They Died in 2021 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Hank Aaron

"Hammerin' Hank" Aaron was born February 5, 1934. He played in the MLB for 21 years. He played with the Indianapolis Clowns, a professional baseball team in the Negro American League in his first three months. He was then sold to the Atlanta Braves. He played briefly in the Class - C farm team.

In 87 games, he scored 89 runs. In 1953, he was moved to the Class-A Jacksonville Braves. He was often separated from his team when traveling due to the Jim Crow laws. He was usually required to take care of his lodging and meals while the team paid for the other players.

He met his first future bride Barbara Lucas whom he would marry on October 6, 1958. In 1954 he started spring training with the Milwaukee Braves after left fielder Bobby Thomson injured his ankle sliding into second during a spring training game.

He hit his first major league home run on April 23, 1954. Aaron was the first Atlanta Braves player to reach the 500th home run. In 1972, despite a shorter season due to a baseball strike, he hit his 673rd home run.

In 1973, Hank Aaron hit his 713th home run. Many people expected him to tie Babe Ruth's record in the final game of the regular season; however, afraid of all the death threats he was getting because of the color of his skin, he did not achieve it. Lewis Grizzard (editor of "The Atlanta Journal at that time) reported that his journalists were being harassed for following the home run chase. Grizzard even wrote up Aaron's obituary thinking Aaron would be murdered before the 1974 season. He received a lot of support amongst the hate mail. Charles Schultz even printed a series of "Peanuts" comic strips in which Snoopy tried to break Babe Ruth's record, receiving a lot of hate mail. In the August 11, 1973 strip, Lucy tells Snoopy, "Hank Aaron is a great player... but you! If you break Babe Ruth's record, it'll be a disgrace." Both Snoopy and Aaron finished the 1973 season one home run less than Ruth. On April 4, 1974, Aaron tied Ruth's record. It was his first swing, on his first at-bat against the Reds pitcher Jack Bellingham. On April 8, 1974, while the Braves were at home against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Aaron broke the record, hitting home run 715 against Al Downing. In his last at-bat for the Braves on October 2, 1974, he hit home run 733. With his contract up, he asked to be traded to the Milwaukee Brewers. Now in the American League, he was made the designated hitter. On May 1, 1975, he broke Babe Ruth's RBI record. He hit his 755th home run on July 20, 1976, which would be his last. On January 22, 2021, he died of natural causes just two weeks before his 87th birthday.

Answer: Ed Asner

Eddie "Ed" Asner was born on November 15, 1929, in Kansas City, Missouri. He grew up on the Kansas side, however. His Hebrew name was Yitzhak. In 1951 he was drafted and served with the U.S. Army Signal Corps for two years. In 1962, he made his movie debut as Frank Gerson in the Elvis Presley movie "Kid Galahad" for which he was not credited.

In 1970, after guest-starring on various tv shows, he landed the role of Lou Grant on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show". He then continued to play Lou in his own series, the spin-off, "Lou Grant".

While "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" was a 30-minute sitcom, "Lou Grant" was an hour-long drama. Ed Asner is one of the few to win a Prime Time Emmy Award for the same role in the comedy and drama categories. He also guest-starred as Lou Grant on "Rhoda" and "Roseanne".

In 1977, he played Captain Davies in the miniseries "Roots", for which he also won an Emmy. He has also done much voice acting work, including J. Jonah Jameson on the 1990s cartoon "Spider-Man". In 1996, he was inducted into the Academy of Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame. 2001, he was given the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 2009, he voiced Carl Fredrickson in the Pixar movie "Up". In 2018 he was cast in the Netflix original series "Dead to Me:" Before his death on August 29, 2021, at age 91, from natural causes, he played himself on "Let's Be Real" and voiced Claude in "Muppets Haunted Mansion".

Answer: Dustin Diamond

Dustin Neil Diamond was born on January 7, 1977, in San Jose, California. He is best known for his role as Samuel "Screech" Powers in the various versions of "Saved by the Bell" from 1988 to 2000. In 2007, he was on "Celebrity Fit Club". In 2009, he published the book "Behind the Bell".

The other cast members were not exactly thrilled with the book as it made them all look bad. He was also a member of the alternative metal group Salty the Pocketknife. He played bass and wrote a lot of their music.

They only made one album as they quickly split up due to irreconcilable differences. In January 2021, he was diagnosed with stage four small cell carcinoma of the lungs. Despite a round of chemotherapy, he died at the young age of 44 on February 1, 2021.

Answer: Hal Holbrook

Although he didn't bring his Mark Twain to Broadway until 1966, he started doing it in 1954. He did the show for more than 60 years when he retired in 2017, due to poor health. Mark Twain lived to be 74, which means Hal Holbrook was almost Mark Twain as long as Mark Twain was Mark Twain. Harold Rowe Holbrook Jr. was born on February 17, 1925, in Cleveland, Ohio. From 1942 to 1946, he served in the United States Army.

In 1976 he played Abraham Lincoln in the Carl Sandburg biography. From 1990 to 1994, he played Evan Evans on "Evening Shade". From 1988 to 1990, he had a reoccurring role as Reese Watson, Julia Sugarbaker's significant other. Dixie Carter his third, and last wife, played Julia on the show.

He also directed four episodes. In 1999 he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

In 2007, he won an Oscar for his role as Ron Frank in "Into the Wild". On April 10, 2010, Dixie Carter, his third and final wife, passed away from endometrial cancer. On January 23, 2021, Holbrook died at the age of 95 from natural causes.

Answer: Larry King

Larry King was born Lawrence Harvey Zeiger on November 19, 1933, in Brooklyn, NY. His first broadcast was on May 1, 1957, on what was then radio station WAHR. During this time, he took the name King because the station's general manager said Zeiger was too hard to remember. King took the name King from an ad for King's Wholesale Liquor.

He legally changed his name to Larry King. The first celebrity King interviewed was Bobby Darin. "The Larry King Show", a radio show he had run from 1978 to 1994, and won a Peabody Award. Larry King's followers were called "King-ahoics".

In 1985, he began hosting "Larry King Live" on CNN. He has guests of all kinds, from psychics to politicians to celebrities, on his show. He has done tens of thousands of interviews, according to CNN.

In 2010 he retired from the show. However, he did do occasional specials until 2012. After a 1987 heart attack, he founded the Larry King Cardiac Foundation. It paid for life-saving heart procedures that people could not afford to pay themselves. King was married eight times to seven women and had five children. Two of his children, Andy and Chaia, died in 2020, only weeks apart. Andy died at age 65 due to a heart attack, and Chaia succumbed to lung cancer at age 51. On January 23, 2021, due to sepsis caused by COVID, he passed away; he was 87 years old.

Answer: Cloris Leachman

Cloris Leachman was born April 30, 1926, in Des Moines, Iowa. In 1946 she was in the top 16 of the Miss America pageant. In 1971 she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for the movie "The Last Picture Show", in which she played Ruth Popper. In 1972, 1973, 1974, and 1975, she was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in Comedy for her role as Phyllis on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show".

She won it in both 1974 and 1975. In 2009, her autobiography "Cloris: My Autobiography" came out. Like her co-Star Betty White, she was a vegetarian and animal rights activist. On January 27, 2021, at the age of 94, Leachman died due to a stroke with COVID as a factor.

Answer: Norm Macdonald

Norm Macdonald was born October 17, 1959, in Quebec City, Canada. He was a writer for "Roseanne", a comedy tv show, for the 1992-1993 season. In 1993, MacDonald joined the cast of "Saturday Night Live". The following year he became the "Weekend Update" host on the show.

In 1998, he was replaced as host by Colin Quinn. This was due to a decline in ratings. Still, at the time, Macdonald believed it was because the then-president of NBC, Don Ohlmeyer, had an issue with Macdonald's 'OJ Simpson is a murderer' jokes on the show because Ohlmyer was a good friend of OJ's and supported him during the trial. Macdonald remained briefly as a regular "SNL" cast member.

In 1999, he returned to host the show. He starred on "The Norm Show", later called "Norm", which ran for three seasons.

In 2013 he began his podcast "Norm Macdonald Live". It ended in 2017. On September 14, 2021, at the age of 61, Norm Macdonald died in Pasadena, California, from acute leukemia.

Answer: Helen McCrory

Helen McCrory was born on August 17, 1968, in Paddington, London, England. She was initially cast as Bellatrix Lestrange in "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" but had to give the role up due to being pregnant for the first time. Helena Bonham Carter replaced her.

She was recast a few years later as Bellatrix's sister Narcissa Malfoy, wife of Lucius and mother of Draco in "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince". She reprised her role in both parts of "The Deathly Hallows". On April 16, 2021, at age 52, McCrory died from breast cancer.

Answer: Prince Philip

On June 10, 1921, Prince Philip was born in Mos Repos, Corfu, Kingdom of Greece as a prince of Greece and Denmark. He renounced the title, however, to marry Elizabeth. On November 19, 1947, King George VI gave Philip the title His Royal Highness. The next day Prince Philip and then Princess Elizabeth were married, and he was given the titles of Duke of Edinburg, Earl of Merioneth, and Baron Greenwich. According to the "Readers Digest" website, when Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth II, Philip stayed a prince.

The British Parliamentary Law states if a male member of royalty moves up, his bride matches him in the female equivalent; however, if the female is the one to ascend, her husband does not change titles. On April 9, 2021, two months before his 100th birthday, Prince Philip died in his sleep at Windsor Castle from old age.

At the time of his death, he was the longest-serving Royal consort in world history.

Answer: Christopher Plummer

Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer was born December 13, 1929, in Toronto, Ontario. He was bilingual, speaking French and English. Plummer was only short the Grammy in becoming an EGOT. He was nominated in 1986 for Best Recording for Children but did not win.

He won Emmys in 1977 and 1994. He won the Oscar in 2012. He won Tonys in 1974 and 1997. Plummer did not like making "The Sound of Music" except for working with Julie Andrews. He referred to the movie as "The Sound of Mucus". However, on October 28, 2010, he joined the rest of the movie's cast on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" for the 45th anniversary of the film.

He also agreed the movie was well done. It just didn't appeal to him. In 2008 his memoir "In Spite of Myself" was published. On February 5, 2021, Plummer died 2.5 weeks after a fall where he hit his head in Weston, Connecticut, with his third wife, Elaine Taylor, at his side.

He was 91 years old.