A Time of Innocence Trivia Quiz

Answer: 3

On November 22, 1963, American president John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald while traveling in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas. The funeral for the fallen president was held three days later on November 25, which also happened to be John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s third birthday.

The young Kennedy famously saluted his father as the casket departed the church in Washington, D.C. Five years later John, Jr. would have to live through another family tragedy when his uncle Robert was assassinated in 1968 while campaigning for President of the United States. John, Jr. himself would die at age 38 in a plane crash that occurred in 1999 near the island of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts.

Answer: Napalm Girl

On June 8, 1972, the South Vietnamese dropped napalm bombs on the Vietnamese town of Trang Bàng, home of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, who was nine years old when the attack occurred. Kim Phuc, who was given the unfortunate nickname "Napalm Girl", was photographed running through her town's streets naked after her clothes had been burned off by the napalm which left her with severe burns on her body.

Despite the graphic nature of the photograph, it was posted on the front page of the "New York Times" on June 9, 1972.

The photograph was chosen as the World Press Photo of the Year in 1973. Kim Phuc later founded a non-profit organization designed to help children who have suffered physical and psychological trauma as the result of war.

Answer: Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1929. Anne and her family moved to Amsterdam in 1933 after Adolf Hitler had been appointed Chancellor of the Reich. In 1940, the Nazis invaded the Netherlands and would send Jews who were living in the area to their concentration camps. Anne and her family attempted to hide from the Nazis in what is now the Anne Frank House located along the Prinsengracht canal in Amsterdam. Anne Frank documented her experiences with the Nazis in a journal that she received from her father in 1942. Sadly, Anne and her family were eventually discovered.

Her last journal entry was made on August 1, 1944. Anne and her family were sent to various concentration camps in Germany and Poland and she died around February or March 1945.

She died as a result of the typhus epidemic that spread across her camp.

Answer: A truck driver found the child, but he was deceased

Charles Lindbergh was a U.S. aviator who became famous for completing the first trans-Atlantic flight from New York to Paris using his single engine airplane, the Spirit of St. Louis. On March 1, 1932, Charles' infant son, Charles, Jr. was allegedly kidnapped from his family's home in Hopewell, New Jersey with a ransom note left in the child's bedroom. Two months later on May 12, the child's body was discovered by a truck driver on the side of the road in the nearby town of Mount Rose, New Jersey.

The alleged kidnapper was a German immigrant named Richard "Bruno" Hauptmann, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the crime. There are some people who believe that the kidnapping may have been a hoax designed to cover up the true story behind the infant's death, since Charles, Jr. was reported to have died very close to the time that he had been reported missing.

Answer: Colorado

On December 25, 1996 in the city of Boulder, Colorado six-year old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey was reported missing by her parents initially leading investigators to believe that the child had been kidnapped. Police eventually found JonBenet's body locked in a room in her parents' basement. An autopsy on the body discovered that JonBenet had been strangled and that her skull had been fractured.

This discovery led police and federal investigators to look to the parents as primary suspects in JonBenet's murder.

However, due to mishandled evidence and overwhelming doubt prosecutors were unable to formally charge JonBenet's parents with the murder. Although investigators never named her brother Burke as a suspect he was publicly accused of JonBenet's murder during a television documentary that aired in 2016.

The true story behind the incident still remains a mystery as of the time that this quiz was written.

Answer: A drug used by pregnant women

Thalidomide was a drug introduced in 1953 by Chemie Grünenthal, a pharmaceutical company based out of Germany. Although it had other uses, Thalidomide was initially used extensively by pregnant women to help treat some of the side effects of pregnancy, such as morning sickness.

However, scientists who developed the drug did not anticipate the side effects that the drug would have on the unborn fetus. During the late 1950s / early 1960s thousands of children across the globe either died or were born with severe deformations as a result of the drug.

The drug was banned world-wide soon after. Thalidomide would make its return once stricter regulations were in place to prevent further misuse of the drug.

Answer: They were placed into a Japanese internment camp in the U.S.

George Takei became famous for portraying Hikaru Sulu, the former helmsman of the U.S.S. Enterprise in the "Star Trek" television series. George Takei was only four years old when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, which brought the United States into World War II.

As a result of the bombing, the American government ordered that people of Japanese descent in the western states and territories be placed in internment camps as a security precaution. There are many people who believe these camps were unjustified and were driven simply by racial prejudice. George Takei and his family, who were living in California when the bombing occurred were placed in an internment camp in Arkansas.

He and his family were released after World War II concluded.

In addition to being placed in an internment camp, several of George Takei's extended family members were killed when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

Answer: He floated to Florida in an inner tube

Elian Gonzalez was found floating in an inner tube off the coast of Florida near Miami in November, 1999. Elian and his mother were part of a group of refugees who fled Cuba in a small boat looking to immigrate to the United States. A storm destroyed the boat and Elian's mother drowned during the trip. Upon arriving in the United States, authorities initially released Elian to the custody of relatives living in the Miami area.

However, the child's father who was still in Cuba demanded that his son be returned to him.

It became a political conflict after U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and Cuban leader Fidel Castro became involved in the incident. Janet Reno eventually ruled that Elian would need to be returned to Cuba and posted a deadline of April 13, 2000 for the child to be turned over to immigration authorities. Elian's relatives refused the order and he was forcibly taken from his relatives' home on April 22, 2000. Pictures of the young Elian being taken at gunpoint resonated across international media.

Answer: Newtown, Connecticut

On the morning of December 14, 2012, 20 year old Adam Lanza entered the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. There he proceeded to murder 26 people, which included 20 students and 6 faculty members using assault weapons that were owned by his mother, whom he had killed prior to the incident at the school. Adam Lanza committed suicide before police could apprehend him.

This incident has fueled an ongoing debate on gun control in the USA. The frequency of mass shootings such as this one has prompted some lawmakers to seek stricter laws involving firearms.

However, other lawmakers are hesitant with increasing gun control in order to avoid conflict with those who seek to defend the second amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Answer: Nigeria

In April 2014, 329 girls from a school in the town of Chibok, located in northeastern Nigeria were abducted by Islamic terrorist organization Boko Haram. Approximately 53 girls had escaped, but the rest were taken to an unknown location where they experienced physical, mental and sexual abuse.

The primary intention of the organization was to sell the girls off into slavery, but also used them as a means of intimidation. Once the international community became aware of the incident, many nations plead for the organization to release the girls, especially former First Lady Michelle Obama.

Some of the girls were eventually found by Nigerian and international authorities, but many are still missing and unfortunately the incident was just one of several mass kidnappings that have occurred in the nation since.