Rejected Trivia Quiz

Answer: Anheuser-Busch brewing company

Overton was wrongly maligned in many quarters for having taken this action after years of rejection of his own. As a teetotal father of three he was angered by what he perceived to be the blatant false advertising of Anheuser-Busch's Budweiser brand that was attracting his children towards the alcoholic beverage. "Something needed to be done," he claimed. Sadly for him, the courts disagreed and his $10,000 suit was dismissed before coming to trial.

Answer: Rudyard Kipling

Kipling was honoured by the Nobel committee in 1907 for his "originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration". At the age of just 41, this made him the youngest recipient of the award in the 20th century.

However, despite the enduring success of much of Kipling's work, most notably his children's stories and his poetry, the publisher who rejected him was not alone in having doubts about his literary merits. A contemporary great, T.S. Eliot once described Kipling as a writer who could create "great poetry on occasions, even if only by accident."

Answer: God

Chambers felt God also ought to answer for hurricanes, earthquakes and famine among other things. A judge dismissed the case, as Chambers had not properly served notice to God, as he had been unable to provide a home address. Chambers appealed, claiming that God's omniscience meant He knew about the lawsuit already.

The appeals court rejected the case on the grounds that the court "does not address or dispose of abstract questions or issues that might arise in [a] hypothetical or fictitious situation or setting."

Answer: William Bligh

The story of the mutiny on the Bounty has made Bligh a cultural villain and his nemesis, Fletcher Christian into a romantic anti-hero. However, the truth of the tale, demonstrated by the ship's log, suggests that Bligh as a commander was considerably more lenient than most of his contemporaries. Indeed, the number of mutineers in the Southern Ocean in 1789 represented less than half of the men on board the Bounty.

Bligh was also somewhat maligned by the succession of older actors chosen to play his part on film. At the time of the mutiny, Bligh was only 35 years old. He had risen to prominence at a relatively young age after his excellent seamanship was recognised by James Cook, who appointed him as ship's master on the ill-fated voyages of the Resolution that would prove to be Cook's last.

Bligh's journey in the Bounty's launch took him and 18 loyal members of his crew from the scene of the mutiny close to Tonga, to the Dutch-run colony of East Timor. By Bligh's calculations, the distance they had travelled, in a boat ill equipped for such oceanic voyages, was 6,710km.

Answer: Grand Ole Opry

"The Grand Ole Opry" is a country music concert that has run since first being staged in Nashville and broadcast on radio in 1925. Initially called the "WSM Barn Dance", it took its current name from an on-air comment from presenter Judge Hay in 1927.

Following Presley's one and only appearance, Jim Denny, the manager of the show, notified Sam Phillips, the boss of Sun Records, that Presley was not what they were looking for. However, his disappointment was short-lived. Just two weeks later he was asked to play on a rival show, "Louisiana Hayride" and proved such a hit that he was booked to appear on the show every Saturday night for the next year. Another year later, Presley had become the first rock 'n' roll star to hit the top of the US Billboard album charts and had achieved the first of 17 US number one hits during his lifetime.

Answer: FW Woolworth

For most of the 20th century, the name Woolworth was writ large across the high streets of towns and cities on both sides of the Atlantic as well as in South Africa and Australia. It was declared the largest department store chain in the world in the 1979 "Guinness Book of Records".

FW Woolworth opened his first store after noticing how well old stock sold when reduced to a price of five cents. The concept of everything at five cents failed in his first store but when expanded to a "five and dime" concept at his second store, it proved to be a huge success. By 1913, Woolworth's store chain was so profitable that he was able to commission the world's tallest building to be built in his name and to pay for it entirely in cash.

The company's success lasted well beyond the death of its founder in 1919. It remained a powerful high street player until the late 1980s, when it began to suffer from having over-diversified in the face of strong competition. In 1997, the last of the US department stores closed. The UK high street chain, which had run independently of the US parent company since 1982, was one of the highest profile casualties of the 2008 credit crunch. The 800 stores in the UK all closed down on January 6th, 2009.

Answer: Batman

What was possibly the most mysterious thing was that Kalkan, who claimed that "there is only one Batman", had apparently not realised that this was not true until 2008, some 69 years after Batman made his first appearance in the pages of DC Comics. Not only was Batman, Turkey not the only the only batman in the world, it wasn't even the only batman in Turkey. The batman was a unit of measurement of mass during the period of the Ottoman Empire.

By the end of 2008, Kalkan's fall from grace was complete when he was sentenced to 10 months in prison for promoting terrorism by publicly praising Kurdish rebel leaders.

Answer: Albert Einstein

It wasn't all failure for Einstein as a young student. His marks in the failed entrance exam for mathematics and physics were said to be outstanding. It was just the rest that let him down. He did eventually get in a year later, having graduated from secondary school, thereby bypassing the need for an entrance exam.

His persistence was worthwhile. When he was made a Nobel laureate in 1921, Einstein became the sixth graduate of the Polytechnic to receive the accolade. By the end of the 20th century, another 23 scientists connected to the establishment had a Nobel Prize to their name.

Answer: Oprah Winfrey

Oprah's great failure as a news presenter was that she was visibly too affected by the stories she presented to be considered credible. She later turned this failing was turned to a strength to stunning effect when she took over as presenter of "Chicago AM" and introduced a new style of confessional talk show.

By the time the show, renamed "The Oprah Winfrey Show" had ended its run in 2011 it had clocked up 4,561 episodes and made Winfrey both a billionaire and one of the most powerful people in the US media.

Answer: Charlie Chaplin

Chaplin was a huge star in the silent movie era, with his famous tramp character appearing in numerous hits such as "The Kid", "The Champion" and "The Gold Rush".

It was the tramp that was the focus of the look-alike competitions rather than Chaplin himself, who looked somewhat different out of make up. Chaplin said that he took part in the contest in San Francisco out of a desire to show the contestants how to do the tramp's walk properly. However, the judges were not convinced and chose not to put him through to the final.

It is not recorded who won the particular competition that day, although some legends claim it was Chaplin's brother. However, another British-born comic movie star, Bob Hope, once triumphed in a contest staged in Cleveland.