Remember Me? -B- Trivia Quiz

Answer: Francis Bacon

Bacon's work was continually to focus on the most repulsive and frightening aspects of mankind. His 1951 versions of Velazquez's dignified portrait of 'Pope Innocent X' converted him into a screaming figure on the verge of madness, and the highly expressive style Bacon developed, blurring and contorting the flesh, exerted a fascination that partly accounts for his popularity.

He himself observed that nobody had ever bought one of his paintings because they liked it.

Answer: Joan Baez

Her pure, silvery soprano and simple treatment of traditional ballads made her first solo albums, on which she accompanied herself on guitar, among the first major successes of the folk boom. She made Pete Seeger's song 'We Shall Overcome' the anthem of the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam movements, in which she was closely involved.

She had a long running but spasmodic professional and personal relationship with Bob Dylan.

Answer: Roger Bannister

The four minute barrier had been a great target for athletes for years until Bannister broke the time on 6th May 1954 at Oxford. He was assisted by two other leading British athletes, pacemakers Chris Chataway and Chris Brasher. Bannister later became a distinguished neurologist and university administrator; he also gave many after dinner speeches around the athletic world.

Answer: Christiaan Barnard

Barnard trained at Cape Town University before he left for Minneapolis in the 1940s to train under Walter Lillehei, the foremost American heart surgeon of the time. After returning to South Africa, Barnard experimented on transplanting hearts into dogs, that rejected transplanted tissues less readily than humans, when another American surgeon, Walter Shumway, announced his intention of transplanting a human heart. Barnard had already established the necessary surgical principles, including keeping patient's supplied with oxygen during the period when the old heart had been removed and the new one was put in place.

On hearing of Shumway's announcement, he performed the first human transplant on December 3rd 1967. That patient died after a few days, but his second lived for two more years.

Answer: Franz Beckenbauer

Beckenbaeur was West Germany's leading football player in the late 1960s and for much of the 1970s. He won numerous domestic trophies during his long career with the Bayern Munich club and played in three European Cup winning sides. As an international he captained the West German team to the European Championship in 1972 and the World Cup in 1974.

He completed his playing career with the New York Cosmos. He retired from playing in 1977 before he was given the role of the West German national coach in 1984.

In 1990 he led his country to the World Cup the last time the country played before the re unification of Germany as a football nation.

Answer: Ray Bradbury

Bradbury was a prolific short story writer, and one of the foremost writers of science fiction, or more properly, science fantasy. Wonderful depictions of small town America mingled with bizarre circumstances drawn from a nightmare carnival. 'The Martian Chronicles' reflected on his underlying concerns for social and political issues; these emerged in 'Fahrenheit 451' (1953), set in a future totalitarian state where books were burned. 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' (1963) was a chilling depiction of a more subtle kind of evil that gained power from our inner desires.

Answer: Donald Bradman

Bradman's stature as cricket's most successful batsman could be best judged by one single statistic. Only five players in the 19th and 20th century had a batting average of more than sixty. Four of those had averages between sixty and sixty five; Bradman had 99.94. In all first class games he made 117 centuries, passing 100 in better than one innings in three. He was a punishingly quick, as well as prolific scorer and such was his dominance that the England team visiting Australia in 1932/33 devised the intimidatory 'Bodyline' bowling tactic solely to combat him.

Bradman's test career spanned the years 1928-48 and his record might have been even more remarkable without the interruption of the war years and an early season loss to illness. Remarkably a medical examination at the start of his military service revealed below-average eyesight.

Answer: Willy Brandt

Brandt returned to Germany after working with the Norwegian Resistance during World War II and entered politics, serving as Chancellor in 1969-74. As such he backed integration into NATO and the EEC, while his efforts for peace with the East brought him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971. He later chaired the Brandt Commission which reported on the world economy in 1980.

Answer: Alfred Butts

Long periods of unemployment led Butts to devise 'Scrabble' during the 1930s. His game initially enjoyed modest sales, but once adopted by Jack Strauss of Macy's in 1952, sales rocketed to 4.5 million sets within two years. With the mixed attractions of crosswords, anagrams, and good luck, 'Scrabble' to this day is still extremely popular.

Answer: Guy Burgess

Educated at Eton and Cambridge, and an outrageous drunkard and notorious homosexual, Burgess must have seemed an unlikely candidate for recruitment to the KGB. However, having gone over to the Russians as a student, Burgess made himself most useful by obtaining a post at the Foreign Office, and was then appointed to the Washington embassy. Aware that his deception was about to be discovered, he fled to Russia with his co-spy Donald Maclean in 1951.