Born Under the Sign of Aries Trivia Quiz

Answer: Anthony van Dyck

He was born Antoon van Dyck in Antwerp which was then part of the Spanish Netherlands but is now in Belgium. One of the great Flemish painters of the Baroque era, he also became the dominant influence on English portrait painting for the next century and a half.

Answer: Clyde Barrow

He was born Clyde Chestnut Barrow near the small town of Telico in Ellis County, Texas, just southeast of Dallas. First sent to prison in 1930, he was paroled after 22 months despite killing a fellow inmate who had assaulted him.
Barrow had met Bonnie Parker just before he went to jail. In August 1932, they killed the first of nine lawmen that would die during the pair's 2-year crime spree.
The couple were ambushed and killed by a posse of four Texas lawmen on May 23, 1934, on a rural road in Bienville Parish, Louisiana. Bonnie and Clyde were shot more than fifty times -- officers were taking no chances! Both John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd sent cards and flowers to Bonnie Parker's funeral.

Answer: Tennessee Williams

Born Thomas Lanier Williams III in the eastern Mississippi city of Columbus, Tennessee Williams won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for "A Streetcar Named Desire" in in 1955 for "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof".
Williams died in controversial circumstances in New York City in 1983 at the age of 71. Despite his expressed wish to be buried at sea, his brother insisted that he should be buried in Saint Louis MO. He bequeathed his future royalties to the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, where the funds support a creative writing program.

Answer: Cy Young

He was born Denton True Young in eastern Ohio and made his Major League debut for the Cleveland Spiders in 1890. Nine seasons in Cleveland, two with the St. Louis Perfectos were followed by eight seasons with the Boston Americans/Red Sox. He returned to Ohio in 1909 and played two seasons with the Cleveland Naps before finishing his career with the Boston Rustlers in 1911.
Young was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937. The year after his death in 1955, the Cy Young Award for the previous season's best pitcher was established.
In an era when pitchers now pitch every five days (rather than every other day in Young's day) and 300 wins is considered a Hall of Fame career, Young's record of 511 wins is unlikely ever to be surpassed. Hall of Famers Walter Johnson (417 wins) and Grover Cleveland Alexander and Christy Mathewson (both with 373), all pre-WWII pitchers, have come closest. Warren Spahn (363), Greg Maddux (355) and Roger Clemens (354) were the post-war pitchers with the highest totals a century after Young's career finished.
Other records that still stood a century later are 7,356 innings pitched, 815 games started, 749 complete games and 25 1⁄3 consecutive hitless innings pitched. Of those, only the last record seems to be even vaguely within the reach of pitchers in the modern game. (Nolan Ryan played for 27 seasons and pitched until the age of 46 and still started 'only' 773 games, still 42 short of Young's record.) At 316, Young also lost more games than any player in history -- perhaps an unwanted record that he will also never lose.

Answer: Otto von Bismarck

He was born Otto Eduard Leopold Bismarck on a wealthy family estate to the west of Berlin in the Prussian province of Saxony. Before the 1860s, Germany consisted of numerous principalities loosely joined as members of the German Confederation. Using both diplomacy and the Prussian military, Bismarck achieved unification. Defeats of Denmark, Austria and France left Prussia as the most powerful and dominant component of the new nation state, and of mainland Europe.

In 1871, Bismarck was appointed as the first Imperial Chancellor of the German Empire, a position he would hold for the next two decades. He died at the age of 83 in 1898.

Answer: Hans Christian Andersen

Hans Christian Andersen was born in the town of Odense on the Danish island of Funen. His fairy tales ('eventyr' in Danish) which have been translated into more than 125 languages.
Statues of Andersen can be found in his native country, in Odense and at Rosenborg Castle Gardens in Copenhagen, and around the world: in Central Park in New York City, a statue of Andersen and "The Ugly Ducking"; in Solvang, California, a city built by Danish immigrants; and in Bratislava in Slovakia.
Andersen's birthday, April 2, is "International Children's Book Day" and the bicentenary of his birth, 2005, was "Andersen Year" in Denmark.

Answer: William Wordsworth

"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud..." William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor-Coleridge launched English literature's Romantic Age with the publication of "Lyrical Ballads" in 1798.
At the age of 28, in 1798, Wordsworth began work on his greatest epic, an autobiographical conversation work that he simply referred to as "The Poem". Today it is widely known as "The Prelude" or, to give it its full title, "The Prelude or, Growth of a Poet's Mind; An Autobiographical Poem". Wordsworth worked on it for the rest of his life and it was finally published after his death in 1850. His widow, Mary, gave the piece its title.
Wordsworth followed Robert Southey as Poet Laureate in 1843, the first person appointed to the post during Victoria's reign.

Answer: Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was voted into second place in a 2002 BBC poll of "100 Greatest Britons", behind only Sir Winston Churchill.
Brunel is perhaps best remembered today for the Clifton Suspension Bridge, a 1,352-foot bridge across the Avon Gorge in Bristol. When it was completed in 1864, it had the longest span of any of the world's bridges. It has also stood the test of time, with more than four million vehicles still crossing annually more than 150 years later.
He also established the Great Western Railway: he designed London's Paddington Station as the line's eastern terminus, and built impressive viaducts and huge tunnels (including the world's longest railway tunnel at the time). Even before GWR was completed, Brunel sought to extend the service by building iron-hulled steam-powered ships to carry passengers across the Atlantic Ocean to New York. He developed the "SS Great Britain", the world's first propeller-driven ocean-going iron ship and, in 1834, the largest ship ever built.
Brunel died of a stroke in 1859 aged just 53.

Answer: Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the American Declaration of Independence, the country's first Secretary of State, its second Vice-President and its third President. He took office as President in March 1801 and, in 1803, managed the acquisition from France of the enormous Louisiana Territory.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition (or the "Corps of Discovery Expedition"), set out on their 27-month journey from Saint Louis, Missouri to the Pacific Coast and back in 1804. They were charged with mapping the country's newly acquired lands, finding a practical route to the West Coast, and establishing an American presence before European powers began claiming what Jefferson saw as American territory. It is fitting, perhaps, that Jefferson died on July 4, American Independence Day, in 1826 at the age of 83. Remarkably, America's second President, John Adams, died on the same day at the age of 90 and, five years later, the country's fifth President, John Monroe, would also die on the same date.

Answer: Henry Mancini

Born Enrico Nicola Mancini, he is perhaps best-known for his memorable theme to "The Pink Panther" film series.
Mancini was nominated for an incredible 72 Grammy awards. He won 20 times, including the first ever "Album of the Year" award (for his theme to the "Peter Gunn" TV series). He was also honored with a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995, a year after his death at the age of 70.
He was nominated 18 times for an Academy Award, winning four times: for "Victor Victoria" in 1982, for the song from ""Days of Wine and Roses" in 1962, and twice for "Breakfast at Tiffany's" in 1961 (for best score and best song).