The End of the World Trivia Quiz

Answer: the Mayans

The Mayan calendar spanned over 5000 years from 3114 BC to AD 2012. Presumably, had the culture survived, their calendar would have "flipped over" and begun again in 2012. It was never intended to predict the end of the world. Many traveled to historic religious sites in Mexico and Guatemala to await the end of the world but 21 December 2012 turned out to be no more than the routine winter solstice.

Answer: T.S Eliot

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) wrote "The Hollow Men" in 1925. It was one of his most popular poems. The quoted lines, which conclude the work, have had wide cultural influence, quoted by Stephen King in "The Stand," in the motion picture "A Star is Born" (1954), in Neville Shute's "On the Beach" (1957), and in the British television series "Doctor Who."

Answer: R.E.M.

The Athens, Georgia, rock band R.E.M. comprises Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Michael Stripe. The band won numerous Grammy Awards during its activity 1980-2011. They released their song "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" on their album "Document" in 1987.

The song (more of a stream-of-consciousness diatribe) goes by quickly and includes many puzzling parts, for example, the linking of four people with the initials "LB": Leonard Bernstein, Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce, and Lester Bangs. Vocalist Michael Stripe called it "a collection of streams of consciousness." The song appears in the Walt Disney motion picture "Chicken Little" (2005) at the climax, seriously.

Answer: The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

In Douglas Adams' "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe," which is the second volume of the five-volume trilogy, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," the reader is introduced to Milliways. The restaurant is built in a time bubble which is temporally (not spatially) located at the end of time. Diners are thus able to witness the end during their meal and then return to their own time where the Universe continues to exist.

It has a counterpart called the Big Bang Burger Bar where diners can witness the creation of the Universe, as well.

Answer: music

Dryden's ode is in seven stanzas, each describing the music that brought the Universe into being. It concludes with a "Grand Chorus": "So when the last and dreadful hour / This crumbling pageant shall devour, / The trumpet shall be heard on high, / The dead shall live, the living die, / And Music shall untune the sky." The reference to the trumpet is drawn from 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 and 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17. St Cecilia is the patron saint of music and musicians; the ode was written for her feast day 22 November 1687.

Answer: The End of the World

According to the album cover, the song "The End of the World" was co-written by all the members of the Cure: Robert Smith (vocals, guitar), Simon Gallup (bass guitar), Perry Bamonte (guitar), Roger O'Donnell (keyboards) and Jason Cooper (drums). It was the first single from their eponymous 2004 album.

The memorable music video, directed by Floria Sigismondi, showed a house progressively decomposing and then, at the end, beginning to rebuild itself with plants arising from the floor.

Answer: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Mary Shelley (1797-1851) wrote "Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus" during the period between 1818 and 1820, while she was still a teenager. This is the well-known story of a scientist who constructs a sapient man out human parts. Her novel "The Last Man" was published in 1826 but was severely criticized and not reprinted until 1965.

It is the story of a man who escapes a plague which eventually takes his family leaving him alone in the world. Director James Arnett attempted a low-budget very-loose modernization of it on film in 2008 without great success.

Answer: You don't love me anymore.

The lyrics to "The End of the World" give several reasons for why everything ought to stop: you don't love me anymore, I lost your love, and you said goodbye. This popular song was written by Arthur Kent and Sylvia Dee specifically for Skeeter Davis. It was promptly covered by Herman's Hermits in 1965, and again by the Carpenters in 1975.

The English singer Sonja covered it in the UK in 1990. American Country Western singer Chet Atkins produced the original Nashville recording in 1962. The song was played at his funeral in 2001 and at Davis' funeral at the Ryman Auditorium in 2004.

Answer: Panic in the Year Zero!

Most films do not require three different titles but marketing drives a lot of strange decisions. This black-and-white film depicts a man and his family who barely escape annihilation when nuclear bombs rain on Los Angeles. Frankie Avalon plays Milland's character's son.

At one point, the remnants of the United Nations change the date to "the Year Zero." The film concludes with a Cold War admonition: "There must be no end -- only a new beginning."

Answer: Robert Frost

Robert Lee Frost (1874-1963) exercised the gift of expressing serious and complex matters in light and simple ways. His poem "Fire and Ice" is an excellent example; it is among his most popular and has been anthologized widely. The poem was first published in a magazine (Harper's) in 1920 and in a book ("New Hampshire") in 1923.

In the "Twilight Saga" series of novels by Stephenie Meyers, the poem is the epigraph to "Eclipse (2007)."