Just a Day in May Trivia Quiz

Eleanor of Aquitaine (1124-1204) was the Queen of France and mother of two daughters when she met Henry of Anjou (1133-1189) in 1152. Between the scandal of their apparent attraction and the fact that Eleanor had not borne any sons (women could not inherit the French throne due to Salic law), Louis VII sought an annulment which freed Eleanor to marry Henry in 1154. Henry became Henry II of England in 1154 and they had 9 children (8 surviving to adulthood) together - William, Count of Poitiers (1153-1156), Henry, the Young King (1155-1183), Matilda, Duchess of Saxony (1156-1189), Richard I of England (1157-1199), Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany (1158-1186), Eleanor, Queen of Castile (1161-1214), Joan, Queen of Sicily (1165-1199), and John of England (1166-1216).

Over the course of their marriage, Eleanor backed their sons in rebellion against Henry, and, as a result, he held her prisoner (really house arrest) in a castle, although at times she was allowed to travel with him. One of these times was dramatized by James Goldman in the 1966 play, "The Lion in Winter." Katharine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole played Eleanor and Henry in the 1968 movie based on the play, with Hepburn winning her third Best Actress nomination Oscar and O'Toole receiving his third (of eight) Best Actor nomination. Fictionalized versions of their relationship also appear in several of Sharon Kay Penman's novels and "The Captive Queen" by Alison Weir.

Nicholas II (1868-1918) was the last Czar of Russia, reigning from 1894 through the Russian Revolution in 1917. He was born at the Alexander Palace near St. Petersburg during the reign of his grandfather, Alexander II. In 1884 he met Queen Victoria's granddaughter, Alex of Hesse. Nicholas became Czar upon his father's death on November 1, 1884, and married Alex less than a month later, on November 26. As Czar he was unpopular, leading the country to defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, leading anti-Jewish pogroms, and suppressing the 1905 Russian Revolution.

Nicholas and Alexandra had five children, daughters Olga, Marie, Tatiana, Anastasia, and son and heir Alexei, who inherited hemophilia through his mother. Alexei's fragility was hidden from the public and led his mother to consult mystics, most notoriously Gregori Rasputin. Losses in WWI and his son's fragility led Nicholas to abdicate on March 15, 1917, in favor of his brother, Grand Duke Michael. The family searched for a country in which to take asylum, but were unsuccessful and were placed under house arrest. They were executed on July 17, 1918. There were rumors that youngest daughter, Anastasia, escaped, but the family's grave was found in 1979, and confirmed in 1989. Genetic tests proved that all seven family members had been murdered and buried together.

On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessey bought a ticket for and boarded a whites only train car in New Orleans. Plessey was a mixed race man descended from Louisiana's Free Persons of Color. Free Persons of Color were people of mixed heritage - African, European, and Native American - whose ancestors were not enslaved at the time of the Civil War. He did this to set up a test case challenging the state's Separate Car Act which provided for "separate but equal" accommodations for different races. Both Black citizens (on fairness grounds) and the rail company (which didn't want to spend the money for extra cars) wished to challenge the law.

The law was upheld under Louisiana state law and appealed to the US Supreme Court under the 13th and 14th Amendments, which upheld the law by a 7-1 vote. Separate but Equal remained the law until "Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka" reversed it by a 9-0 vote in 1954.

Karol Jozef Wojtyla was born in Wadowice, Poland. While a college student, he acted and wrote plays, but his education was interrupted by the German invasion of Poland and he worked as a laborer during WWII to avoid deportation. In 1942, he began studying to be a priest and also joined the underground, escaping a roundup by Nazi soldiers in 1944 by hiding in his uncle's basement. In 1945, he helped a 14-year-old girl, Edith Zierer, who'd escaped from a labor camp. After his ordination, he was asked by the gentile relatives who'd hidden a boy named Stanley Berger from the Holocaust to baptize him, but refused, and helped him emigrate to the United States to be raised by Jewish relatives.

Wojtya was ordained in 1946, and served as a priest in several parishes while continuing his academic studies, earning a Doctorate in Sacred Theology in 1954 and learning over a dozen languages. He was named Auxiliary Bishop of Krakow in 1958 and Archbishop in 1964. In 1978, after the 33 day reign of John Paul I, he was elected pope at the age of 58. Despite an assassination attempt in 1981, he had an active papacy, traveling extensively (and photographed enjoying outdoor activities like skiing and hiking), supporting labor and the fall of the Communist bloc, and improving relations with other world religions. John Paul II died on April 2, 2005, after several years of declining health including a 2001 diagnosis of Parkinson's disease. He was succeeded by Joseph Ratzinger, who took the papal name Benedict XVI. John Paul II was canonized by Pope Francis on April 27, 2014.

Jacqueline Cochran (1906-1980) was born in Florida as Bessie Lee Pittman, and married Robert Cochran as a young teen. After her divorce, she started using the name Jacqueline Cochran, and moved to New York where she eventually started a cosmetics company. In the 1930s she learned how to fly airplanes and began racing. During WWII, she ferried US made planes to Britain, becoming the first woman to fly a transatlantic bomber.

She lobbied Eleanor Roosevelt and Lt.Col. Robert Olds for the formation of a women's air corps, and became the director of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) when it was formed in 1943 by the merger of the Women's Auxiliary Flying Squadron and the Women's Flying Training Detachment. After the war, she joined the Air Force as a Lieutenant Colonel and retired as a Colonel in 1970. She also began chasing speed records, and, challenged by her friend Chuck Yeager, the first person to break the sound barrier, she became the first woman to do so on May 18, 1953.

Cochran sponsored the Mercury 13, which tested women for the space program. The participants were not, like their male counterparts, military pilots with engineering degrees, but on average had more hours of flight experience. She ultimately decided, however, that having women in the space program would slow progress towards putting humans in space. She also ran for Congress in 1956. Jacqueline Cochran died on August 9, 1980.

Elizabeth Stamatina Fey was born in Upper Darby, PA, a suburban Philadelphia community. She earned a BA in Drama from the University of Virginia in 1992, and moved to Chicago, where she joined the Second City improvisational troupe. She was hired by "Saturday Night Live" as a writer in 1997, and made her first appearance as an extra the following year. In 1999, she became the show's first female head writer, and in 2000 began co-anchoring the Weekend Update segment with Jimmy Fallon.

Fey left "Saturday Night Live" in 2006 to create and star in "30 Rock", which ran for seven years, won three Emmys for Outstanding Comedy Series. During this time she earned an Emmy Nomination for Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. She also created the Netflix series, "The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt", and wrote and starred in "Mean Girls." Fey returned to "Saturday Night Live" as guest host six times as of the 2024-2025 season and made several more appearances as former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. She was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2010.

India's nuclear research began with the 1945 establishment of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the Indian Atomic Energy Commission was established in 1948. In 1956, the country opened the first nuclear reactor in Asia. The country's nuclear program dealt with both civilian and military applications but stepped away from bomb research between 1964 and 1966. Code named Operation Smiling Buddha, the first Indian nuclear bomb test occurred on May 18, 1974, making the country the sixth member of the nuclear club, after the US, the USSR, the UK, France, and China.

In March, 1980, small earthquakes around Mount St. Helens and releases of steam from the peak indicated that the volcano, dormant since the 1850s, was entering a new period of activity. Over the next two months, new craters and a large, moving bulge grew on the mountain.

At 8:32 AM on May 18, the volcano explosively erupted, officially causing 57 deaths (due to reporting inconsistencies the number could be as high as 60 or as low as 55) and over $1 billion in property damage. The power of the explosion was approximately 1600 times that of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima and ash was reported as far away as Oklahoma.

Alexander Godunov was born November 28, 1949, in Yuznho-Sakhalinsk, Sakhalin, USSR. He began studying ballet at age 9, alongside friend Mikhail Baryshnikov and joined the Bolshoi Ballet in 1971. He defected on August 21, 1979, while on tour in the United States, and joined the American Ballet Theater with which he danced until 1982.

He transitioned to a career in acting, appearing as an Amish farmer and in "Witness" and a thief in "Die Hard." Godunov was addicted to alcohol and was found dead from hepatitis caused by chronic alcohol abuse on May 18, 1994, although he actually died several days earlier.

Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 and initially classified as the smallest and furthest from the sun planet. Its first moon, Charon, was discovered by James Christy in 1978. By the time Nix and Hydra were confirmed in 2005, Pluto's status as a planet was being debated due to the number of trans Neptunian bodies that had been discovered, including Eris which is substantially larger than Pluto, in 2006, the International Astronomical Union developed a definition of a planet. Pluto meets the first two criteria - it orbits the sun and has a gravitational field - but has not "cleared the neighborhood" of bodies other than its natural satellites and was thus demoted to dwarf planet.

Nix and Hydra were discovered in 2005 using the Hubble Space Telescope. Both are irregularly shaped and quite small. Nix is about 31 miles across its largest dimension and Hydra is 51 miles across its longest dimension.