Mixed People Limerick Quiz

Answer: Frank Sinatra

Frank Sinatra (1915-1998) was one of the greatest entertainers of the twentieth century. He was born in Hoboken, New Jersey and developed his extraordinary style through hard work with big bands led by Harry James and Tommy Dorsey.
"Strangers in the Night" by Bert Kaempfert, Charles Singleton and Eddie Snyder, which he released in 1966, and on which he memorably sang "doo-be-doo-be-doo", was one of his biggest hits.
His Academy Award for playing Maggio in "From Here to Eternity" (1953) signalled a career upturn after a slump. He had had to beg for the role.
Mia Farrow was the third of his four wives. They married in 1966 when he was 50 and she was 21, just a few days after "Strangers in the Night" had topped the Billboard chart.

Answer: Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller (1923-1999) was not a one-trick pony - he wrote seven novels, including "Good as Gold" and "Something Happened" - but he will always be chiefly remembered for his first, "Catch-22". Published in 1961, its story of airmen on the Italian island of Pianosa during World War II was influenced by Heller's wartime experience as a bombardier flying 60 missions. In the novel, Catch-22 was a rule by which airmen could be released from flying missions only if insane. Anyone asking to be excused must be sane and therefore their request would not be allowed.

On a personal note, this is one of my favourite novels. I first became aware of it when, in a fan magazine, my heroes, Slade, all said it was their favourite book. What great role models! The book's description of Milo Minderbinder obtaining eggs and butter for frying them had a great influence on me: we had never heard of such luxury in Wales and it has become my favourite thing to eat.

Answer: Anne of Cleves

Henry VIII's third wife Jane Seymour had died in 1537 after giving birth to their son Edward. Thomas Cromwell suggested the king should marry Anne of Cleves to build an alliance with her brother, William. Hans Holbein the Younger was sent to paint a portrait of the young woman for the king to judge her suitability. Henry agreed to the match, but very soon after their wedding in 1540 the 49 year old king sought to have the marriage to the 25 year old Anne annulled. Anne consented and was given the title "The King's Sister", and given money to keep herself in some luxury. Over time she and Henry become close, regularly meeting and confiding in each other. Henry went on to marry the 17 year old Catherine Howard in 1540- and that marriage wouldn't go well. Cromwell was beheaded in 1540 on the same day as Henry's fifth wedding - his downfall not helped by the failed marriage he set up. Holbein's portrait must not have been blamed that much - he stayed as court painter until his death in 1543. Anne lived to 1557, outliving her ex-husband by ten years.

Eleanor of Aquitaine was married to Henry II.
Catherine of Valois was married to Henry V.
Margaret of Anjou was married to Henry VI.

Answer: Henry Ford

Henry Ford (1863-1947) did not invent the motor car and he was not the originator of the assembly line method of production. The principles he applied to way he brought them together made automobiles within the reach of ordinary working people and helped bring about enormous change in the early twentieth century.

There is a quote attributed by Ford that highlights the nature of innovation, and in the modern parlance, disruption: "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses". There are many quotes attributed to Ford, and he may well have said it, but there is no record proving that he did.

Answer: John Major

When Margaret Thatcher was driven out of office by her MPs in 1990, the party was clear about what they didn't want. They didn't want a dominant, strident leader who would hector them. They didn't want anyone too posh - so old Etonians were out. They also didn't want anyone who had been obviously disloyal to their former leader. John Major ticked all those boxes - for someone who had been Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer he was pretty unknown with little of the baggage of the "big beasts" who would have been alternatives. Major was from a colourful background - when John was born in 1943 his father was a 63 year old former music hall performer who had moved into selling garden gnomes. John left school at 16. He had experience of being unemployed and worked his way up from lowly office jobs.

Major's premiership was difficult - his back benchers had removed one leader and didn't take kindly to being managed closely - especially over Europe. His "back to basics" initiatives about personal and public morality ran into repeated difficulties due to seemingly constant revelations of sleazy behaviour by Conservatives. His cone hotline, where people could phone up to complain about too many traffic cones on the roads was a source of great hilarity. He lost votes on Europe and the country had to exit the European Exchange Rate Mechanism at a massive financial and political cost.

On the other hand, he won a General Election in 1992 against all predictions and he set up the UK's National Lottery that contributed to great sporting success for the nation. Most important, it was under his leadership that the UK started to engage in the talks with the IRA about Northern Ireland's future that ultimately led to the Good Friday Agreement.

Major was ridiculed by cartoonists and TV's "Spitting Image" as a grey man. His most famously ridiculed quotation reflected the difficulties of his job: "When your back is against the wall, there is only one thing to do, and that is turn around and fight". His premiership ended with defeat to Tony Blair's "New" Labour in 1997.

Answer: Fridtjof Nansen

If you are looking for a hero, you could do a lot worse than Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930). He became known for his incredible expedition in which he deliberately trapped his ship, Fram, into the Arctic ice cap, on the assumption that it would carry him near to the North Pole. His time drifting started in September 1893 and culminated in a dash for the pole on foot along with Hjalmar Johansen on 14 March 1895. On 7 April, they turned back, having reached 86°13.6′N - the farthest north anyone had reached by about three degrees. On his return to Christiana in September 1896 he was acclaimed. Edward Whymper said that Nansen had made "almost as great an advance as has been accomplished by all other voyages in the nineteenth century put together". Nansen's memoir of the expedition, "Farthest North" made him famous and secured him financial independence. For the next 20 years he worked on scientific study and became active politically.

In the aftermath of World War I, Nansen became the Norwegian League of Nations Society president. In April 1920, working for the League, he took on responsibility for the repatriation of over 400,000 prisoners of war. In 1921 he became the League's High Commissioner for Refugees, with a focus on two million displaced refugees following the Russian Revolution. He created the "Nansen Passport" to get around the lack of identification papers typically affecting refugees. People who received these passports included Stravinsky, Chagall and Pavlova. He worked inventively on resettlement of refugees following the Greek-Turkish war of 1919-1922. In 1922 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work. He donated the prize money to relief funds. He went on to attempt to help Armenians who had been displaced after the genocide committed during World War I. In these efforts he was assisted by Vidkun Quisling, who went on to become a notorious traitor in World War II.

After Nansen's death in 1930, the League set up the Nansen International Office for Refugees, which organisation itself was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1938.

Answer: George Best

George Best (1946-2005) was a superstar footballer who, while never playing at the top international level - Northern Ireland didn't qualify for a major tournament in his day - delivered at the highest club level and was one of the finest European footballers to play the game. Best was born in Belfast and was 15 when spotted by a scout for Manchester United who told club manager Matt Busby, "I think I've found you a genius".

He formed an incredible attacking spearhead with Bobby Charlton and Denis Law.

He became a celebrity - with his dribbling skills, unpredictability, gusto and dashing good looks, acquiring the nickname "El Beatle" after United demolished Benfica 5-1 at the Stadium of Light in 1966. Manchester United won the European Cup in 1968 - the first English side to do so.

In 1974, Best left the club at the age of 27. He made various appearances for clubs all over the world and at various levels before finally retiring as a player in 1983. Best acted with bravado about his life. Typical quotes include: "I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars.

The rest I just squandered" and "If you'd given me the choice of going out and beating four men and smashing a goal in from thirty yards against Liverpool or going to bed with Miss World, it would have been a difficult choice. Luckily, I had both". Underneath that he was a shy man who suffered from alcoholism. He died at the age of 59 due to multiple organ failure.

Answer: Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610), born in Milan, became the most famous painter in Rome, but had to flee for Naples in 1606 (away from the Roman authorities) when he was given a death sentence for killing a man in a brawl. After a year in Naples he went to Malta to work for the Knights of Malta and then was arrested after a brawl, escaped to Sicily, returned to Naples, and was facially disfigured in another brawl. He sent to Malta his painting "Salome with the Head of John the Baptist" (c1609), with himself the model for John the Baptist's head on a platter in an attempt to curry favour. The cause of his death in Tuscany in 1610, having travelled in expectation of a pardon, is mysterious - maybe a fever or perhaps an assassination.
In the midst of all this chaos, Caravaggio produced work that is considered of the highest rank - in some ways his work is seen as the start of modern painting. His work was vital and immediate - in "Supper at Emmaus" (1601), a disciple's stretched arm seems to reach out to the viewer and another disciple's shirt is worn at the elbow, also pointing at the viewer. His "Judith Beheading Holofernes" (1599-1602), showing the Biblical scene at the moment when blood spurts from the victim's neck was particularly influential on Artemisia Gentileschi.
Caravaggio is particularly known for his use of strong contrasts between dark and light known as chiaroscuro or tenebrism. The influence of Caravaggio can be seen in the work of many other subsequent masters, including Ribera, Rubens and Rembrandt.

Answer: Alexander Fleming

Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) made one of the most important discoveries of the twentieth century when he returned from his summer vacation in 1928 and noticed that some of the staphylococci cultures he had left out had been contaminated by mould that seemed to be inhibiting their growth.

This mould, penicillin, was killing the bacteria. Fleming worked with his discovery but had almost given up hope that it could be manufactured on a large scale when he heard about the work done to achieve a stable form of the compound by Howard Florey, Norman Heatley, Ernst Chain and Ernest Abraham in Oxford in 1940. By 1945 there was an industrial process for production.

The age of antibiotics brought in by Fleming's discovery revolutionised the treatment of diseases that had been scourges of humanity for centuries. Fleming, Florey and Chain were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945.

Answer: David Bowie

David Bowie (1947-2016) changed his stage name from Jones to avoid confusion with the singer with the Monkees. His early work included the novelty song "The Laughing Gnome" (1967). He hit the charts with "A Space Oddity" - released in 1969 to coincide with the Apollo 11 moon mission.
Albums and image changes followed in quick succession, including: "Hunky Dory" (1971- "Kooks" and "Life on Mars?"); "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars" (1972 - "Starman" and "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide"); and "Station to Station" (1976 - The Thin White Duke was his persona, mentioned in the title track).
Bowie was a generous collaborator - producing great work with the likes of Iggy Pop and Lou Reed. He was always interested in new things - he introduced his fans to the music of people like Jacques Brel and Bertolt Brecht and creative concepts like the William Burroughs cut-up technique.
Many artists in many genres were inspired by Bowie's music, attitude and continual reinvention. He's been called one of the most influential people in pop music since the Beatles.