Fred Who? Trivia Quiz

Answer: Fred Grandy

Fred Grandy was an actor who was best known for his character called Gopher in the television series "The Love Boat". While his acting career was going on, he also was interested in politics, a field in which he had interest since a very young age. He had some immediate ties to politics, being a roommate of David Eisenhower during his school years. He was best man as Eisenhower's wedding to Julie Nixon, the daughter of former President Richard Nixon. He also served as a speechwriter for a congressman in his home state of Iowa.

In 1986, he ran for Congress in his home state, and won the seat by a scant 3000 votes. He went on to serve four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives before a failed bid for Governor ended his political career. Since then he has become a talk show host on both U.S. television and radio.

Answer: Frederick Banting

Frederick Banting was a medical scientist and a doctor. Born in Ontario, Canada in 1891, he joined the Canadian Army Medical Corps as a teenager and served during the First World War in France. When the war ended in 1919, Banting returned to Canada and was a medical practitioner at London, Ontario.

Banting had become deeply interested in diabetes, and after much research during the early 1920s came up with the insulin that is credited with saving over 16 million lives worldwide. Banting passed away in 1941, but in a survey taken by the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) in 2004, he placed 4th on the list of The Greatest Canadians of All Time.

Answer: Fred Rogers

With the line "Won't you be my neighbor?" Fred Rogers came to our homes everyday for over three decades and endeared himself to our children via "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood". Rogers was born in Latrobe Pennsylvania in 1928 and originally entered a seminary after graduated from college, however he was diverted to television in the early 1950s. Rogers worked on a television station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1954 on a show called "The Children's Corner".

He also found time to study theology and became an ordained Presbyterian minister during this period.

He developed "Misterogers" in the early 1960s in Canada, and when the show was cancelled, Rogers retained the rights to the show and moved it to his former station in Pittsburgh beginning in 1968.

The show moved to Public Broadcasting (PBS) in 1969 and remained in production and a favorite of children worldwide for over 30 years. Rogers passed away due to cancer in 2003.

Answer: Frederic Chopin

Frederic Chopin was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1810. His father was a French expatriate and his mother was Polish. He was considered a child prodigy on the piano. He did become a French citizen as a matter of convenience but was an ardent supporter of Poland and was considered a Polish patriot.

He was always in failing health and passed away prematurely at age 39. Two of his most famous works are "The Minute Waltz" (Waltz in D flat major, Op. 64 No. 1) and "The Funeral March" (Sonata No. 2 in B flat minor Op. 35).

Answer: Frederick Forsyth

Frederick Forsyth was born in Kent, England in 1938. After serving in the Royal Air Force, he became a journalist in the early 1960s working for Reuters, and then the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). One of his jobs was to report on the tense situation in the African country of Biafra, and this led to his controversial departure from the BBC due to his support of the Biafran cause.

He wrote his first book in 1969 about this situation called "The Biafra Story". In addition to "The Day of The Jackal" and "The Odessa File" which were his first two novels, he has written such others as "The Dogs of War", "The Fourth Protocol", and "The Negotiator" among others. Just to prove that he was still going strong he wrote "The Afghan" in 2006.

Answer: The Statue of Liberty

Frederic Bartholdi was born in 1834 in Alsace, in France. As an adult he studied architecture and painting in Paris. In addition to his sculpture work, he also painted under the pseudonym of Amilcar Hasenfratz.

In 1879 Bartholdi was commissioned to produce a work which was called "Liberty Enlightening the World". He traveled to the U.S. personally and selected New York Harbor as the site where the monument was to stand. The Statue of Liberty was given to the U.S. by the people of France in 1886.

Some of Bartholdi's other famous works include The Lion in Belfort, in Belfort France, which is a lion carved into the side of a mountain, The Bartholdi Fountain in Washington D.C., and Fontaine Bartholdi in Paris, France. Bartholdi died in 1904.

Answer: Fredric March

No, it wasn't Fredric Flintstone. It was Fredric March who can list "Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" under his list of credits. March was born in 1897 in Racine, Wisconsin and began acting in 1920. He was nominated for his first Academy Award in 1930 for his role in the motion picture "The Royal Family of Broadway". After winning the Oscar in 1932, he starred in a series of films and was nominated again for his role of Norman Maine in "A Star Is Born".

March continued his successful career into the 1940s and 1950 with films such as the comedy "I Married a Witch" (1942), "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) for which he won his second Academy Award. His portrayal of Willy Loman in the film adaptation of "Death of a Salesman" in 1951 won him another Oscar nomination.

He did continue making films into the 1960s and 1970s albeit at a much slower pace. His final film was "The Iceman Cometh" in 1973. March passed away in 1975, another cancer victim.

Answer: He was born in Transylvania

Of the four listed choices, the only true statement is that Lebow was born in Transylvania, Romania in 1932. Lebow was a dedicated runner and started the New York Marathon in 1970. Unfortunately, he place 45th out of 55 runners that first year. It has since become one of the biggest marathons in the world with more recent counts showing that the number of runners has increased a bit since then. The 2008 Marathon statistics say that there were 37,899 participants. Lebow never ran in the Olympics and did not create the Boston Marathon.

Lebow's last marathon was in 1992 in celebration of his 60th birthday. He had been diagnosed with brain cancer two years earlier, and passed away in 1994.

Answer: Fred Thompson

Fred Thompson was born in Alabama in 1942 and became an attorney in Tennessee in 1967. He was an attorney who assisted the senators investigating the Watergate incident in that 1970s that led to the resignation of then President Richard Nixon. Thompson is sometimes credited with coming up with the question "What did the President know, and when did he know it?" which was used extensively during the hearings.

Thompson worked as an attorney and lobbyist up until 1994 when he was elected as a senator from the state of Tennessee. His acting career was in full swing as well, having appeared in the films "No Way Out" (1987) with Kevin Costner, and "The Hunt for Red October" (1990) with Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin. In 2002 as his senate term was ending, he took the role of Arthur Branch, New York District Attorney in the successful U.S. TV series "Law and Order", a role which he played for five years until he quit the show for his failed presidential run in 2008.

Answer: William Hanna and Joseph Barbera

Fred, Wilma, Barney, Betty and the kids were a creation of the Hanna-Barbera team who also gave us such animation attractions as "Tom and Jerry", "Huckleberry Hound" and "Scooby-Doo" in addition to "The Flintstones".

Fred made his first appearance in 1960, voiced by actor Alan Reed for the first seventeen years. His voice has changed a bit over the years with different people doing the voiceovers. In addition there have been a couple of full length non-animated motion pictures featuring Fred, the most well known of these starring John Goodman, and Rosie O'Donnell. The Fred Flintstone character was said to be patterned after a combination of Ralph Kramden from "The Honeymooners" (Jackie Gleason) and Chester A. Riley from the 1950s television show "The Life of Riley" (William Bendix).