Who Am I? Trivia Quiz

Answer: Pol Pot

Saloth Sar was born the eighth of nine children in 1925 in the small fishing village of Prek Sbauv in what is now northeastern Cambodia but was then part of French Indochina.

As Pol Pot, he became the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in 1963. In 1975, the Communist forces captured the capital, Phnom Penh, and Pol Pot became de facto ruler of Cambodia. In Pol Pot's totalitarian dictatorship, more than 25% of Cambodia's 8 million population had either been executed, or had died from malnutrition or poor medical conditions, by the end of the 1970s.

Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge government collapsed in 1979, but he still retained power in parts of the country. His death in 1998 may have been from natural causes, suicide or murder, but his body was cremated before it could be inspected by the authorities, so we shall never know for certain.

Answer: George VI

Born in the latter days of Queen Victoria's reign, in 1895, on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk, as the second-oldest brother Prince Albert was never expected to become king. His older brother, Edward VIII ascended to the throne in 1936 on the death of their father, George V. Less than a year later, Edward abdicated in order to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson, leaving 'Bertie' to take over as king.

As George VI, he was the monarch throughout WWII. The latter part of his 15-year reign saw the beginning of the breakup of the Empire and the founding of the Commonwealth of Nations, of which he was the first head.

Answer: Stalin

Born in 1878 in the city of Gori in eastern Georgia, Josef Stalin succeeded Vyacheslav Molotov as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1922. Two years later, following the death of Lenin, he consolidated power as the economy became more industrialized. This was a period during which millions were held prisoner in the Gulag labour camps, and anyone deemed "an enemy of the working class" executed or exiled.

Just before the beginning of WWII, Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, but two years later Hitler reneged on that agreement and invaded Russia. The Soviet Union suffered greater losses than any other nation during the war, but emerged from it much more powerful, with control over most of eastern Europe.

Still a controversial figure today, popular with many Russian people but seen as a tyrant by the outside world, Stalin died in 1953 at the age of 74. He was buried in Lenin's Mausoleum in Moscow, but his body was moved in 1961 to the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.

Answer: Fidel Castro

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born in 1926 in the village of Biran, in Holguín province in eastern Cuba. Although he came from a relatively wealthy family, and later married into an even wealthier one, Castro developed strong leftist, anti-imperialist political views whilst a student in the mid-1940s at the University of Havana.

In the ensuing years, he was involved in anti-government revolutions in Colombia and the Dominican Republic and he was arrested back home in Cuba. Overthrowing the Batista government in 1959, Castro became Cuba's 16th Prime Minister. In the following five decades, Castro held numerous titles including President of Cuba, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, and President of the council of Ministers. Whatever title he held at the time, though, he was the effective dictator of the country until his retirement in 2008, when his younger brother, Raul, succeeded him in office.

Answer: Moctezuma

Born in 1398, Moctezuma I beame king of the Tenochititlans in 1440 following the death of his half-uncle, Itzcoatl. During his reign, the Tenochititlans became the most important member of the Aztec Triple Alliance formed by the city-states of Tenochititlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan.

It was during the reign of Moctezuma that the boundaries of the Aztec Empire expanded beyond the Valley of Mexico, stretching east to the Gulf of Mexico coast. He was succeeded as Aztec emperor by his grandson, Axayacatl.

Answer: Haile Selassie

Emperor Haile Selassie was born in 1892 in the town of Ejersa Goro, on the outskirts of the city of Harar in eastern Ethiopia. He was revered as the returned messiah and as God incarnate by members of the Rastafari movement.

Although his regime was frequently criticized by human rights groups, it was largely because of him that Ethiopia became a charter member of the United Nations. One of the most important figures in the history of both Ethiopia and of Africa in the 20th century, he was deposed by a coup d'état shortly before his death at the age of 83 in 1975.

Answer: Franz Joseph I

The oldest son of Archduke Franz Karl and Princess Sophie of Bavaria and the grandson of Holy Roman Emperor Francis II, Franz Joseph was born in 1830 in the Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna. He embarked upon a military career, as a colonel in the Austrian army, when he was just 13. In December 1848, the abdication of his uncle, Ferdinand I, and the renunciation of the titles by his father, left Franz Joseph I as Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary and Croatia, King of Bohemia and King of Lombardy-Venetia.

The throne of Lombardy-Venetia was conceded in 1866 at the end of the Third Italian War of Independence, but his remaining titles he retained for the rest of his long life, except that of President of the German Confederation.

During his reign, Franz Joseph I suffered numerous personal tragedies: his brother, Maximilian, was executed in Mexico in 1867, his son, Crown Prince Rudolf, committed suicide in 1889, and his wife, Empress Elisabeth, was assassinated in 1898. It was also the assassination of his nephew, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in 1914 that led to the outbreak of World War I.

Answer: King Rama IX of Thailand

Bhumibol Adulyadej was born in 1927 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. His father, a student at Harvard University at the time, was Mahidol Adulyadej, Prince of Songkla, the 69th child of Chulalongkorn, King Rama V of Siam.

Following the abdication of King Rama VII in 1935, Bhumibol's brother, the 9-year old Ananda Mahidol, was officially recognized as the next king, designated Rama VIII even though the family was living in exile in Switzerland at the time. They returned to Thailand following the end of WWII but six months later the king was shot in circumstances that were variously explained as suicide, regicide and accidental but remain a mystery still.

Bhumibol Adulyadej succeeded his brother on the throne as the ninth monarch of the Chakri Dynasty, designated Rama IX. At the beginning of 2016, Thailand entered a year of national celebration of the Platinum Jubilee (on June 9) of the reign of the world's most popular monarch. Rama IX is not only the longest-reigning monarch in Thai history, but also the world's longest-serving head of state, having come to power more than five years earlier than Britain's Queen Elizabeth II.

Aged 88 at the time of his Platinum Jubilee, Rama IX is closing in on the record reign of a monarch of a major country, 72 years and 110 days by King Louis XIV of France.

Answer: Jawaharlal Nehru

Jawaharlal Nehru (also sometimes called Pandit Nehru due to his Kashmiri roots) was born in 1899 in the city of Allahabad in North-western Province in British India, now the state of Uttar Pradesh in India. His father was twice president of the Indian National Congress, now one of India's two main political parties, but historically at the heart of the struggle for independence.

Schooled at Harrow and then Cambridge, where he graduated with a degree in natural sciences, once he returned to India Nehru became a leading figure, alongside Mahatma Gandhi, in the nationalist movement.

Often known fondly as 'Chacha Nehru' ("Uncle Nehru") by the Indian people, his birthday (November 14) is a public holiday celebrated today as "Children's Day".

Answer: William I of England

Born in 1028 in the commune of Falaise in the Calvados department of northern France, the son of the unmarried Robert I, Duke of Normandy, he was sometimes called William the Bastard. He is best remembered, though, as William the Conqueror, victor in perhaps the most famous of all military engagements, the Battle of Hastings. (For some reason, if they learn nothing else in their history classes, just about every English schoolchild leaves school knowing that the battle of Hastings was fought in 1066.)

The first cousin once removed of the childless English king Edward the Confessor, William was promised the monarch's support for his claim to the throne. When Edward instead named the earl Harold Godwinson as his successor, William raised a fleet and an army and crossed the English Channel to do battle with his nemesis. The rest, as they say, is history.

Following his victory on the fields of Sussex on October 14, William claimed the English throne and his coronation as King William I was held in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day, 1066. He reigned for more than two decades, until his death aged 59 in 1087, when he was succeeded by his son, William II (William Rufus).