African constabulary before returning to England to take up a post as inspector general of cavalry.

In around 1907 the scouting movement was begun. His sister Agnes Baden-Powell founded the Girl Guides. In 1939 Baden-Powell's health became uncertain and his doctors recommended a move to a warmer climate.

He moved to Nyeri, Kenya, where he died on 8 January, 1941.

Answer: Corsier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland

Charlie Chaplin was born on 16 April, 1889, in London, England. His early childhood was rather tragic; aside from the poverty in which his family lived, his mother was mentally unstable and was committed to a mental asylum. He took to the stage as a young child and joined a troupe that took him to America. His 'tramp' character proved so popular that by the 1920s he was well known as a silent film actor. His first talkie, the 'The Great Dictator' (1940), satirised Adolf Hitler.

His morals (marrying very young women) and his alleged communist sympathies led to a decline in popularity. He decided to premiere his film 'Limelight' in London, and the day after he left the USA by ship to travel to England, his US visa was revoked. He did not return there, instead choosing to spend his last years with his family in Switzerland. He died following a stroke in 1977, aged 88.

Answer: Paris, France

Diana Frances Spencer was born 1 July, 1961 in Sandringham, England, being created a Lady by her father's succeeding to an earldom in 1975. She was employed as a nanny when she became engaged to then Prince Charles, Prince of Wales. They were married in 1981, and divorced in 1996. On August 31, 1997, she was visiting Paris with her companion, Dodi Fayed, an Egyptian film producer.

The car in which they were travelling crashed in an underpass. Diana was later pronounced dead of the injuries sustained. Fayed and the driver of the car, Henri Paul, also died in the crash. Diana's bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, survived.

It is alleged that none of the car's occupants was wearing a seat-belt, but that the real cause of the tragedy was speed, as the driver attempted to shake off pursuing paparazzi.

Answer: Maryland, USA

Sir Frank Whittle was born on 1 June 1907, in Coventry, England. He was the son of a mechanic and loved engines. He entered the RAF as a pilot and furthered his knowledge of aeronautics at Cambridge University. He patented his design for a jet engine in 1930.

His designs for the jet engine were incorporated into planes that were used in World War 2. He accepted the position of NAVAIR Research Professor in 1976, and died on 8 August 1996 (aged 89) of lung cancer, in Maryland, Florida. His body was later repatriated to the U.K.

Answer: California, USA

Olivia Newton-John was born om 26 September, 1948, in Cambridge, England. He family emigrated to Australia in the early 1950s, where they settled in Melbourne. Her family history is interesting' her father, who taught German in an elite school in Melbourne, was an MI5 officer who worked on the Enigma project; on her mother's side, she was a descendant of Protestant theologian Martin Luther.

She returned to the UK to pursue a musical career. In 1978, Newton-John starred in the musical film 'Grease', cementing her own claim to fame.

She suffered breast cancer three times, and established several foundations to support women in similar circumstances. She died on 8 August, 2022, aged 73 at her home in the Santa Ynez Valley, California.

Answer: Colón, Panama

Does anyone else see the irony here? Died of dysentery...in Colon? Drake was born Devon, England, in around 1540. Until his undoubted skill was recognised and rewarded with a commission to open trading routes by Queen Elizabeth 1, he had spent the greater part of his seafaring life as a buccaneer and pirate.

But with the Queen's impramada, he circumnavigated the world in a single expedition from 1577-1580 and brought back unheard of treasure including rare and exotic spices. The Queen herself came to great his return and knighted him on the spot.

He was elevated to the rank of vice-admiral and he participated in the fight against the Spanish Armada. He was unsuccessfully harrying the Spanish off the coast of Central America in 1595-6 and it was here he suffered a bout of dysentery which led to his death on 28 January, 1596.