Their End Is Nigh Trivia Quiz

Answer: Camel

The photograph shows Thomas Sopwith as a young man in 1910, aged 22, around the time when he made his first flight as a pilot. The Sopwith Aviation Company was set up in 1912, and manufactured a number of military aircraft, including over 5,700 Sopwith Camel fighters between 1917 and 1918.

After the war, the company went bankrupt, but Sopwith bounced back by founding the equally famous Hawker Aircraft, later to become Hawker Siddley. In the 1930s he developed an interest in yachting, and twice competed for the America's Cup, very nearly winning it in 1934.

Answer: Last surviving American Civil War General

Daggett was born in Greene, Maine, on June 14 1837. In April 1861 he joined the 5th Maine Volunteers as a private on the Union side. He fought in many of the major battles, including First and Second of Bull Run, Antietam, and Gettysburg, and rose rapidly through the ranks to be appointed brigadier general in 1865 in recognition of his service. After the Civil War ended, he re-joined the regular army as a captain, and rose once more to the rank of brigadier general before his full retirement in 1900.

The last surviving Confederate General is usually said to be Felix H. Robertson (1839-1928), although there is some doubt as to whether he was ever formally appointed.

Answer: Laurel and Hardy

Hal Roach was born in January 1892, and died in November 1992, aged 100. He made one of his final public appearances in March 1992, at the 64th Academy Awards, two months after his 100th birthday. He began making short silent movies in 1915, working with his friend Harold Lloyd, and is credited with bringing Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy together as a double act.

He worked with them for almost 20 years, overseeing their move from silent to talking pictures in the late 1920s and 30s. After World War II, he moved into TV production, and his studio became a prolific producer of popular programmes.

Answer: Irving Berlin

Irving Berlin was born in May 1888, and died in September 1989 at the age of 101. "Alexander's Ragtime Band", written in 1911, was his first major hit, and made him famous around the world. Over the next 40 years or so, he wrote the scores for many Broadway musicals, including "Annie Get Your Gun" (1946), and successful Hollywood movies.

It was in the 1942 movie "Holiday Inn" that his most successful song, White Christmas", first appeared, sung by Bing Crosby and Marjorie Reynolds.

Answer: Grandma Moses

Anna Mary Robertson was born in September 1860, and married Thomas Moses in around 1887. For much of her life she painted and worked at embroidery as a hobby, but in her late 70s she began to paint scenes of American rural life in the "naïve" style which became her trademark.

In the late 1930s, her paintings were spotted in a local shop window by Louis Caldor, a New York art collector, and during the last 20 years of her life she became internationally famous and popular for her "folk art" paintings.

The name Grandma Moses was attached to her by the press at the time she first came to notice. She died in December 1961, aged 101.

Answer: Ballets Russes

Ninette de Valois was born in the southern Irish town of Blessington in June 1898. Her position in ballet history is assured by her founding, in 1931, of the company that became London's Royal Ballet. Known at first as the Vic-Wells Ballet (after the Old Vic and Sadler's Wells Theatres where it was based), it soon became internationally renowned, and many of the world's greatest dancers performed with the company. Ninette de Valois formally retired as the company's director in 1963, but continued to play a major role behind the scenes for many years.

She died in March 2001 at the age of 102.

Answer: Piano

Horszowski was born in the town of Lviv (then part of Austria-Hungary; now in Ukraine) in June 1892. He was a child prodigy at the piano, and was giving public performances at the age of nine. He gave his final recital at the age of 99, giving him a performing career of 90 years, and was still giving lessons up until a week before his death in May 1993, just short of his 101st birthday.

Answer: Leni Reifenstahl

Leni Reifenstahl was born in Berlin in August 1902, and began her artistic career as a dancer, then an actress. In the 1930s she moved into directing (one of the first women to do so), and in 1933 she made a film of the 1933 Nazi rally in Nuremburg, entitled "Der Sieg des Glaubens" (The Victory of Faith).

Its successor, "Triumph des Willens" (Triumph of the Will), about the 1934 Nuremburg Rally, is acknowledged as one of the greatest propaganda films ever made. After the war, she was cleared of active involvement in Nazism, and in the 1970s published a series of acclaimed photographs of the Nuba tribes of Africa.

She died in September 2003 at the age of 101.

Answer: Saved 669 Czechoslovakian children from the Nazis

Sir Nicholas Winton was born in May 1909 and died in July 2015 at the age of 106. During the 1930s, he was working as a stockbroker in London, and became part of a group that was concerned about the rise of the Nazis in Europe. In late 1938, as Germany began moving into Czechoslovakia, Winton set up an operation to rescue as many children as possible - the majority of them Jewish - by means of trains out of Czechoslovakia, via the Netherlands and thence to Britain.

This became known as the Czech "kindertransport", and ensured that 669 children were saved from almost certain death. Among those saved were the filmmaker Karel Reisz and Labour MP Alf Dubs.

At the age of 105, Sir Nicholas was awarded the Order of the White Lion (First Class) by the Czech Republic, its highest honour, in recognition of his actions.

Answer: Jeanne Calment

At the time of her death in 1997, at the age of 122 years and 164 days, Jeanne Calment had the distinction of being the longest-lived person whose date of birth could be reliably confirmed. She was born in the French town of Arles in 1875, and lived there for her entire life.

In later years, she became famous for having once met the painter Van Gogh, who had lived and worked in Arles from 1888-1890. She recalled seeing him when she was aged 13 and he came to buy canvas in her uncle's shop. She described him as having been "dirty, badly dressed and disagreeable".