Gone Too Soon, Yet Not Forgotten Quiz

Answer: Argentina

The second wife of Juan Peron, Eva was not content with just being an 'ornamental' First Lady. She held the offices of Minister of Labour and Health while also pursuing other causes close to her heart including women's suffrage. In 1951, she sought a greater role in running the administration of her country by announcing her decision to campaign for the post of Vice President.

Unfortunately, she was also battling cancer at the same time and further deterioration in her health forced her to withdraw from the elections.

A year later, she succumbed to the disease. Shortly before her death, she was given the title of 'Spiritual Leader of the Nation'.

Answer: Oscar Wilde

Born in Dublin and having studied at Oxford, Wilde was one of the leading figures of the literary scene. His one and only novel, "The Picture of Dorian Grey" was well received, as were his plays, famous among them being "The Importance of Being Earnest".

Unfortunately, his private prosecution of the Marquess of Queensberry for libel backfired. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas and to avoid being convicted himself managed to gather evidence of Wilde's homosexual lifestyle which was treated as a crime in those days. Found guilty, Wilde was sentenced to two years' hard labour. Once free, he moved to France leading a largely penniless life.

He died in 1900 from a severe ear infection, though for years it was believed that the cause of his death was syphilis.

Answer: Martin Luther King, Jr.

King was a Baptist minister who became famous for his work towards obtaining basic civil rights for fellow African Americans. His well known speech "I Have a Dream" was delivered in 1963 during a political rally in Washington seeking greater civil and economic rights for African Americans.

Inspired by Gandhi's non violent struggle for Indian independence, King, too, opted for the same route in his struggle for civil rights. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964 becoming the youngest recipient of the honour at that time. Four years later, he was assassinated by James Earl Ray at Memphis, Tennessee.

He was 39 years old when he died.

Answer: Lord Byron

Born George Gordon Byron, this British poet's well known works include "She Walks in Beauty", "When We Two Parted" and "Don Juan" among many others. He had a string of high profile affairs and ultimately left England to escape the scandals. On receiving a request from the Greeks to aid them in their quest for independence from the Ottoman Empire, Byron sailed to the Ionian Islands in 1823.

While preparing to attack a Turkish occupied fort in the Gulf of Corinth, Byron contracted fever and the primitive methods of bloodletting used in his treatment further aggravated his condition.

He succumbed to the fever on April 19th, 1824 dying at the age of 36.

Answer: Figure Skating

Sergei Grinkov and his partner Ekaterina Gordeeva won their first major title at the World Junior Championship in Colorado in 1985. The pair went on to win four World Figure Skating Championships starting in 1986 and also won gold at the Winter Olympics in 1988 and 1994.

Their professional partnership led to marriage in 1991. They also participated in multiple seasons of the figure skating show "Stars on Ice". In 1995, while practicing for a forthcoming season of the show, Grinkov suffered from a massive heart attack, which proved to be fatal, leading to his early death at the age of 28.

Answer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Mozart took to the keyboard at the age of three which watching his elder sister aged seven take lessons. Both children were hailed as prodigies and received an opportunity to perform at the Imperial Court in front of Empress Maria Theresa of the Habsburg dynasty.

This led to several invitations to perform before royalty in different European countries. As he grew older, Mozart was appointed a court musician in Salzburg, the city of his birth. However, he was continuously on the look out for better positions and was dismissed from his job due to his frequent travels.

His prolific composing continued in Vienna and while he received much acclaim, the financial rewards were not commensurate. He died in 1791 of medical complications with the exact cause still unknown.

Answer: Rajiv Gandhi

Indira Gandhi, daughter of India's first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, was India's first female Prime Minister. During her fourth term in office, she was assassinated by her own bodyguards following the infamous Operation Blue Star where she ordered the Army to invade the Golden Temple, revered by the Sikhs, in order to flush out the terrorists seeking asylum within.

A pilot by profession, Rajiv Gandhi, older son of Indira, stayed away from politics, with his younger brother Sanjay assuming the role of successor. Sanjay's death in an air crash in 1980 forced Rajiv to enter the political arena. Merely four years later, he was forced to assume the role of leader of the Indian National Congress party following Indira's death.

While he is credited with have laid the foundations for the telecommunications and information technology boom that followed in the 1990s, Gandhi's decision to send peace keeping forces to aid the Sri Lankan government against the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) outfit earned him the wrath of militant Tamil groups. During an election campaign in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by members of the LTTE on the 21st of May, 1991, at the age of 46.

Rahul Gandhi is the son of Rajiv Gandhi while Varun Gandhi is the son of his younger brother, Sanjay Gandhi.

Answer: Sylvia Plath

American poet and writer Sylvia Plath married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956. The couple had two children, Frieda and Nicholas, but separated when Plath found out that Hughes had been having an affair. Frequently assailed by bouts of depression, Plath discussed her various suicide attempts with Anne Sexton, who was also a poet and writer. Plath finally succeeded in taking her own life in 1963 by putting her head inside a gas oven while her children slept in the next room.

In 1982, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her anthology of poems published posthumously under the title "The Collected Poems".

Answer: Lou Gehrig

Henry Louis Gehrig, more popularly known as Lou Gehrig, was an American baseball player who played for the New York Yankees for 17 seasons. Nicknamed the 'Iron Horse' for his powerful batting, Gehrig set a number of records in the game including most consecutive games played with a whopping 2130 games.

His streak ended when he retired from the game following the onset of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disease characterised by progressive muscle weakness. The disease, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, turned fatal and claimed his life at the young age of 36.

Answer: Netherlands

Originally from Germany, Anne and her family moved to Amsterdam in the Netherlands in 1933 after the Nazis rose to power in Germany and passed various laws discriminating against the Jewish citizens of the country. The German invasion of Netherlands in May 1940 and the subsequent persecution of Jews there forced the family to go into hiding in a small annexe above Anne's father's office in July 1942. Joined by another family a few days later, the Franks continued to live in hiding for two more years. During this period, Anne maintained a diary documenting daily occurrences, her future plans when they were freed, her interactions with her own family members among other things.

The Franks were discovered by the Gestapo in 1944 following an anonymous tip off. Otto Frank, Anne's father, was the only member of the family to survive the concentration camps and published her diary, which had been saved by one of their family friends, to honour her dream of becoming an author.