So Many Kissing Cousins! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Charles Darwin

According to his autobiography, Charles Darwin spent much time considering whether or not he should marry at all, but he finally decided to wed his cousin Emma Wedgwood. The couple had ten children, but two died in infancy. Darwin was said to be a devoted father, though whenever his children fell ill he feared that they were suffering from some consequence of 'inbreeding' because of the close biological link between him and his wife.
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was an early proponent of evolutionary theories. He lived from 1744-1829.
Erasmus Darwin was the grandfather of Charles Darwin, and was accomplished in many intellectual fields. His book 'Zoonomia' actually contained some early ideas relating to evolutionary theory.
Charles Schultz has no real connection to Charles Darwin, though Darwin did sail on a ship called 'The Beagle' and Schultz's character Snoopy was a beagle.

Answer: Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) successfully sought re-election in 1936 and during that campaign, Alfred Landon was the Republican candidate who opposed him (thus FDR would never have exhorted people to vote for Landon). Despite his mother's objections, FDR married his cousin Eleanor in 1905.

The man who was President of the United States at the time, Theodore Roosevelt, was also Eleanor's uncle, and he stood in for her deceased father at the wedding ceremony. FDR and Eleanor had six children, all born between 1906 and 1916.

Answer: Jerry Lee Lewis

The marriage between Jerry Lee Lewis and Myra Gale Brown hit the headlines in 1958 while the musician was on tour in England. It was a scandal. The tour was cancelled, he was blacklisted from radio, and his popularity plummeted. He had some success performing his rock repertoire in Europe, but it was his shift into country music that really gave him a boost in the late 1960s.

Answer: Jesse James

The relationship between Jesse James and his cousin Zerelda 'Zee' Mimms began in 1865. He was bedridden with a chest wound and she tended to him during his convalescence. In 1874 the couple finally married and in 1875 their first child, Jesse James Jr., was born.

In 1878 Zee gave birth to twins who died in infancy and the couple's only daughter was born in 1879. In stark contrast to his father, who lived much of his life outside the law, Jesse James, Jr., grew up to be a lawyer and respected member of the bar.

Answer: Winnie the Pooh

The adventures of Christopher Robin, Winnie the Pooh, and the other characters in A.A. Milne's classics have delighted generations of children, but in his later years Christopher Robin Milne wrote about the problems he faced in life as a consequence of his appearances in the books.

Despite his mother's objections, he married his cousin Lesley Selincourt in 1948. For much of their life together, the couple ran a successful bookstore in Dartmouth. Their daughter, born in 1956, was diagnosed as suffering from severe cerebral palsy.

Answer: Oldest person to have ever lived.

Jeanne Calment was born in France in 1875 and married her second cousin Ferdinand in 1896. The couple had one daughter, and though Ferdinand died in 1942, Jeanne outlived her daughter and only grandson. A Japanese man, Shigechiyo Izumi, also claims the title of 'oldest person to have ever lived' (or at least people claim it on his behalf), but there is doubt as to the validity of his birth certificate. Jeanne Calment died in 1997 having lived for 122 years and 164 days.

Answer: Antarctica

Vivian Fuchs was born on the Isle of Wight in 1908, and from an early age he had a love of the outdoors. As a young man he pursued an education in geology and then used this knowledge to secure positions on various exploratory expeditions. In 1933, he married his cousin Joyce Connell and the following year the couple both took part in an expedition to Kenya. Fuchs is best known for being the leader of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Fuchs led the group on a 99 day trek across Antarctica, and on March 2, 1958, Fuchs and company became the first people to complete an overland crossing of the continent.

Answer: The United States Declaration of Independence

The United States Declaration of Independence decreed that the thirteen American colonies that were at war with Great Britain were no longer part of the British Empire. Thomas Jefferson is credited as the principle author of the document, and he was married to his third cousin Martha Wayles Skelton.

The couple, married in 1772, had six children before Martha died in 1782. John Adams married his third cousin Abigail Smith in 1764; Josiah Bartlett married his first cousin Mary Bartlett in 1754; Charles Carroll (of Carrollton) marries his second cousin Mary Darnall in 1768; William Ellery married his first cousin once removed Abigail Cary in 1767; Benjamin Harrison married his second cousin Elizabeth Bassett; Stephen Hopkins married his second cousin Sarah Scott in 1726; William Whipple married his first cousin Catherine Moffat around 1770.

Answer: Pottery

Josiah Wedgwood, often referred to as the 'Father of English Potters', produced items which unique and of extremely high quality. He founded 'Josiah Wedgwood and Sons' in 1759 and up until 1986, when Wedgwood merged with Waterford Crystal, many of his descendants remained closely involved with the company. Josiah married his third cousin Sarah Wedgwood and the couple had seven children.

Their eldest, Susannah, was the mother of Charles Darwin. Their third child, Josiah II, was the father of the woman Charles Darwin married.

Answer: The word 'cousin' should be changed to 'niece'.

Voltaire was the pen name of Francois-Marie Arouet. He was a French author and philosopher of the Enlightenment period and composed works in an incredible range of forms including plays, novels, essays, pamphlets and reference books. In 1744 Voltaire assumed financial responsibility for his niece because her husband died. Several years later Voltaire and Madame Denis moved to Prussia and lived there, as a couple, until Voltaire's death in 1778.

Answer: H.G. Wells

Herbert George Wells, usually referred to as H.G. Wells, was an English writer who produced both fiction and non-fiction works. In 1891 he married his cousin Isabel Mary Wells, but the marriage lasted only three years. Wells left his wife for Amy Catherine Robbins whom he later married.

Despite Wells indulging in affairs with numerous women, including prominent writers and activists, his second marriage lasted until the death of his wife in 1927. The incorrect answers are all characters from some works by Wells.

Answer: Rudy Giuliani

In 1968 Rudy Giuliani married his second cousin Regina Peruggi. In 1982 the couple secured a civil divorce. In 1983 the marriage was annulled because, according to Giuliani, he and his wife had believed they were third cousins when they first married. According to the Catholic Church, the couple would have required special dispensation to marry had they known they were second cousins, so the marriage was dissolved according to religious law.

Answer: During World War II he developed rocket technology for the Germans and then moved to the United States to work on rockets for them.

Wernher von Braun worked as a physicist developing rocket technology for Germany while it was under Nazi rule. When World War II was all but over, von Braun surrendered to the Americans. While working in the United States, he made some important contributions to the US space programme, and remained a prominent scientist for many years.

While working at Fort Bliss, training others in the use of rocket technology, he proposed to his cousin, Maria Luise von Quistorp, by mail. The cousins were married in Germany in 1947 and a few weeks later returned to the United States. Over the next thirteen years, the couple gave birth to three children.

Answer: Frank Sinatra

J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the F.B.I. from 1935 to 1972, was convinced that Frank Sinatra had mob connections and that the singer was engaged in illegal activities in association with Mafia figures. Hoover allocated a great many man hours to collecting information on Sinatra, amassing a file that was 1,275 pages long.

The file on Gambino himself was only 1,239. Carlo Gambino married his cousin, Catherine Castellano, in 1932. The couple raised their family of four children in a modest house in Brooklyn.

Answer: Mork and Mindy

For those of you who didn't know who Mork and Mindy were, I can promise you they weren't related: they weren't even from the same planet! 'Mork and Mindy' was a sitcom about an alien and a woman who shared an apartment. There is a good deal of controversy about Joseph and Mary, but some scholars believe they were first cousins and that they lived together as a normal man and wife after the birth of Jesus. Isaac and Rebekah were married and they were first cousins once removed (Genesis 24:12-14). Jacob married two of his cousins: Leah and Rachel (Genesis 28-29).

Answer: Albert Einstein

All of the men mentioned were winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics. Hendrik Lorentz won it together with Pieter Zeeman 'in recognition of the extraordinary service they rendered by their researches into the influence of magnetism upon radiation phenomena'. Max Plank won it 'in recognition of the services he rendered to the advancement of Physics by his discovery of energy quanta'. Niels Bohr won it 'for his services in the investigation of the structure of atoms and of the radiation emanating from them'. Albert Einstein is often remembered in popular culture for his theories of relativity, but it was actually his work on the photoelectric effect that won him a Nobel Prize in 1921.

In 1919, Einstein married his second wife, Elsa Lowenthal.

She was his first cousin maternally and second cousin paternally. Quotes taken from the Nobel Prize website.

Answer: Samuel Morse

Samuel Morse did a lot of work developing the telegraph and the character encoding system known as Morse Code. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, telegraph messages sent using Morse Code were employed to transmit sports results and even to provide commentary of the sporting events themselves. Sarah Elizabeth Griswold was Morse's first cousin once removed and was his second wife.

The couple were married in 1848, welcomed their first child in 1849, their only daughter in 1851, and their youngest son in 1853.

Answer: Edgar Allan Poe

The original 'Treehouse of Horror' episode features James Earl Jones reading Poe's poem 'The Raven' while the visuals are provided by the Simpson family. Lisa's rival (in the episode of the same name) produces an elaborate diorama depicting a scene from Poe's short story 'The Tell-Tale Heart', and an earlier episode pays homage to the same work in its title: 'The Telltale Head'.

In the episode 'Lisa the Simpson', The House of Usher is shown exploding on a television programme (that one's for perceptive viewers with fast eyes). Fans of 'The Simpsons' will spy some more scattered Poe references in other episodes too. In 1835, at the age of 26, Edgar Allan Poe secretly married his cousin Virginia Clemm.

She was only thirteen years old at the time, though her age was listed as twenty-one on the marriage certificate.

In May of the following year the couple had a public marriage ceremony in Richmond, Virginia.

Answer: Johann Sebastian Bach

Interestingly enough, all of these men were composers who married their cousins, but only Bach fit the other aspects of the description given. 'Discover Bach!' is a computer game designed to expose children to Bach's music and to help them learn how to hear the different parts played by each instrument. Bach married his second cousin Maria Barbara Bach in 1707.

The couple had seven children but only four lived to adulthood.

Answer: They all have

There have been multiple Presidents of the USA who were married to their cousins; Franklin Delano Roosevelt was an example given earlier in this quiz. John Alexander Macdonald was the first Prime Minister of Canada and served in that office from 1867 to 1873.

In 1843 he married his first cousin Isabella Clark. Isabella died in 1857 and thus never saw her husband take office. As of 2008, Eisaku Sato was the longest-serving Prime Minister of Japan, having held the position from 1946 to 1972. In 1926 he married his cousin Hiroko and the couple had two sons.