I Saw it in a Dream Quiz | Mixed People

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Which well-known entrepreneurial icon said: 'All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them'?

Answer: Walt Disney

Walt Disney (1901-1966) remains famous worldwide for film production, theme animation and Disney theme parks. Sir James Dyson revolutionised vacuum cleaning with his Dual Cyclone system, and later with a design for a high-speed hand drier. Bill Gates was founding CEO of the Microsoft Corporation. Sir Richard Branson's Virgin companies have included interests in music, aviation, transport, communications and space tourism.

2. 'I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.' - Which of Shakespeare's tragic figures says this?

Answer: Hamlet

Many of Shakespeare's plays use the convention of dreams to explore the relationship between reality and imagination or invention. These lines are spoken by Hamlet to his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern on their arrival in Elsinore, as he starts to explain the reason for his depression.

However he quickly realises that the pair have been sent to spy on him, and changes the subject.

3. In August 1963 the Black civil rights leader Martin Luther King gave his landmark 'I Have a Dream' speech. Where did this memorable event occur?

Answer: Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC

This most famous of King's speeches was delivered at the rally of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28th 1963. The other places were also scenes of memorable speeches by Martin Luther King. In March 1965, on the steps of the State Capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, King delivered his 'How Long, Not Long' speech.

In the Riverside Church in New York City he spoke against the Vietnam war ('Beyond Vietnam') in April 1967. His final speech ('I've Been to the Mountaintop') was delivered in Memphis, Tennessee on April 3rd 1968.

The following evening he was shot dead at a Memphis motel.

4. Which leading chemist told delegates to an 1890 convention that the structure of the chemical benzene had been revealed to him in a dream?

Answer: Friedrich August Kekule

F.A. Kekule (1829-96) was a German organic chemist who developed his theory of how carbon atoms link together in a ring shape, after having a dream of a snake seizing its own tail.

5. In which of Charles Dickens' novels does Affery Flintwinch, after going to bed, imagine she's dreaming when she sees her husband Jeremiah speaking to a double of himself in a cold and candle-lit room downstairs?

Answer: Little Dorrit

Affery Flintwinch is so terrified by her brutal husband Jeremiah and harsh mistress Mrs Clennam that she regularly imagines she is merely dreaming the events of scheming and wickedness she witnesses in the house. On this occasion Jeremiah is plotting with his secret twin brother Ephraim when he thinks Affery is asleep.

6. Which President of the United States had a premonition of his own assassination in a dream shortly before he was shot?

Answer: Abraham Lincoln

President Lincoln told his wife, a few days before he was shot by John Wilkes Booth, that in his dream he heard cries coming from the East Wing of the White House. Going to investigate, he saw a covered corpse being guarded by soldiers. They told him they were weeping for the president who had been killed by an assassin.

7. Kevin Costner starred in the 1989 film "Field of Dreams", but who was the legendary baseball player who provided the title for W.P. Kinsella's novel on which the film is based?

Answer: Joe Jackson

Shoeless Joe Jackson was one of eight members of the Chicago White Sox team accused of throwing the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds in the infamous Black Sox match fixing scandal. His innocence or guilt remains controversial but he was banned from Major League Baseball after 1920 and therefore remains ineligible for baseball's Hall of Fame.

8. Which Romantic poet claimed to have composed one of his most famous poems, "Kubla Khan", while in an opium-induced dream?

Answer: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Coleridge claimed that he composed several hundred lines of the poem while in a dream, and began to write it down as soon as he woke, with a clear recollection. However his work was interrupted by the arrival of an unidentified 'person from Porlock' (a nearby village) and when his unexpected guest had left his recollection had faded and he was unable to complete the poem. Only fifty-four lines exist therefore of 'Kubla Khan: A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment'.

9. He was a soldier in the First World War. Asleep in a trench, he dreamed he was buried under a pile of earth and red-hot iron. He woke and immediately left the trench, which soon afterwards was hit by an enemy shell killing his fellow soldiers. Whose dream changed history?

Answer: Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler fought on the front line at Ypres, the Somme, Arras and Passchendaele and was decorated twice for bravery. General John Pershing was Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Force when the U.S. entered the war in 1917. Although First Lord of the Admiralty at the outbreak of the war in 1914, Winston Churchill served briefly on the Western front in 1916 as a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Scots Fusiliers regiment. Joseph Stalin was conscripted into the Russian Army in 1916, but an injury to his arm sustained in youth ruled him out of active military service.

10. The 'Pilgrim's Progress' (1678) is a dream allegory that tells of the journey of its hero 'Christian' from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. It was partly written while its author was in prison, but who was this English 'jailbird'?

Answer: John Bunyan

John Bunyan (1628-1688) was imprisoned on several occasions for his 'heretical' Christian beliefs, including an almost unbroken spell of twelve years during which part of the 'Progress' was written. George Herbert (1593-1633) and Henry Vaughan (1622-1695) were both Welsh poets of the 'metaphysical' school. John Clare (1793-1864), who was known as the 'Northampton Peasant Poet', spent many years in asylums because of his mental health.

Source: Author dsimpy

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor Snowman before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

I Saw it in a Dream Trivia Quiz

A dream isn't just something that disturbs a good night's sleep. It can be a predictor, or even the cause, of momentous events - whether for good or for bad.

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