Idi Amin: Larger Than Life Trivia Quiz

Answer: Milton Obote

Obote was the Ugandan president that Amin overthrew in a military coup in 1971 while Obote was out of the country. After Amin was deposed in 1979, Obote was returned to the presidency of Uganda in elections held in 1980. There are many who say that his regime was even more oppresive than Amin's, he just didn't get the press that Amin did.

Answer: Koboko, Uganda

Koboko is a village in northwestern Uganda. Jeddah is where Amin died on August 16, 2003. Kampala is the capital of Uganda.

Answer: False

Amin was a member of the Ugandan army when that country gained its independence from Great Britain in 1962, rising to military chief of staff in 1966. Before that, he was a sergeant in the British colonial army.

Answer: Big Daddy

Amin was a man of enormous appetites. As president, he weighed up to 250 pounds. He also had a healthy sexual appetite, and was rumored to have fathered as many as 40 children. That's a lot of ties on Father's Day.

Answer: 1971-1979

Amin seized power on January 25, 1971. He was driven out of Uganda by Tanzanian troops in April 1979, after an attempt to overtake parts of Tanzania.

Answer: Richard Nixon

Seems Amin was "concerned" for Nixon's well-being after the latter was forced from power by the events of Watergate.

Answer: False

It's estimated by human rights groups that between 100,000 and 500,000 people perished at the despotic hand of Amin during his eight-year tenure.

Answer: Air France

On Sunday, June 27, 1976, armed gunmen from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, along with some German accomplices, hijacked Air France flight 139. They first directed the plane to Libya, then Uganda. Their goal was to gain the freedom of Palestinian terrorists that were being held in jail in Israel. Israeli commandos rescued the captives a week later in a daring nighttime raid on July 4.

There was much evidence that Amin was actually in cahoots with the hijackers, and was not negotiating a peaceful resolution to the standoff, as he had claimed.

The story of the rescue was made into a movie later that year, "Raid on Entebbe," starring Charles Bronson, Peter Finch and Martin Balsam.

Answer: Tanzania

Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere was a frequent thorn in Amin's side, as he was highly critical of the Ugandan leader. It was Amin's ill-advised attempt to forcefully take parts of Tanzania in October of 1978 that ultimately to his downfall.

Answer: He threatened to kill French citizens living in Uganda.

Filmmaker Barbet Schroeder didn't shy away from pulling the curtain away from the façade that Amin built up around himself. When Schroeder refused a request that several short scenes which revealed Amin as he truly was be excised from the film, Amin responded by rounding up 150 French citizens that were in Uganda at the time, threatening to with death unless his demands were met. Of course, Schroeder acquiesced to Amin's demands, and even credited Amin as a co-editor of the film.

After Amin fell from power, Schroeder restored his film to its original version.

This version is available on both video and DVD, with the DVD version including an interview with Schroeder.