The Life of Samuel Clemens Trivia Quiz

Answer: Langhorne

The world remembers him as Mark Twain, but he was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens. When Clemens was training to be a riverboat pilot, he had to know safe channels on the Mississippi River. A rope knotted every six feet was lowered into the water when sounding the river shallows.

The call "by the mark, twain" meant that the water was two fathoms, twelve feet deep, safe water for a riverboat.

Answer: No

It is said that Samuel Clemens came in on a comet and went out on the comet's tail. He was born on Nov. 30, 1835, on a night that Halley's comet blazed across the sky, and he died on April 21, 1910, the year Halley's comet made its reappearance. Samuel Clemens was born in the small hamlet of Florida, Missouri.

His parents were John Marshall Clemens, an attorney and merchant, and his mother was Jane Lampton Clemens. The family moved to Hannibal when he was a boy of four.

Answer: Typesetting

John Clemens died when his son was eleven. When Samuel Clemens was fourteen, he became an apprentice at the "Hannibal Courtier" to learn to set type. He began writing humorous articles for his brother Orion's newspaper the "Hannibal Journal" in 1850. When he was in his early 20s, Clemens became a cub riverboat pilot.

He would later write about his experiences in "Life on the Mississippi".

Answer: His brother died as a result of a riverboat explosion.

Henry Clemens died as a result of having his lungs scorched when the boiler blew up on the riverboat, Pennsylvania. Samuel Clemens had also been working on the Pennsylvania but had left the boat in New Orleans, after quarreling with the pilot. One of the most famous recorded premonitions is that of Samuel Clemens's vivid dream of Henry's death. Clemens saw Henry's body lying in state in a tin coffin that rested between two chairs.

A bouquet of white flowers, with a single red flower in the center, was on his chest.

The dream was so real that Clemens woke up, dressed, and went outside, before realizing that he had been dreaming. After Henry's death, Clemens was standing beside the body, which was in a tin coffin that rested between two chairs, when an unknown lady walked over and laid a bouquet of white flowers, with one red flower in the center, on Henry's chest. All the other Pennsylvania victims were buried in wooden coffins, but the women of Memphis, Tennessee, were so moved by Henry's youth, they had provided a tin coffin for his burial.

This account of Clemens's dream is from the Reader's Digest book "Mysteries of the Unexplained".

Answer: 1863

Samuel and Orion Clemens headed for Nevada in 1861. Orion had been offered the position of secretary of the new territory, and Samuel wanted to try his luck at silver mining. When mining did not pan out, Clemens became a newspaper reporter. His first article under the pen name Mark Twain was published in the Nevada "Territorial Enterprise" on Feb. 3, 1863.

In 1864, Clemens left Nevada and headed for the California goldfields.

Answer: One

Clemens visited Hawaii (then called the Sandwich Islands) in 1866. As a reporter for the San Fransisco newspaper "Alta California", he took a cruise to Europe, Turkey, and Egypt, in 1867 aboard the "Quaker City". During the cruise, Clemens became friends with a young man from a wealthy family from Elmira, New York, named Charles Langdon.

After the trip, Clemens was invited to meet Langdon's family, and he fell in love with Charles's sister, Olivia (Livy) Langdon. The couple were married in February, 1870, and they were happily married until her death in 1904.

Answer: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The first novel that Clemens wrote alone was "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (1876). He had collaborated with Charles Dudley Warner on "The Gilded Age" in 1873. Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900) was the much respected editor of the "Hartford Courtier" newspaper and a friend and neighbor of Samuel Clemens in the exclusive Nook Farm neighborhood of Hartford, Connecticut. "Innocents Abroad", a travel book based on Clemens's experiences during 1866 and 1867, was first published in 1869. During his lifetime, "Innocents Abroad" was the most popular of his books.

Answer: Yes

Huckleberry Finn was modeled after Clemens's friend, Tom Blankenship. Clemens said that Tom was "ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as any boy had." "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" was first published in 1885. It told the story of Huck Finn, one of Tom Sawyer's pals, who runs away from his alcoholic, abusive father and goes down the Mississippi River on a raft with Jim, a runaway slave.

Answer: Mark Twain's Mechanical Pen (a type of ballpoint pen)

Samuel Clemens patented the self-pasting scrapbook in 1873. It was marketed as Mark Twain's Patent Scrapbook, and it actually did quite well commercially. On Dec. 19, 1871, Clemens was granted a patent for Mark Twain's Elastic Strap, a device that could be used to tighten the waistband of men's trousers or ladies' corsets. Clemens received a patent in 1885 for his history trivia game called Mark Twain's Memory-Builder Game.

The object of the game was to help players recall different events in history. If you are interested in Clemens's game, go to: http://www.twainquotes.com/MemoryGame.html to view the gameboard and read the rules of the 1891 version.

Answer: He heavily financed an automated typesetting machine that did not work.

By 1891, Clemens was in such financial straits that he closed his mansion in Nook Farm and moved his family to Europe, and he went bankrupt in 1894. One of his major financial losses was the $200,000.00 that he poured into the Paige Typesetting Machine.

He finally abandoned the machine after it failed during a test run. Another factor was the heavy losses sustained by Charles L. Webster & Company, the publication firm started by Clemens. In 1895, Clemens undertook a world reading tour which was so successful that Clemens paid his debts off dollar for dollar with the proceeds.

Answer: False

Samuel and Livy Clemens moved to Hartford, Connecticut, in 1871. They lived in a mansion in Hartford's Nook Farm neighborhood from September, 1874 to June, 1891. Nook Farm was a tight-knit, exclusive community. One of Clemens's neighbors was writer Harriet Beecher Stowe and her husband, Calvin Stowe. Clemens's hospitality was legendary.

He hosted such events as billiard and card parties, literary teas, and amateur theatrical productions for his guests' entertainment. Clara Barton (1821-1912) was never a neighbor of Clemens. Miss Barton was called the "Angel of the Battlefield" for her tireless care of the wounded during the American Civil War.

Answer: Oxford

Samuel Clemens was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature by Oxford University in 1907. Of all the honors given Clemens, this was the one that he was most proud of.

Answer: Yes

When Samuel Clemens was twenty-one, he heard that cocoa plants had miraculous curative powers, so he hatched a scheme to import the plants from South America. He took a steamboat to New Orleans, where he planned to book passage for South America. Instead, travelling down the river rekindled his childhood dream of becoming a riverboat pilot. Clemens paid pilot, Horace Bixby, to train him. Clemens had to memorize some 1,200 miles of the Mississippi River, from St. Louis, Missouri, to New Orleans. Clemens became one of the best pilots on the Mississippi River. "Your pilot cares nothing about anything on earth but the river, and his pride in his occupation surpasses the pride of kings." This quote is from his book "Life on the Mississippi".

Answer: One

Samuel and Livy Clemens had four children. Langdon Clemens, their eldest child and only son, died as an infant in 1872. Suzy Clemens died of spinal meningitis, which she contracted on a visit to the United States, in 1896. Jean Clemens, who suffered from epilepsy, drowned in her bath during a seizure on Christmas Eve, 1909.

At the time of his death, only Clemens's daughter Clara, who had married and moved to Europe, was still living. His wife, Livy Clemens, passed away in Florence, Italy, in 1904.

Answer: 75 years old

In 1909, he wrote, "I came in with Halley's comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it." Samuel Clemens did go out with the comet. He passed away on April 21, 1910. Thank you for taking my quiz on the life of Samuel Clemens.