Notable Centenarians Quiz | Other People

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. This man was a Japanese skiing legend and at the age of 70 was the oldest person to climb Mt. Everest.

Answer: Keizo Miura

Keizo Miura was born on 15 February 1904 and died 5 January 2006. He was the oldest person to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro at the age of 77 and when he was 99 years old, he descended a glacier at Mont Blanc. He celebrated his 100th birthday by skiing at Snowbird, Utah.

2. She was born Anna Mary Robertson and became a famous American painter. Her painting "Fourth of July" hangs in the White House.

Answer: Grandma Moses

Grandma Moses was born in Greenwich, New York 7 Sept 1860. She did not begin painting until in her seventies and her works depicting rural life are still popular. She died 13 December 1961.

3. This Hungarian born centenarian was the founder of Paramount Pictures.

Answer: Adolph Zukor

Adolph Zukor was born 7 Jan 1873 in Ricse, Hungary and after emigrating to the United States in 1916, he went into the burgeoning film industry and started Paramount Pictures. He died 10 June 1976. Cecil B DeMille is a famous director and Charles B Mintz was associated with Screen Gems. Marcus Loew formed Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer.

4. This woman, born in Shanghai, China, was on the cover of Time magazine twice. She was the first Chinese national and only the second woman to address the United States Congress. She is also known as "Madame Chiang Kai-Shek".

Answer: Mayling Soong

Mayling Soong was born around 1897 and in 1927 married Chiang Kai-shek. She became very involved in Chinese politics and followed her husband to Taiwan in 1949. On her second "Time" magazine cover she was called the "Dragon Lady". Madame Chiang Kai-shek died 23 October 2003.

5. This centenarian became a famous composer, though he could barely read music. Among his many compositions was "White Christmas", one of the most recorded songs in history.

Answer: Irving Berlin

He was born 11 May 1888 as Israel Isidore Baline in what is now Belarus. He taught himself to play the piano and works such as "God Bless America" and "There's No Business Like Show Business" have made him an American cultural icon. Irving Berlin died 22 September 1989.

6. These sisters were both centenarians and are in the "Guinness Book of World Records" as the world's oldest authors.

Answer: Sarah Louise and Annie Elizabeth Delany

The Delany sisters not only authored several books, but were civil rights pioneers. Sarah, known as Sadie, born 19 September 1889, was the first African-American woman to teach domestic science in the state of New York. She died 25 January 1999. Bessie was born 3 September 1891 and was the second black woman to obtain a dentistry license in New York, dying on 25 September 1995.

7. This French woman was born on 21 February 1875 and when she died at the age of 122 had the longest documented lifespan.

Answer: Jeanne Calment

Jeanne Calment died on 4 August 1997 and came from a line of long-lived persons. Her brother Francois was 97 years old when he died, her mother lived to the age of 86 and her father Nicholas died at 93 years. Her husband (who was also her second cousin) Fernand Calment was 76 when he died in 1942 from a eating a dessert made of spoiled cherries. Jeanne believed that her longevity was due to the olive oil which she rubbed on to her skin.

8. This woman proved that age was not a barrier to patriotic actions. She was known as the "Grand-woman of the Philippine Revolution" for sheltering revolutionaries in her store.

Answer: Melchora Aquino

Melchora was born on 6 January 1812 and tended wounded rebels in her home as well as hosting the secret meetings of the revolutionaries. She was arrested and sent to the Marianas Islands for refusing to disclose the whereabouts of one of the rebel leaders. She died 2 March 1919 and became known to her people as "Tandang Sora".

9. In 1924 this woman was the first of her gender to graduate from the University of Alaska and became known as the "Grandmother of the Conservation Movement".

Answer: Margaret Murie

She was born Margaret Thomas 18 August 1902 in Seattle, Washington. Known as Mardy, she and her husband Olaus Murie were leaders in the Wilderness Society and were instrumental in getting the Wilderness Act passed in 1964. She died 19 October 2003.

10. This member of a prominent American family won a gold medal in rowing in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris.

Answer: James Stillman Rockefeller

James Stillman Rockefeller was born 8 June 1902 and was captain of the gold medal winning rowing team. Benjamin Spock was a member of the rowing crew. Rockefeller, who died 10 August 2004, was a prominent banker and married Nancy Carnegie a grand-niece of Andrew Carnegie.

11. This geophysicist was born in Lancashire, England 6 August 1900 and founded Texas Instruments.

Answer: Cecil Howard Green

Cecil Green and his wife Ida were great contributors to institutions of higher learning in the United States. At the age of 91, he received and honorary knighthood from Elizabeth II. Cecil Green died 11 April 2003.

12. This centenarian was a member of Britain's national ice hockey team and became a pioneer in aviation. His company produced a famous World War I airplane that was mentioned in the popular comic strip "Peanuts".

Answer: Thomas Sopwith

Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith was born in Kensington (London) on 18 January 1888. He was a self-taught pilot and was not discouraged by crashing his plane on his first solo attempt. The Sopwith Aviation Company produced a number of successful World War I aircraft, including the "Sopwith Camel" favored by Peanuts character "Snoopy". Thoght bankrupted by the war, Sopwith became a notable yachtsman and was knighted in 1953.

He died 27 January 1989.

13. This centenarian was the first United States citizen to receive a monthly Social Security benefits check.

Answer: Ida May Fuller

Ida May was born 6 September 1874 in Vermont and received her check 31 January 1940 for the sum of $22.54. At the time of her death in August 1975, she had contributed $24.75 to Social Security and received over $22,000.

14. This military man was fluent in French and German and gained fame as the founder of the Green Berets.

Answer: Aaron Bank

Aaron Bank was born 23 November 1902 and served in the OSS during World War II. He worked with the French Resistance and was involved in an OSS plot to capture or kill Adolph Hitler. After World War II, he founded the U.S. Army Special Forces, popularly known as the Green Berets. He died 1 April 2004.

15. This pediatrician was a co-developer of the pertussis vaccine.

Answer: Leilia Daughtry Denmark

Leilia Daughtry was born on 1 February 1898 in Georgia and was the eldest of 12 children. She was the only female in her 1928 graduating class at the Medical College of Georgia and married war veteran John Denmark. When she retired in 2002 at the age of 104, Dr. Denmark was the oldest practicing pediatrician in the world.

16. This centenarian became one of the most notable accordionists who ever lived and was responsible for its acceptance as a serious instrument.

Answer: Anthony Galla-Rini

Galla-Rini was born 18 January 1904 in Connecticut and his early years were spent on the Vaudeville circuit with his parents and six siblings. "Mister Accordion" was responsible for hundreds of musical arrangements for the accordion and died 30 July 2006.

17. This Russian emigrant was the father of sleep research and the first to discover REM sleep.

Answer: Nathaniel Kleitman

Born in Russia 26 April 1895, Kleitman emigrated to the United States in 1915. He opened the first sleep laboratory at the University of Chicago where he not only discovered REM sleep but correlated it with dreaming. Kleitman died on 13 August 1999.

18. This man was President of Turkey and his term in office ended in 1960 after a military coup.

Answer: Mahmud Celal Bayar

Bayar was born on 16 May 1883 in Umurbey, Turkey. He served in the Ottomon Parliament and was elected as Turkey's third president, 22 May 1950. After a military coup, he was imprisoned until 1964 and pardoned in 1966. He died in Istanbul at the age of 103 on 22 August 1986.

19. She was the second wife of a famous World War II general and was given the Legion of Merit by the Philippine government in 1993.

Answer: Jean Faircloth MacArthur

Jean Marie Faircloth was born 28 December 1898 in Nashville, Tennessee. She met General Douglas MacArthur on a trip to Manila and married him in New York in 1937. She was with him in the Philippines when the Japanese attacked and refused to leave Corregidor until ordered to do so by President Roosevelt. Ronald Reagan awarded her the Medal of Freedom in 1988 and she died 22 January 2000.

She lies buried beside her husband in Norfolk, Virginia.

20. This woman was the daughter of two Nobel Prize winners, the sister of a Nobel Prize winner and the wife of a man who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize.

Answer: Eve Curie Labouisse

Eve was born on 6 December 1904 in Paris to Marie and Pierre Curie, Nobel Prize winners in physics in 1903. Marie Curie would win a second Nobel Prize in 1911, five years after Pierre's death. Eve's sister Irene Joliot-Curie won the prize in 1935 for chemistry. Eve married Henry Richardson Labouisse, Jr in 1954 and in 1965 as executive director of UNICEF, he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965. Eve died 22 October 2007.

Source: Author pshelton

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor bloomsby before going online.
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Notable Centenarians Trivia Quiz

Reaching the age of 100 years is a major accomplishment and these centenarians have found that age is not a barrier to success. See how many of these remarkable people you know.

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