Heaven Must Have Sent Me An "Angel" Quiz

Answer: Nathaniel

Gabriel is celebrated in all three faiths as a messenger from God. He first appears in the Book of Daniel when he appears to Daniel and helps him understand a vision about the end of days. In the Christian faith Gabriel is the angel who tells the Virgin Mary that she will be the mother of Jesus, the son of God. This is celebrated as the Annunciation. Muslims believe that Gabriel was the medium for Muhammed when the Qur'an was revealed to him.

Michael is also mentioned in these three faiths. In the Book of Daniel the prophet Daniel has a vision involving Michael where he is identified as the protector of Israel and will help defend Israel in the trials to come. Michael is much revered in the Christian faith and was sainted in the middle ages. He is considered the patron saint of chivalry and, by some sects, as the patron saint of the warrior. In the Book of Revelation, Michael is viewed as the leader of the Army of God against Satan. The Roman Catholic Church views him as the angel of death as he carries the souls of the dead to heaven.

Raphael whose name translates to "God heals" is considered an archangel who heals. In the Book of Tobit which is canonical to most Christian faiths, Raphael's healing powers are used to heal Tobit of blindness and to deliver his wife Sarah from the devil. In Islamic faith it is Raphael who will blow the horn and announce the coming of Judgment Day. Raphael is even mentioned in secular literature. In Milton's "Paradise Lost", he warns Adam not to eat from the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

FUN FACT: Michaelmas which is a Christian feast celebrating all three of these saints takes place annually on September 29th.

Answer: Coconut

Angel food cake is a type of foam cake with a springy texture. While the origins have never been clearly determined, it is generally believed that the cake followed the invention of the eggbeater in 1865. Because of the large number of egg whites used and the labor required to whip air into the eggs, a lack of an eggbeater to whip the eggs to a stiff froth would make the process extremely difficult. Recipes for snow-drift cake and silver cake found in cookbooks in the 1800s are very similar to later recipes for angel food cake.

Like most foam cakes, angel food cakes have a high proportion of eggs to flour and are leavened by the air whipped into the eggs. Because only egg whites are used, the cake has little to no fat. This gives angel food cake its characteristic light texture and taste. It is customarily made in a tube pan that should be un-greased. A sauce or frosting is often applied to the finished product imbuing it with a little flavor and texture.

FUN FACT: As written in the 1883 "The President's Cookbook", angel food cake was a favorite dessert for first lady "Lemonade Lucy" Hayes.

Answer: Vampire

The character of Angel was born in Ireland in 1727. Quite a playboy in his younger years, Angel is sired by the vampire Darla when he mistakes her for a noblewoman. The two of them go on a feeding frenzy well into the next century, traveling the world for fresh victims whom they relish in terrorizing. This ends when in 1898 a gypsy curse is placed on him which restores his human soul and allows him to feel the guilt for all the pain he had caused through the years. Disgusted by his sudden remorse, Darla leaves him and he spends the next hundred years feeding off of rats because he is too repulsed to kill anyone else. He is contacted by a demon to fight against evil which leads him to seek out the vampire slayer.

Angel first appeared on "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" in March, 1997. In the series first episode, Angel warns Buffy that the town she just moved to is on a Hellmouth, an opening for demons. A romantic relationship quickly develops between the vampire and the vampire slayer until a night of passion breaks the gypsy curse and he loses his soul again. His newfound viciousness is unleashed on Buffy and her friends and their relationship culminates in her sacrificing him to save the world. He returns from this vortex where he had been tortured unmercifully a new man. While he has regained his soul, it becomes clear that he would never be able to give Buffy a normal life and heads to Los Angeles to start over.

In L.A. Angel becomes a private investigator now on the spinoff show "Angel". He performs good deeds often at odds with the evil law firm Wolfram and Hart. During the five seasons that "Angel" aired, many of the characters from "Buffy" made cameos including the character Cordelia coming over to the series from the start and with whom Angel develops a romantic entanglement.

FUN FACT: David Boreanaz moved on from "Angel" to star as special agent Seeley Booth on the hit TV program "Bones".

Answer: Pasadena Angels

The Angels who as of 2009 were called the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim joined the American League in 1961 as an expansion team. The team's founder was movie star and singer Gene Autry who purchased the franchise in 1960. He named the team the Los Angeles Angels in deference to a franchise in the California League first established in 1892. Their first year winning percentage of .435 was not particularly impressive but one of the highest averages for an expansion team.

After playing in Los Angeles, the Angels moved to Anaheim in 1966 where they were renamed the California Angels. At that time there were four baseball teams in California but only the Angels were in the American League. In the 1970s the Angels had one of baseball's greatest pitchers, Nolan Ryan. He pitched seven no-hitters with the team and set the major league record for the most strikeouts in one season at 383. In 1979 they reached the playoffs for the first time but lost in the American League Championship Series to the Baltimore Orioles.

The Angels made the playoffs again in 1982 and 1986 and in 1996 Disney took over the team. The company decided to rename the team the Anaheim Angels as a way to promote the city which also features Disneyland, one of its premiere theme parks. Finally in 2002 the Angels made it to the World Series and in a seven game series against the San Francisco Giants won the championship for the very first time, a little over 40 years after joining the league.

In 2005 they controversially changed their name once again to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in a way to attract more patrons from Los Angeles. A number of Hall of Famers have played part of their career with the Angels including Rickey Henderson, Reggie Jackson, Dave Winfield and Don Sutton with two others having their numbers retired by the team: Rod Carew (number 29) and Nolan Ryan (number 30).

FUN FACT: The team logo features a large red A with a halo around it.

Answer: Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was born in London in 1688 and, while growing up, he attended Catholic schools in secret as they were illegal in 17th century England. His first publication was "The Pastorals" which appeared in "Poetical Miscellanies" in 1710. The following year at the age of twenty-one he released "An Essay on Criticism" which was critically well-received and helped make him one of the most popular poets of his day. Written in heroic couplets, the poem deals with literary criticism in his time and includes a vitriolic attack on John Dennis, a critic who Pope mocked with the line "A little learning is a dangerous thing".

E.M. Forster was born close to two hundred years following Pope's birth in 1879. Also born in London, he attended Cambridge where he befriended members of the famous Bloomsbury Group. Five of his novels were printed in his lifetime including "Where Angels Fear To Tread", "The Longest Journey", "A Room With A View", "Howard's End" and "A Passage To India". His sixth novel "Maurice" was released posthumously in 1971. Five of these novels were later made into highly-lauded films by the production team of Merchant-Ivory which reignited interest in Forster in the late 20th century. "Where Angels Fear To Tread" was Forster's first published novel released in 1905. The plot of the novel revolves around a widow who falls in love with an young Italian man while on vacation in Tuscany. The film version was released in 1991 starring Helena Bonham Carter, Judy Davis and Rupert Graves.

FUN FACT: "For fools rush in where angels fear to tread" is referenced in works by Edmund Burke, Thomas Hardy and James Joyce.

Answer: Attaboy, Clarence!

"It's A Wonderful Life" was released in the United States on December 20th, 1946. It was based on the 1939 short story "The Greatest Gift" by Philip Van Doren who wasn't able to successfully publish the story at that time. RKO bought the rights in 1944 as a potential vehicle for Cary Grant. Unable to get a suitable script together, RKO sold the rights to Frank Capra's production company, Liberty Films, the following year and Capra hired several scriptwriters to revise the screenplay to fit his vision of the film.

The story is about George Bailey who has lived in the small town of Bedford Falls his entire life despite youthful ambitions to view the world. Running the family savings and loan, he finds himself in a predicament when his uncle misplaces $8000 of the bank's money. On the brink of jumping off a bridge, he saves Clarence who has fallen into the waters below. When Clarence admits he's an angel, George doesn't believe him until Clarence shows him what it would be like if he were never born. Having seen how much worse off his friends and family are without him, he pleads with Clarence to take him back to his former life. Upon returning, he finds his friends and family have raised the money that was lost and the final scene described in the question takes place.

Filmed mostly in Culver City, California during a three month shoot in 1946, the movie opened to surprisingly mixed notices. It received five Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Editing and Best Sound Recording but didn't win a single Oscar. Since then the film has become a Christmas classic. It has regularly appeared on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 best films and was even chosen by the AFI as the most inspiring American movie of all time in 2006.

FUN FACT: Sesame Street's Bert and Ernie get their names from the cop and taxi driver in the movie.

Answer: The Beatles

The first recording act to take "Angel" to the Billboard top ten was Madonna. The third release from her multi-platinum album "Like A Virgin" debuted in the top 40 on May 11th, 1985 and soared up the chart to number five. It spent four weeks in the top ten, 12 weeks in the top 40 and 17 weeks on the Hot 100. It peaked at number four on the airplay chart and number nine on the sales chart. It was ranked number 81 in Billboard's listing of the top 100 songs of 1985. The B side of the 12" single in the United States featured the tune "Into The Groove" which received massive airplay in 1985 but was never itself released as a single and therefore never made it onto the American pop charts.

Three years later Aerosmith released their own "Angel" which became their highest charting single up to that time. It was the second release from the multi-platinum album "Permanent Vacation" and debuted in the top 40 on February 27th, 1988. The power ballad shot up to number three where it perched for two weeks beginning April 30th. It tallied five weeks in the top ten, fifteen weeks in the top 40 and a total of 25 weeks on the Hot 100. Billboard named it the 34th biggest hit of 1988.

Sarah McLachlan took her version to the top ten in 1999. Featured in the 1998 film "City Of Angels", "Angel" made its top forty debut on November 14th, 1998. It made its way to number four on March 6th, 1999, getting as high as number two in airplay and number five in sales. Its 31 weeks on the Hot 100 included 27 weeks in the top 40 and eight weeks in the top 10. It was a massive hit on the Adult Contemporary chart where it stayed at number one for 12 weeks.

FUN FACT: The only "Angel" to reach number one was Shaggy's "Angel" which topped the chart on March 31st, 2001.

Answer: Killing a dog

"Rent" is the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical from the 1990s. It was originally the brainchild of Billy Aronson and Jonathan Larson who came up with the idea in the 1980s to base their story on Puccini's "La Boheme" and set it in the East Village of New York City. Larson asked Aronson if he could develop the idea on his own and then went ahead to make drastic changes to Aronson's concept. Larson took much of his own experiences living as a hungry artist in New York and brought it to the play. Following workshops to hone the play both musically and plot-wise, the musical was set to premiere off-Broadway on January 25th, 1996. On the day prior to its debut, Larson unexpectedly died from an undiagnosed aortic aneurysm. Amazing critical review and word of mouth combined with the sudden death of the composer soon launched "Rent" into a must-see phenomenon.

"Rent" tells the story of a group of struggling artists living in New York during the heyday of the AIDS epidemic. In the play, Angel, a street drummer, comes to the rescue of Collins after he has been mugged and left bleeding on the street. Angel and Collins immediately hit it off and move in together. Angel describes how a woman asks him to play his drums to drive a neighbor's dog to jump off a ledge. In return he receives a large cash reward for his performance.

"Rent" played on Broadway from April 29th, 1996 to September 7th, 2008 before closing after 5,124 performances. It became a motion picture when director Chris Columbus helmed the movie with much of the original cast reprising their roles with the major exception being movie actress Rosario Dawson in the role of Mimi. It was a moderate disappoint as it only grossed thirty million dollars in the United States.

FUN FACT: "Rent" premiered exactly one hundred years following the premiere of Puccini's "La Boheme".

Answer: The basins of the Amazon River

The angelfish found commonly in aquariums around the world is a freshwater variety in the family Cichlidae. Known for its triangular-shaped dorsal fins and flat bodies, the angelfish is native to the South American continent. Because of massive selective breeding by hobbyists, the precise origins of the typical household angelfish is not fully understood and is generally considered a crossbreed among the three strains of Pterophyllum all found on the South American continent.

Aquarium angelfish phenotypically most resemble Pterophyllum scalare. This species, often referred to as the freshwater angelfish, makes its home in the swamps surrounding the basins of the Amazon and its tributaries. It prefers warm temperatures (>75 F) and a neutral pH. Pterophyllum leopoldi is the smallest and often the most aggressive of the three species of angelfish. It can often be distinguished by its lack of a pre-dorsal notch and somewhat longer nose, hence its nickname "long-nosed angelfish". Pterophyllum altum is the largest of the three breeds differentiated from the others by a notch over the nares. Naturally silver, the P. altum typically possesses three vertical stripes of either brown or red and is found in the warm, more acidic waters of Venezuela off the Orinoco River Basin.

Angelfish are omnivores and can be fed a mixture of flake and live food. They often form lifetime pairs and are difficult to mate with other fish after that bond has been formed. Sexual maturity usually occurs between the eighth and twelfth month and spawning can occur up to every week if the eggs are removed. The eggs are normally deposited on a flat surface and both partners care for the eggs by creating an area of high water circulation around them. In only a few days the eggs will hatch and the little fish will live off the yolk sac for about a week before they become free swimming.

FUN FACT: The stripes found on most naturally occurring angelfish are used as camouflage to ambush prey.

Answer: Lie on the ground and fan your arms and legs

Of course, you need fresh or at least untarnished snow to really appreciate your work of art when you are done. Your arms make the wings and the legs form the gown. Really quite cool, literally and figuratively. The Guinness Record for snow angels was broken in 2007 when the good people of North Dakota created nearly 9000, quite a sight to behold.

FUN FACT: Wes Welker, wide receiver for football's New England Patriots, was fined $10,000 for making a snow angel following a touchdown during a game in December, 2008. Most expensive snow angel ever made? I think so.

Thanks so much for playing! Hope you had a heavenly time!