QUIZ WHIZ: Famous people, surprising facts

1. Aided by his 6-foot-4-inch height, which U.S. president won an estimated 300 wrestling matches?

A. John F. Kennedy

B. Gerald Ford

C. Abraham Lincoln

D. Franklin D. Roosevelt

2. Which scientist ate giant tortoise meat while visiting the Galápagos Islands?

A. Isaac Newton

B. Galileo

C. Louis Pasteur

D. Charles Darwin

3. Which author survived a train wreck, helping to rescue others from the wreckage before retrieving an early manuscript of Our Mutual Friend?

A. Charles Dickens

B. Walt Whitman

C. Herman Melville

D. Ralph Waldo Emerson

4. In his book 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship, which artist described a process for waking himself just after falling asleep to harness his dreams for art?

QUIZ WHIZ Answers: How many did you get right?

1. C — Abraham LincolnLincoln suffered only one recorded wrestling defeat and was posthumously inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.2. D — Charles DarwinDarwin developed a taste for exotic creatures as a member of Cambridge’s...

A. Leonardo da Vinci

B. Norman Rockwell

C. Salvador Dalí

D. Rembrandt

5. Before publishing her first memoir in 1969, which author would sing and dance under the name Miss Calypso?

A. Margaret Atwood

B. Harper Lee

C. Toni Morrison

D. Maya Angelou

6. Which Founding Father invented a swimming aid at the age of 11, decades before creating bifocal glasses and the lightning rod?

A. Benjamin Franklin

B. John Adams

C. George Washington

D. Thomas Jefferson

7. Which famous criminal preferred the nickname “Snorky,” a term meaning snazzy, to his more common moniker “Scarface”?

A. Bugsy Siegel

B. Al Capone

C. Lucky Luciano

D. John Dillinger

8. Raised in a slave-owning family in Missouri, which author was a lieutenant in a Confederate militia for two weeks?

A. Ernest Hemingway

B. William Faulkner

C. F. Scott Fitzgerald

D. Mark Twain

9. Who was bullied by schoolmates for, among other things, speaking French with a thick Corsican accent?

A. Marie-Antoinette

B. Napoléon Bonaparte

C. Joan of Arc

D. Alexandre Dumas

10. Chief Lapulapu killed which of these explorers in 1521 and is today considered a national hero in the Philippines?

A. Henry Hudson

B. Juan Ponce de León

C. Ferdinand Magellan

D. Christopher Columbus

11. Which artist was among those suspected of stealing Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911?

A. Vincent van Gogh

B. Frida Kahlo

C. Pablo Picasso

D. Jackson Pollock

12. In a letter to his cousin (and eventual wife), Elsa, which scientist admitted to hating socks and rarely wore them?

A. Stephen Hawking

B. Robert Oppenheimer

C. Albert Einstein

D. Nikola Tesla