Historical Figures Beginning With 'C' Quiz

Answer: Explorer

Italian explorer John Cabot was instrumental in early navigation to what would become North American in the fifteenth century as it was his voyages that allowed the Europeans of the day to track the coastline of Newfoundland. Cabot would depart from Bristol one last time in 1498 and vanish from the history books shortly thereafter, but his legacy would remain in Canada as the Cabot Trail, circling Cape Breton Island, would be named in his honour (even though he never reached Nova Scotia).

Answer: Author

One of the youngest recipients of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Albert Camus is best known for his highly-philosophical fictional works including "The Stranger", "The Plague", and "The Fall". Born in Algeria, Camus would spend much of his later life in France and be well-received by his philosopher contemporaries (like Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre) so much so that his work would gain traction and lead to what many critics have claimed to be the rise of absurdism as a philosophy in post-World War II Europe.

Answer: Painter

Spending his entire life in Italy between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Caravaggio would rise to become one of the nation's most famous painters. Making significant use of chiaroscuro to depict intense darks and lights on the canvas, his work became almost instantly-recognizable and paved the way to Baroque aesthetic in art.

Although Caravaggio had a couple of still life images, the majority of his body of work consisted of religious figures.

Answer: Physicist

A Nobel Prize winner hailing from Britain, Sir James Chadwick had an accomplished career in the sciences, having been educated at both the Universities of Manchester and Cambridge. Advised by the father of nuclear physics himself, Ernest Rutherford, Chadwick would go on to discover the neutron in 1932. During World War II he would lead the British scientists contributing to the Manhattan Project.

He passed away in 1974.

Answer: Cookbook writer

Although Julia Child spent several years of World War II as a typist for the OSS, her most significant achievements came after when she embarked on an education at Le Cordon Bleu, becoming one of the biggest figures in French cuisine, at least in America, with her eventual cookbook, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". Child would go on to feature in several television cooking specials and, in 2009, be portrayed by Meryl Streep in an Oscar-nominated turn in "Julie & Julia".

She passed away in 2004.

Answer: Prime Minister

Joseph Clark was born in 1939 and, forty years later, became the youngest Prime Minister in Canada's history. Clark would last less than a full year in office after being removed in a motion of no confidence upon presenting his first budget. It would lead Pierre Trudeau to retake office and lead the country for another four years into the 1980s. Leadership of the Progressive Conservative party would subsequently be taken by Brian Mulroney, who would be Prime Minister from 1984-1993.

Answer: Inventor

Becoming a key figure in firearms manufacturing in the mid-nineteenth century, it's Colt's guns that became typical tools during the early days of exploring the American West, especially when it came to outfitting the U.S. Army during the Mexican-American War.

By the time the American Civil War came around, Colt provided weapons to both sides, inevitably becoming one of the richest men in North America.

Answer: Architect

Harvey Wiley Corbett, born in California in 1874, would become one of the men who would shape the growing skylines of America as his designs and architectural works would be used for Rockerfeller Center, Eleven Madison, and One Fifth Avenue. A proponent of modernist architectural aesthetic, he would end up being one of the key figures responsible for the look and feel of both the Chicago World's Fair (in 1933) and the New York World's Fair (in 1939).

He passed away in 1954.

Answer: Biochemist

Born in Prague, Gerty Cori would establish herself as one of the most famous female scientists of her generation when she and her husband pursued their medical research in the United States shortly after World War I. It's in the labs there that she became the third woman to win a Nobel Prize, doing so for her research into the catalytic conversion of glycogen-- in effect, energy creation in the body.

She and her husband won the prize in 1947; she passed away in 1957.

Answer: Composer

A Viennese composer from the nineteenth century, Carl Czerny was known for studying under one of the greats, Ludwig van Beethoven. Czerny was so prolific during his time that he created more than a thousand individual pieces, many of which were done for teaching purposes-- he was prolific in training new pianists. Critically, however, he was not well-received in his time with many claiming that he spread himself too thin across his works.

Despite this, he became the teacher of some of Europe's most famous composers including virtuoso Franz Liszt.