May I Have the Bill, Please? Trivia Quiz

Answer: Clinton

Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III on August 19, 1946 in Hope, Arkansas. He was a posthumous child, his father, William, having been killed in an automobile accident three months before he was born. When his mother married Roger Clinton, the family moved from Hope to Hot Springs, AK. Bill took his stepfather's name when he was 14.

He attended Georgetown University, where he earned his Bachelor's degree, won a Rhodes scholarship (the first American president to do so). After studying at Oxford he left and entered law school at Yale, where he met his now-wife Hillary Rodham. They were married in 1975 and their daughter Chelsea was born in 1980. Clinton served as President of the USA from 1993 to 2000. Hilary Clinton was Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013.

Answer: William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland

William Augustus was the second of the two sons born to George II and his queen, Caroline of Ansbach (the fifth of their seven children ). He was born in 1721 and died at the age of 44 following a massive heart attack. A brilliant military strategist, William Augustus proved his mettle in various battles on the continent and was hailed as the hero of the battle of Dettingen. In 1745 Prince Charles Edward Stuart (aka Bonnie Prince Charlie to the Scots or The Young Pretender to the English) came to Scotland in an attempt to succeed where his father had failed in 1715. The object was to oust George II and restore the Stuart monarchy in the UK. George II was having none of this, so he appointed his "martial boy" to put down the rebellion. William Augustus more than exceeded dad's expectations by routing the Jacobites in the week between April 8 and 16.

The final battle at Culloden pitted Charles Edward Stuart's army of ill-nourished, ill-equipped, and ill-trained Highlanders, along with French soldiers, against a disciplined, well-trained and well-equipped English army in one of the bloodiest and most brutal battles ever fought on British soil. Charles Edward escaped, via Skye, back to the Continent, the French who had fought under his banner were sent home with their tails between their legs, and the Scottish Jacobites were ruthlessly hunted down and killed. The Lowland Scots, the English, and the residents of British colonies all hailed William Augustus as a great hero, and the University of Glasgow conferred an honorary degree on him. Despite his orders to hunt down and kill any Jacobites left standing, William Augustus was known to exercise clemency if special cases were brought to his notice, but the humiliation of Culloden still rankles and he will be forever known in the Highlands as Butcher Cumberland, and the little common ragwort (also known as cankerweed, staggerwort and tansy ragwort) is still called stinking billy.

The Highlanders seem to have very long memories, and William Wallace is still regarded as a hero in Scotland. King William III is not well-liked by Highlanders either because the Massacre of the Macdonalds at Glencoe happened on his watch and he did nothing to punish the Campbells who perpetrated this shameful act, but nobody ever named a flower for him. I doubt if any memory of William the Conqueror lingers in the Highlands since he never wandered up that way, being too busy keeping the Saxons in line after he became King of England.

Answer: William Poole

While the villain in Martin Scorses's movie 'Gangs of New York' was loosely based on William Poole, be warned that the connection was very loose. For one thing, the New York Draft Riots featured in the movie occurred after the real William 'Bill the Butcher' Poole died in 1855.

The real William Poole was the son of English immigrants, a butcher by trade, a bare-knuckle pugilist by choice, and the leader of the Know Nothing Party. He had an on-going feud with John (not William) Morrisey, another bare-knuckle boxer. After Morrisey had won a fight over 'Yankee' Sullivan, by means which Poole considered foul, Poole challenged Morrisey to a fight. The fight took place on July 26, 1854 and according to the account given by the 'New York Daily Times' it was something of a free-for-all. Poole emerged the winner but only, reported the 'Times', "when his friends joined the fight and kicked Morrisey unconscious."

Morrisey, naturally, was rather miffed by this and throughout the following months a number of pitched battles between Morrisey's gang and Poole's gang were common on the streets of New York, much to the annoyance of the New York Police Department. Eventually, Morrisey conspired with several others to do away with Poole once and for all. On February 25, 1855 one of Morrisey's friends, a boxer named Lew Baker, encountered Poole in a Broadway bar and shot him, fatally wounding him. His friends managed to get Poole to his home on Christopher Street, where he died from the gunshot would. His last words were those that Scorsese's Bill the Butcher dictated to his gang members: "I die a true American." He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Tom (not William) Hyer was another bare-knuckle fighter of the time, and a member of Bill the Butcher's gang.

Charles (not William) Owens was a barkeep who refused to serve an obviously drunk Poole and his friends more drinks and got brutally beaten up for making that decision.

Answer: William Aberhart

Ontario-born Bible Bill Aberhart was the principal of Crescent Heights High School, my former high school in Calgary (long before my time, I assure you!). In addition to his role as a high school principal, Aberhart, who was fascinated by the prophetic teachings of the Bible, ran enormously popular Bible study groups. By 1923, the Palace Theatre in downtown Calgary was rented in order to accommodate all those who wanted to hear Aberhart's prophetic message and in 1925 CFCN radio began broadcasting his message to avid listeners in Western Canada and the northwestern US. In 1927 Aberhart and a group of backers founded the Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute and he became its first Dean. The Institute served as a worship centre, held Bible study classes and also had a studio which broadcast Aberhart's Sunday services, which proved to be as popular as his Bible study sessions.

The Great Depession of 1929 sparked Aberhart's interest in Social Credit, the unusual monetary reform theory espoused by Major C.H. Douglas. (It's too complicated to explain, so look it up. It's doubtful if even Aberhart fully understood Douglas' convoluted theory, so don't expect too much). After three years of trying to get the United Farmers of Alberta Party, then the government of Alberta, to adopt Douglas' ideas on monetary reform and failing in the attempt, Aberhart founded the Social Credit Party in 1935. As much to his surprise as anyone's, Social Credit swept to power in a landslide victory over the UFA Party in August of that year. Aberhart tried to reform the banking system, obviously not understanding that such a policy was beyond his power since the control of banks was a federal not a provincial responsibility. Aberhart remained Premier of Alberta until his sudden death in 1943. He was succeeded as Premier by his disciple, Ernest Manning, a former student and lifelong member of the Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute. Manning remained Premier until 1968.

William 'Bill' Davis served as Progressive Conservative Premier of Ontario from 1971 to 1985, W.A.C. 'Wacky Bill' Bennett was Social Credit Premier of British Columbia from 1952 to 1972, and William McDougall was one of the Fathers of Confederation and also served as Lieutenant-Governor of Rupert's Land and the Northwest Territories.

Answer: Bill Bailey

What a combo! Pearl Bailey and Louis Armstrong brought down the house with their swinging medley on her television show in January, 1971, and I was alive to see and hear it! One of the songs was a favourite of both performers and they had individually served it up to their audiences on several occasions but this was the first time they had done it together. 'Won't You Come Home, Bill Bailey' was written by Hughie Cannon in 1902 and has remained a standard on the bill of fare for blues and jazz singers since.

'Bill' was written by P.G. Woodhouse (lyrics) and Jerome Kern (music) for the 1917 show 'Oh Lady! Lady!' and migrated to the Kern/Oscar Hammerstein musical 'Showboat'. I like Allison Crowe's version.

'My Boy Bill' is from Rodgers' and Hammerstein's 'Carousel', and it's sung by Billy Bigelow. The song's actual title is 'Soliloquy' and John Raitt, who created the role of Billy in 1945 (and later fathered singer/songwriter Bonnie Raitt) was cast primarily because of his ability to deliver this superb piece.

As far as I know, there is no song called 'Darlin' Billy'.

Answer: Bill Daily

Bill Daily was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1927, but spent most of his growing-up years in Chicago. After graduating from high school Daily set out to carve out a career as a jazzman and found his true calling, stand-up comedy. Later he attended theatre school and went to work for NBC television in Chicago - on the other side of the camera as a staff director (it was during this phase of his career that he asked a young local comedian to come up with a bit for the local-area Emmy Awards telecast. The 'bit' was a spoof on Press Agents entitled 'Abe Lincoln vs Madison Avenue', the comedian was Bob Newhart, and a career was born!)

Daily's own split-second comic timing and all-American-boy looks didn't go unnoticed by other television exceutives, however, and in the mid-sixties he was cast as Astronaut Roger Healy in 'I Dream of Jeannie'. After 'IDOJ' went off the air, Daily morphed into pilot Howard Borden who lived across the hall from Bob Newhart and his television wife Suzanne Pleshette on 'The Bob Newhart Show'. Daily's Larry character was the psychiatrist on the hit series 'ALF'.

Bill Bixby scored on TV in 'The Courtship of Eddie's Father' and 'The Incredible Hulk', I don't have to remind you of Bill Cosby's TV triumphs, and Bill Engvall is an American stand-up comedian and member of the Blue Collar Comedy Troupe.

Answer: William Baldwin

William 'Billy' Baldwin is one of the four acting Baldwin brothers (the other three are Alec, Daniel and Stephen). Billy made his first film, 'Born on the Fourth of July' in 1989 and hasn't stopped working since. In 1995 he married Chynna Phillips (of Wilson Phillips) and they live in Bedford, New York, with their three children (daughters Jamison and Brooke and son Vance) and a dog named Joe. Billy is probably one of the few actors in the world with a degree in Political Science.

William Windom (best known for playing Dr. Seth Hazlitt in the Angela Lansbury TV series 'Murder, She Wrote') lives in Northern California with his wife Patricia, so he obviously isn't married to Chynna Phillips. William Hurt has been married to several people, both officially and unofficially, but none of them were Chynna Phillips, and William Pratt (aka Boris Karloff) died when Chynna Phillips was barely out of diapers.

Answer: Billy the Kid

All we know for sure about Billy the Kid is that he was born in New York City on November 23, 1859 and was shot to death by Sheriff Pat Garrett at Fort Sumner, New Mexico on July 14, 1881. The 21 years in between his birth and death are a tangle of fact, fiction and highly-exaggerated legend. Until he was 14, when his mother's death from tuberculosis left him an orphan, Billy - then known as William McCarty - lived a fairly normal life.

His mother, who had married William Antrim in 1873, ran a boarding house and Billy ran errands.

After his mother's death he was taken in by neighbours but left them to live on his own when he about 15. He drifted west, working as a ranch hand and sometimes stealing to feed himself between jobs. He fell in with thieves and joined them in horse stealing, got involved in the Lincoln Range War, did a little rustling here and there, took up gambling, and went by the names Mccarty, Antrim and Bonney. Legend would have us believe that he killed 20 men, but historians can only account for four who met their ends at Billy's hand.

Much of what we know about Billy the Kid comes from Sherrif Pat Garrett's own highly-coloured version of the Kid's life and death (Sherrif Pat was not as noble as he makes himself out to be in his book, and Billy probably wasn't nearly as bad, since his friends give different accounts of him than those given by Garrett and the pulp press.)

Answer: Bradley

William Warren 'Bill' Bradley was born in Missouri in 1943. He started playing basketball while still in elementary school and went on to be a high-school basketball star (he was twice named All-American). From high school he went to Princeton, and played basketball while excelling in his academic career, graduating with honours. In each of the three years he played for the Princeton Tigers they won the Ivy League Championship, and he was also captain of the US Olympic basketball team which won gold at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. He attended Worcester College, Oxford, on a Rhodes scholarship.

After leaving Oxford, he played professional basketball for one year in Italy (his team won the European Championship that year) and then returned to the US to play for the New York Knicks. In 1969-70 he helped the Knicks win their first-ever NBA championship and their second in 1972-73. He retired from basketball in 1977 and was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. The Knicks retired his #24 jersey in 1984.

In 1978 he made his first run for the US Senate in New Jersey and won handily with 55% of the vote. In 2000 he ran in the presidential primaries but lost the Democratic nomination to Al Gore. Nowadays, Bradley serves on the boards of Superprotonic,which is an acid-based fuel cell development company, Seagate, a hard disk drive manufacturer, and Starbucks.

The other three US politicians named William who were also Rhodes scholars are former President Clinton, former Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright and former US Ambassador to the Philippines William Stevenson.

Answer: Haley

When Bill Haley (1925-1981) and the Comets recorded 'Rock Around the Clock' in 1954 they didn't know that they were making history. Initially 'Rock Around the Clock' was not a raging success, but Haley and the Comets followed it with a cover version of Big Joe Turner's 'Shake, Rattle and Roll' in December, 1954 which proved to be a monster hit around the world (it was the first-ever rock and roll number to make the British charts), and when 'Rock Around the Clock' was used under the opening credits of the film 'The Blackboard Jungle', it achieved the same success and spent eight weeks as Number One on the Billboard charts.

The Rock and Roll Era had begun and the media hailed Haley as 'The Father of Rock and Roll'. This is something of a misnomer because Rock and Roll had been around for years unbeknownst to white audiences because it was essentially 'black music' which never got mainstream airplay. Most of the white performers recording rock and roll in the 1950s were doing cover versions of music which had been written and previously recorded by black musicians.

Haley ws diagnosed with a brain tumour in 1980 and died at his home in Harlington, Texas on February 9, 1981.