When Cute Animals Inspire... Trivia Quiz

Answer: Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill was born on November 30, 1874. He started his political career as a Conservative, switched to the Liberals and then back to the Conservatives again. During World War One, he was First Lord of the Admiralty, but is best known as the Prime Minister who led Britain on the hard path to victory in World War Two.

The most famous quotes of his date from 1940 and include "We shall never surrender". He died in 1965.

Answer: Molière

Molière's birth name was Jean-Baptiste Poquelin. He was born in 1622. Some of his works include "The Bourgeois Gentleman", "The Imaginary Invalid" and "The School for Wives". Yet, in his lifetime, he didn't escape criticism, especially from the Roman Catholic Church. "Tartuffe" was widely condemned from the Church, since one of its themes was religious hypocrisy, while "Don Juan" was banned from public performance. Molière died in 1673, after a hemorrhage that occurred while he was starring in an adaptation of "The Imaginary Invalid".

Answer: Charles de Gaulle

Charles de Gaulle was born on November 22, 1890. He served in the French Army in World War One and was captured near Verdun in 1916. After the collapse of France in 1940, in the early phases of World War Two, he assumed command of the Free French Forces and set up a government in exile to oppose the puppet Vichy régime, set up by the Nazis.

After the war, he led the Provisional Government of France until 1946, when he retired to write his memoirs. In 1958, when the French Fourth Republic collapsed because of its inability to deal with the Algerian question, de Gaulle returned to political office. Seeing that Algeria's independence was inevitable, he agreed to grant it and survived an attempted coup by the military in 1961.

He also believed that Europe ought to be a "Third Force" in the Cold War and supported easing relationships with the Soviet Union.

In 1969, after a referendum in which the majority of the French people didn't agree with De Gaulle's proposed reforms. He died one year later, in late 1970.

Answer: George Eliot

George Eliot's real name was Mary Ann Evans. Born in 1819, she used a male pseudonym to ensure that her writings would be viewed seriously and with no prejudice because of her gender. Some of her notable works include "Silas Marner" and "Middlemarch". The latter, released in 1872, was described by some critics as the greatest novel written in English. She died in 1880.

Answer: Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was born in 1809. He is considered by most scholars part of the Romantic Movement in America. He is also accepted as the inventor of the detective story, as well as one of the first short-story writers in his native country. His most renowned tales involve mystery and the macabre. Apart from being an author, he was also an editor and a literary critic.

His death, in 1849 under mysterious circumstances, has given rise to many conspiracy theories, including one suggesting he was a victim of "cooping" - a type of election fraud where some citizens are forced to vote for a specific candidate, whom the offenders support.

In the 19th century United States many victims of "cooping" were very savagely beaten and even killed.

Answer: Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was born in 1724. He is one of the most influential philosophers in history. His work, "Critique of Pure Reason" attempts to structure human experience and analyze how it's related to reason. That work also resists the type of knowledge known as "a priori" and advocates knowledge acquired by man's experience. Kant also wrote several other books, dealing with moral philosophy, ethics and aesthetics and posing a strong opposition to the skepticist theories of some of his contemporaries, mostly David Hume.

He died in 1804.

Answer: Anatole France

Anatole France was born in 1844. He began his literary career as a poet, while also working as a journalist. Later, however, he wrote mostly novels, including "The Crime of Sylvester Bonnard" and "At the Sign of the Reine Pedauque". He also wrote several critiques of French society of his age and was considered by some contemporaries as a rather vulgar and derivative writer.

His being a monarchist, like Balzac was, also caused criticism. In 1921, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature and died three years later.

Answer: Bob Hope

Bob Hope was born as Leslie Townes Hope in 1903. Although he became an American citizen, he was born in the United Kingdom. His first film, released in 1934 was a comedy entitled "Going Spanish". His fame comes, to a large extent, from the shows he organized to entertain American military personnel.

In 1997, the US Congress declared Hope as "the first and only honorary veteran of the U.S. armed forces". He died in 2003, having lived for 100 years and almost two months.

Answer: Hippolyte Taine

Hippolyte Adolphe Taine was born in 1828. His influence was crucial in the structure and the formation of Naturalism in France. He inspired writers like Zola and Bourget. His politics tend towards the right, since he acknowledged the right to property as a basic human right.

This led to Taine's opposition to the French Constitution of 1873, arguing that its origins and roots were Jacobin. Hippolyte Taine died in 1893.

Answer: Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci is widely known as the embodiment of the "homo universalis", the new type of character and personality that the humanists of the Renaissance Era tried to create. He is also the ideal example of a polymath. He is described as a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination".

As a painter, he has given us masterpieces such as "Mona Lisa" and "Madonna of the Rocks". Apart from painting, he was a sculptor, architect, engineer, inventor, mathematician, botanist, writer and much more.

Another famous quote of his is "Learning never exhausts the mind."