In Memoriam 1963 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Rogers Hornsby

Born in Winters TX in 1896, Rogers Hornsby made his MLB debut for the St. Louis Cardinals at the age of 19. He spent eleven years with the Cards, then had spells with the Giants, Braves and Cubs before returning to Saint Louis, first with the Cards and then the Browns, for the final five years of his playing career. From 1925 on, he was both player and manager except for half of the 1933 season with the Cardinals.
A World Series champion in 1926, Hornsby was twice named National league MVP. Only Ty Cobb (.366) has finished a Major League career with a higher batting average that Hornsby's .358. He won seven batting titles -- only Cobb (11), Tony Gwynn and Honus Wagner (8 each) won more. He also hit for power -- he was the first National League player to break the 300 HR total. In 1922, he hit 40 homer runs and batted over .400 -- the only player to manage that combination in MLB history. Hornsby and Ted Williams are the only players who have won the batting "triple crown" more than once.
Elected to the Baseball Half of Fame in 1942, Rogers Hornsby was named the starting second baseman in the "Major League Baseball All-Time Team" in a vote by the "Baseball Writers Association of America" in a 1997 poll.
Hornsby died of a heart attack following cataract surgery on January 5, 1963 in Chicago aged 66.

Answer: Robert Frost

Robert Frost was named as America's 12th "Consultant in Poetry" in 1958, a title similar to Britain's "Poet Laureate" although the American appointment is for a two-year period rather than for life. Frost was one of the first winners of the Pulitzer Poetry prize, in 1924 for "New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes" (the award having been instigated two years earlier). He won again in 1931 for his "Collected Poems", in 1937 for "A Further Range" and in 1943 for "A Witness Tree".
Frost never graduated from college but during his lifetime he was awarded more than 40 honorary degrees from universities including Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, Harvard and Dartmouth (twice -- the only person ever so honored).
Frost died of heart failure on January 29, 1963 in Boston MA aged 88. Frost's death was followed quickly by another of America's best-known poets, Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide on February 11, aged just 30.
The alternatives have also all both won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and held the position of America's Poet Laureate.

Answer: Patsy Cline

Born Virginia Patterson Hensley in Winchester VA in 1932, Patsy Cline was a country/pop crossover artist and one of the most acclaimed female vocalist of the 20th Century. The Country Music Hall of Fame opened in Nashville TN in 1961 and in 1973 Patsy Cline was inducted as its first female member. (As of 2013, only 16 of the 121 inductees are women, plus two groups that include female members.)
Cline scored her first hit single with "Walkin' After Midnight" in 1957 and twice topped the Billboard Hot Country Chart, with "I Fall to Pieces" in 1961 and "She's Got You" in 1962.
Cline was hospitalized for a month in 1961 due to injuries sustained in a car crash in which the driver of the other car was killed. Six weeks later, she was back on stage on crutches.
Cline died in a plane crash near Camden TN, 140 miles short of their destination in Nashville on March 5, 1963. Thousands attended Cline's memorial service in her home town and she is buried in Shenandoah Memorial Park in Winchester VA.
The alternatives are three more singers/musicians who died in aviation accidents: Otis Redding in 1967 in Madison WI; guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan in 1990 in a helicopter crash in Elkhorn WI; and Lynyrd Skynyrd vocalist Ronnie Van Zant along with other band members in 1977 in Gillsburg MS.

Answer: Max Miller

Born Thomas Henry Sargent in Brighton, England in 1896, Max Miller is widely considered the greatest stand-up comedian of his generation. Primarily a music hall performer, Miller also made more than a dozen films in the 1930s and 1940s.
Miller never swore or actually told a dirty joke, but he was the master of innuendo and by omitting the final word of a gag or skit he sidestepped the censorship legislation of the time to deliver what was considered highly risqué material. Known for his flamboyant suits and numerous catchphrases, Miller's humor outlived him by decades with many comedians continuing to tell his jokes long after his death. A "Max Miller Appreciation Society" based in his home town still keeps his memory alive today.
Max Miller died on May 7, 1963 in Brighton aged 68.

Answer: John XXIII

Born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli in the Province of Bergamo in northern Italy in 1881, he became the 23rd Pope to take the name John but the first in more than 500 years when he was elected in October 1958. His papacy is best remembered for the calling of the historic "Second Vatican Council", which opened in October 1962 although he did not live to see it concluded three years later.
Pope John XXIII died of stomach cancer on June 3, 1963 in Vatican City at the age of 81. He was succeeded by Paul VI, who began the canonization process that has taken more than half a century.

Answer: Guy Burgess

Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess was born in Devonport in Plymouth in 1911 and was a student at Eton and the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth before he went to Cambridge. Like Blunt, Burgess was a member of the (then Marxist) "Cambridge Apostles", a secret and elite debating society before he was recruited by the Comintern in Moscow. Recruited by Section D of MI6 as a propaganda specialist in the late 1930s, Burgess joined the News Department at the Foreign Office in 1944.

This gave him access to Top Secret documents that he then transmitted to the KGB. During the Marshall Plan negotiations, Burgess was seconded to the British Embassy in Washington D.C., where he shared a flat with Kim Philby. Maclean was suspected of espionage in 1951 but he was tipped off by Philby and escaped to Moscow, and Burgess went with him. Maclean lived happily in exile for more than 30 years, but Burgess did not enjoy Soviet life.

His high alcohol intake contributed to his death on August 30, 1963 in Moscow aged 52.

Answer: Jean Cocteau

Born Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau in Maisons-Laffitte in north-central France in 1889, his best-known novel was published in 1929. His most-acclaimed films include "Beauty and the Beast" (in 1946) and "Orpheus" (in 1949). It is ironic that he wrote the enormously successful play "Le Bel Indifférent" for singer Edith Piaf in 1940 -- 23 years later the writer and the star of the show would both die on the same day.
Cocteau was a Commander of the Legion of Honor, France's highest award.
Jean Cocteau died of a heart attack on October 11, 1963 in Essonne, France aged 74. It was reported that when he heard of Piaf's death he chocked so hard his heart failed.

Answer: Jack Hobbs

Born John Berry Hobbs in Cambridge, England in 1882, Sir Jack Hobbs was nicknamed "The Master" and is recognized as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket. He scored 88 on his first-class debut for Surrey in 1905 and a century in his second match.

He played his entire 29-year career with Surrey, playing 834 matches and scoring a record 61,760 runs at an average of 50.70 including 199 centuries, 273 50s and a top score of 316*. In 61 Test matches for England, Hobbs scored 5,410 runs at an average of 56.94 with 15 centuries and a highest score of 211.

His opening partnership with Yorkshire's Herbert Sutcliffe was legendary, the pair combining for 15 century opening partnerships in 38 test matches. In 1953, Hobbs became the first professional to be knighted.

He died on December 21, 1963 in Hove at the age of 81.

Answer: Aldous Huxley

Born Aldous Leonard Huxley in Godalming, Surrey in 1894, he was a humanist, a pacifist and a satirist who was regarded as one of the premier intellectuals of his time. After leaving Oxford, Huxley taught French at Eton for a year, where one of his pupils was Eric Blair, who would later write under the pen-name of George Orwell.
Huxley's fifth novel, published in 1932, "Brave New World" was ranked fifth in the "100 Best English-Language Novels of the 20th-Century" poll conducted in 1999 by The Modern Library.
Diagnosed with laryngeal cancer three years earlier, Huxley died on November 22, 1963 in Los Angeles aged 69.

Answer: C.S. Lewis

Born Clive Staples Lewis in Belfast in 1898, he was known to his friends and family as Jack. His closest friend was a fellow member of the English Faculty at Oxford University -- John Tolkien.
Lewis is best-remembered for the 7-book high fantasy series "The Chronicles of Narnia", published between 1950 and 1956. His other literary masterpieces include the satirical novel "The Screwtape Letters", published in 1942, and the science fiction series "The Space Trilogy", published between 1938 and 1945.
Lewis died from renal failure a week before his 65th birthday on November 22, 1963 in Oxford. Although the deaths of writers of the stature of Huxley and Lewis would normally have received considerable media coverage, they went virtually unnoticed because of the blanket coverage given to the Kennedy assassination. Fifty years on in 2013, though, the anniversary of Lewis's death was commemorated by a memorial in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.