Buried in Arlington National Cemetery Quiz

Answer: Pete Conrad

Naval aviator Pete Conrad died in a motorcycle accident on July 8, 1999, in California, at age 69. A veteran of four space missions, Conrad was the third man to walk on the moon. Bassett and Elliott See, the original prime crew for Gemini 9, died on February 28, 1966, when their jet aircraft crashed in bad weather in St Louis. Grissom died along with Ed White and Roger Chaffee in the Apollo I fire on January 27, 1967. And Michael Anderson died with six other astronauts when the space shuttle Columbia broke up on reentry on February 1, 2003.

Answer: USS Forrestal

Named for former Secretary of the Navy and the first Secretary of Defense, James V. Forrestal, the USS Forrestal was on station off the coast of North Vietnam when, on July 29, 1967, a stray electrical charge caused an accidental missile launch on the flight deck.

The missile struck a fully-loaded aircraft, starting a devastating chain of explosions on deck and below deck that killed 134 men and destroyed much of the carrier's air wing. The fire was extinguished after 13 long hours, and the repaired Forrestal remained in service until it was decommissioned in 1993. Ironically, Forrestal, himself a veteran of the US Navy, his wife, and his two sons (also navy veterans), are all interred at Arlington.

Answer: Army and Navy

Westinghouse is best known for inventing the air brake to safely stop trains. He also pioneered other electrical devices, including marine and hydroelectric turbines. He was buried at Arlington in March, 1914; his wife of 47 years, Marguerite, followed him in death three months later.

Answer: United Kingdom

Daventry, age 31, and Watson, age 26, died of injuries sustained in a car crash in Washington on November 16, 1943. Both were in the Women's Auxillary Air Force, attached to the Royal Air Force's contingent at the British embassy. Their gravesites at Arlington are under the care of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

Answer: He was originally buried in Detroit

Admiral Robert Peary, a civil engineer by profession, received much glory and praise for reaching the North Pole in 1909. But Matthew Henson, whom Peary had hired as a man-servant for an earlier expedition in Nicaragua and later promoted because of his navigation skills, actually got there first.

He would write a book about the experience, "A Negro at the North Pole", and claim a number of awards and honorary degrees for his work. When he died in relative obscurity in 1955, he was buried in a simple plot in a Bronx cemetery; Peary, who had died in 1920, was buried under a globe-shaped headstone at Arlington. Thanks to the efforts of Harvard professor S. Allen Counter, Henson and his wife were interred at Arlington in April, 1998. Among those attending the ceremony that day were descendants of Anaukaq Henson, the son that Henson fathered with an Eskimo woman during his expedition in the Arctic.

Answer: William Howard Taft

The first person to hold the positions of Chief Justice of the United States and President of the United States, William Howard Taft died on March 8, 1930, just five weeks after stepping down from the Supreme Court. When his wife, Helen Herron Taft, died in 1943, she became the first First Lady to ever be buried at Arlington. John F. Kennedy, assassinated in 1963, is also buried at Arlington. James Garfield, assassinated in 1881, is buried in Cleveland, Ohio. And Abraham Lincoln, assassinated in 1865, is buried in Springfield, Illinois.

Answer: Jimmy Carter

A West Virginia native, Vance served in the navy during World War II. As a public servant, he would serve as Secretary of the Army in the Kennedy Administration and as an Undersecretary of Defense in the Johnson Administration. As Secretary of State, Vance helped negotiate the Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel and won approval of treaties to transfer control of the Panama Canal to Panama.

He resigned in 1980 in protest of President Carter's ill-fated plan to rescue the hostages held in Iran.

Answer: 250

A group of 193 Coast Guardsmen, 56 US Army soldiers, and a surgeon from the US Public Health Service died on the night of January 29, 1945, when the Serpens exploded and sank at Lunga Beach. The crew was loading depth charges when the explosion occurred. Only two crew members on board the ship survived; eight others were ashore on administrative business at the time of the explosion.

Answer: Tax judge

Involved in various legal capacities in the federal government for sixty years, Scott was appointed as a judge in Tax Court in 1960 by President Eisenhower. She was reappointed by President Nixon in 1972, and became a senior tax judge in 1982.

Answer: Accidentally bombed by friendly planes

It is well known that Glenn Miller was bound for Paris in a single-engine plane the night he disappeared. But as he flew out over the English Channel, a group of British night bombers flew over the Channel in the opposite direction, at a higher altitude. According to the documentary, the bombers jettisoned unused bombs right into Miller's flight path.

Although this has never been proven conclusively, it is among the most plausible scenarios surrounding his death. Thanks to arlingtoncemtery.net, arlingtoncemetery.org, and various other sources for the information on this quiz. I hope you enjoyed it!