Die Another Day Trivia Quiz

Answer: Richard Nixon

George Wallace (1919-1998) was one of the most divisive players in post-war American politics. A populist, he was best known for his opposition to government measures to remove racial segregation. When elected Governor of Alabama in 1963, his inaugural speech, written by a Ku Klux Klan leader, included the inflammatory passage: "In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever". In total, he served as Alabama Governor for over 16 years, in three different terms, plus a short period as "First Gentleman of Alabama" when, to get round term limits, his wife Lurleen became Governor in 1966. That term was curtailed by Lurleen's death from cancer in 1968. Jimmy Carter called Wallace's successful campaign to get re-elected Governor in 1970 "one of the most racist campaigns in modern southern political history". Wallace ran several unsuccessful presidential campaigns, with some commentators calling him the most influential loser in US history, as other - successful - candidates learned from his populist campaigning style. After he was shot in 1972, on the presidential campaign trail - hit by four bullets - Wallace was confined to a wheelchair. In later years, Wallace became a born-again Christian, and sought forgiveness from black civil rights leaders for his previous actions: "I was wrong. Those days are over, and they ought to be over". During his final term as governor between 1983 and 1987 he appointed several black people to his administration, including two members of his cabinet. He said that as a result of the shooting he had experienced over twenty years of continual pain. He died in 1998.

The would-be assassin, Arthur Bremer, wanted to be famous, and saw slaying a political leader as a means to that end. His diary recorded his desire: "to do SOMETHING BOLD AND DRAMATIC, FORCEFUL & DYNAMIC, A STATEMENT of my manhood for the world to see". He went to Ottawa to attempt to assassinate Nixon, but failed to get close. Realising it would be too difficult, he switched targets to Wallace. Bremer was sentenced originally to 63 years in prison for shooting Wallace and three others who were also hit in the assassination attempt. Bremer's diary was published after his trial under the name: "An Assassin's Diary". It inspired the character of Travis Bickle in Martin Scorsese's movie "Taxi Driver" (1976). Bremer was released on parole in 2007.

Answer: Kindertransport

The children were transported to countries including the UK and the USA in the Kindertransport, a relief effort which was set up following Kristallnacht in 1938. These children often ended up being the only members of their families to survive the war.

Many who were saved contributed to the war effort and many went on to prominent roles in public life, including Wolfgang Rindler, the physicist who coined the term "event horizon"; Benjamin Abeles, whose research led to the means of powering the Voyager interplanetary spacecraft; Karel Reisz, who directed "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" (1960); and Alf Dubs, a campaigning UK Member of Parliament who became a Lord, whose amendment to the 2016 Immigration Act was aimed at ensuring the safe passage to the UK of child refugees during the migrant crisis that year.

Kinderzeitung means children's newspaper.
Kinderbibliothek means children's library
Kindergarten is a preschool facility - the name first coined by Friedrich Fröbel.

Answer: Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar (100BC - 44BC) was captured by Cilician pirates in 75 BC. These pirates, from the south of what is now Turkey, controlled large areas of the Mediterranean, and were a scourge on the Romans and other people in that region. Their main trade was slavery, and Plutarch called them the "most murderous of men".

When they said they wanted 20 talents (a talent is about 70 pounds) of silver for his release, the twenty-something Caesar laughed at them and told them to ask for 50. He also said he would have them killed.

They considered this very funny youthful bravado. Once he was released, he assembled an army, captured the pirates, and had them crucified.

Answer: True

The 22 year old flight attendant was not scheduled to work on JAT Yugoslav Airlines Flight 367, on 26 January 1972, but was put on the roster by mistake. A bomb was detonated, splitting the plane in two. Of 28 on board, only Vesna Vulović survived - possibly because she was pinned in the back of the aircraft and therefore protected.

After 27 days in a coma and some temporary paralysis, she continued to work for the airline - but in a desk job. This was recognised by the Guinness Book of Records as the highest fall survived without a parachute, and she became a Serbian celebrity.

Her later opposition to the Milosević regime cost her her job. She died in 2016.

Answer: Hernán Cortés

Hernán Cortés was a remarkable soldier - his force of perhaps 900 men, augmented by thousands of Indian allies defeated the great Aztec Empire between 1519 and 1521. He was also a very lucky man. Early after landing in what is now Mexico he and 68 men were captured by the Aztecs. Ten of the men were killed and their heads thrown back at the Spanish. The remaining captured men were made to dance around the statue of an Aztec god, then sacrificed one by one and their hearts torn out. Cortes would have been sacrificed but for the actions of Cristobal de Olea, who killed the four Aztecs who were dragging him off and freed his leader, at the cost of his own life.

Francisco Pizarro was the Spanish conqueror of the Incan Empire.
Juan Sebastián Elcano was the sailor who completed the first round the world expedition when its leader, Magellan, died.
Juan de Fuca was a sailor who explored the waters between Washington State and Vancouver Island.

Answer: Louis Washkansky

The first human to receive a heart transplant was Boyd Rush, who was given a chimpanzee's heart in an operation by James Hardy in 1964. Rush only lasted one hour after the procedure and didn't regain consciousness.

In 1967, in South Africa, Christiaan Barnard decided that Louis Washkansky (born 1913), who had suffered three heart attacks, leaving him with a third of the organ functional, would be a suitable candidate to be a recipient of a heart transplant. A potential donor was identified in November - a black man. The heart was not suitable, and the operation was postponed. On 3 December, 25-year old Denise Darvall was run over by a drunk driver. Efforts to save her were unsuccessful and she was effectively brain dead. Due to the rules regarding death at that time, her healthy, functioning heart meant she was regarded as still alive. Barnard employed subterfuge - injecting her heart with potassium to halt it so that whole body death was recorded. The operation was a success, although Washkansky only survived for 18 days, dying on 21 December. Denise Darvall's kidneys were given to a ten year old boy, Jonathan van Wyk. In apartheid South Africa this caused controversy because the boy was classified by that country's race laws as Coloured, while Denise was White.

Barney Bailey Clark received an artificial heart in 1982.
Ruth Tucker was the first recipient in a kidney transplant operation, in 1950.
Isabelle Dinoire was the first person to undergo a partial face transplant, in 2005.

Answer: Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin (born 1878) was leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s to his death in 1953. On his way to school, at the age of around 12, he was involved in a horrific accident. He was hit by a phaeton, or horse-drawn carriage, and his left arm was damaged for life. Stalin became a revolutionary and served time in prison on multiple occasions - in 1913 he was sentenced to exile, and was then conscripted in October 1916, along with other Bolsheviks. The injury to his arm meant he was ruled unfit to fight by a medical examiner. This was convenient, albeit somewhat embarrassing for the man of steel.

Winston Churchill served in the UK Cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty during World War I. He left the post after the disastrous 1915 Gallipoli engagement and fought on the Western Front as a soldier, making 36 forays into no man's land.

Charles de Gaulle rose to be a company commander until 1916, when he was gassed and captured by the Germans. He spent 32 months as a prisoner of war.

Mussolini served about nine months in the front line during World War I, and was invalided out when a mortar bomb accidentally exploded in his trench in 1917. He resumed his journalistic career.

Answer: Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Gandhi first went to South Africa in 1893, as a 23-year old lawyer. In all, he spent 21 years there, and it shaped his attitudes and activism. At first he was said to consider himself "a Briton first, and an Indian second," but the racist treatment he experienced radicalised him. After a visit to India, when he was returning to Natal by boat in 1897, he hit some difficulties. An article by Gandhi had been published in a local paper in which he detailed the injustices experienced by Indians in South Africa. A mob gathered at the port in Durban, fearing the Indians intended to invade. The ship was at first prevented from landing, and when Gandhi eventually disembarked he was attacked and injured by a violent crowd. He was rescued and led to safety "bloodied but not bowed", by Mrs Alexander, the wife of a police superintendent, who kept the mob at bay with her parasol. Her husband arranged for Gandhi to escape from the angry mob in disguise.

Gandhi developed his policy of passive resistance in South Africa, and it was there in 1914 he was first given the title "Mahatma", or "high souled".

He was assassinated in India in 1948 during the chaotic early days of the independence for India and Pakistan which he had played such a large part in achieving.

Nelson Mandela and Peter Abrahams were both freedom fighters for the black and "coloured" majority in South Africa. Jameson was an arch-colonist from the UK who was involved in inciting war between the UK and the Boers.

Answer: Dick Churchill

Airman Dick Churchill had been a prisoner of war since 1940, and was one of the 76 whose escape from POW camp Stalag Luft III in Poland in April 1944 was immortalised in the movie "The Great Escape" (1963). Of the escapees, 73 were recaptured, and fifty were executed by the Gestapo. Dick Churchill always believed that he was spared because the Germans thought (wrongly) that he might be related to Winston Churchill, and therefore of use to them.

Another who was spared was his escape partner Bob Nelson. Churchill's identifications of the perpetrators of the murders were used in post-war investigations of the war crime.

After the death of Australian pilot Paul Royle in 2015, Dick Churchill became the last surviving escapee.

Answer: In space

Cosmonaut Alexey Leonov was the first person to do a spacewalk. His 12 minute and 9 second extravehicular activity in March 1965 was carried out on the USSR's Voskhod 2 mission. During his spacewalk he was on a 5 meter line attaching him to the spacecraft. Leonov's space suit expanded alarmingly, which meant he was unable to use his chest-mounted camera. Worse still, he was unable to re-enter the spacecraft.

He was floating within his spacesuit, near to heatstroke, dripping with sweat. Leonov knew the Americans were listening, so didn't tell Soviet ground control about his problem.

He managed to open a valve that released enough air so that he could just make it back in. The pressure change meant he came close to suffering from the bends, like a deep sea diver returning to the surface too quickly. Back on the spacecraft, Leonov and his partner Pavel Belyayev had to deal with an oxygen leak and the fear of a spark causing an explosion. Further bad luck and technical malfunctions on the way back to Earth - their spacecraft didn't separate properly, and the automatic controls failed - meant they landed miles away from the planned area, in the middle of a snowstorm among bears and wolves in mating season in a forest.

The rescue party found them on the second day, and the next day they skied several miles to be picked up.