Grave Danger Trivia Quiz

Answer: Spike Milligan

Terence Alan "Spike" Milligan was born in India on April 16th 1918. He was co-creator and a cast member of the classic British radio show "The Goons" which aired on the BBC Home Service between 1951 and 1960. He also appeared in many other radio shows, TV programmes and films.

He died in February 2002 and was buried at the church of St Thomas in Winchelsea, East Sussex, England. The epigraph had to be translated to Irish ("Duirt me leat go raibh me breoite") for the diocese to allow it to be included on the headstone.

Answer: Emily Dickinson

Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts on December 10th 1830. She was a prolific poetry writer although few of her poems were published in her lifetime. In her poetry she used her personal observations to explore themes of self-identity, nature, love and death. She died of liver disease on May 15th 1886 and was buried in her family plot at West Cemetery in Amherst.

Answer: Mel Blanc

Melvin Jerome Blanc was born May 30th 1908 in San Francisco. He is best known for his work with the Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies cartoons where he voiced many well known characters such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig. It was Mel Blanc that gave Bugs Bunny his famous catchphrase "What's up, Doc?".

He died from heart disease and emphysema in July 1989 and was buried at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. The epigraph "That's All Folks" was a phrase his character Porky Pig said at the end of the Looney Tune cartoons.

Answer: Karen Carpenter

Karen Anne Carpenter was born in New Haven, Connecticut on March 2nd 1950. She is best known for her musical partnership with her brother Richard as part of the duo "The Carpenters". They were very successful and had many hit singles in the 1970s and early 1980s including "(They Long to Be) Close to You", "Yesterday Once More" and "There's a Kind of Hush". Sadly Karen suffered from the eating disorder anorexia nervosa for a large part of her life which contributed to her having a fatal heart attack at her parent's house on February 4th 1983.

She was buried at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Cypress, California.

Answer: Rodney Dangerfield

Stand-up comedian Rodney Dangerfield was born Jacob Rodney Cohen on the 22nd November 1921 in Long Island, New York. He first joined the comedy circuit while performing at resorts in New York's Catskill Mountains. He was best known for his self-deprecating gravestone humour and pithy one-liners.

He also appeared in several films. He died of complications following heart surgery in October 2004 and was buried in Westwood Village Memorial Cemetery in Los Angeles. As a mark of respect his Hollywood Walk of Fame star was covered with flowers by his fans.

Answer: Bette Davis

Bette Davis was born Ruth Elizabeth Davis on April 5th 1908 in Lowell, Massachusetts and is remembered as one of Hollywood's legendary leading ladies appearing in such films as "Jezebel" (1938), "Now Voyager" (1942) and "All About Eve" (1950). She carried on working and making films into her early 80s and her last film was "Wicked Stepmother" which was released in 1989.

She died in France of breast cancer in the same year and was buried Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills. The inscription "She did it the hard way" was a suggestion from Joe Mankiewicz who wrote and directed her in "All About Eve".

Answer: Werner Heisenberg

Physicist and philosopher Werner Karl Heisenberg was born in Wurzburg, Germany on 5th December 1901. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1932 for his discovery of a method to formulate quantum mechanics in terms of matrices. He is most famous for his uncertainty principle which states that the position and momentum of a particle cannot be known simultaneously.

He died of kidney cancer in February 1976 and was buried Waldfriedhof in Munich.

Answer: Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was born in Boston, Massachusetts on October 27th 1932. Her best known works include the poems "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus" and her semi-autobiographical novel "The Bell Jar" which describes the mental breakdown and eventual recovery of a young college student.

She married English poet Ted Hughes in 1956 and they had two children. For most of her adult life Plath suffered from clinical depression and had made several suicide attempts. On February 11th 1963 after taking milk and biscuits up to her children's rooms she taped up the doors to protect them and placed her head in the gas oven.

She was found dead of carbon monoxide poisoning later that day. She was buried in St Thomas à Beckett Churchyard, Heptonstall, West Yorkshire, England.

Answer: Christopher Wren

Sir Christopher Wren was born in East Knoyle, Wiltshire, England in October 1632. He is known as one of the most highly acclaimed English architects mainly due to his work at designing many of the buildings that had to be rebuilt after the Great Fire of London of 1666.

Much of the London seen today is shaped by his vision, the most prominent being St Paul's Cathedral. Wren died at the age of 90 on 25th of February 1723 and was buried in the crypt of St Paul's with a simple plaque. His son, wishing to play tribute to his father, had the plaque inscribed "Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice".

Answer: Frank Sinatra

Francis Albert Sinatra was born on the 12th December 1915 in Hoboken, New Jersey. Known as "The Chairman of the Board" he is considered to be one of the best selling music artists of all time and is famous for such songs as "My Way" and "New York, New York".

He also had a successful career as a film actor appearing in such films as "High Society" and "Oceans 11". He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film "From Here to Eternity". After a long and successful career Sinatra died from a heart attack on May 14th 1998.

He was buried in Palm Springs Cemetery District's Desert Memorial Park, California. He was buried with several articles including a packet of Camel cigarettes, a Zippo lighter and a bottle of Jack Daniels. The epitaph on his headstone comes from his 1964 hit of the same name.