Famous Women Named Mary Trivia Quiz

Answer: Religious Figure

It is believed that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, was born around 18 BC. We know she died sometime after 33 AD. Different groups may believe different things about Mary. Some believe she stayed a virgin forever, and Jesus was her only child. Others believe Mary and Joseph physically had other children, such as James, after Jesus.

In the King James Version of the Bible, Mary is first mentioned in Matthew 1:16, which says she was married to Joseph and the mother of Jesus. In total, she is mentioned by name 46 times. Verse 18 states she was impregnated supernaturally, making Joseph the stepfather.

The Quran also mentions Mary, revering her as "The greatest of all women." It also says she was a virgin when Jesus was born.

Answer: Royalty

Mary, I was born on February 18, 1516, and was the only child of Henry VIII by Catherine of Aragon to survive. As an illegitimate child, she was also not allowed to be in the line of succession when her parents' marriage was annulled. However, in 1543, the Third Succession Act changed that. Her half-brother, Edward VI, became king in 1547 at age nine. He died when he was 15, but before that, he tried to prevent Mary I from becoming queen.

Edward VI feared that his half-sister would reverse the Protestant reforms enacted during his reign, and he was correct. He made his cousin, Lady Jane Grey, queen before he died, but Mary had Jane beheaded and then assumed the throne.

In 1554, she married Philip of Spain, making her Queen of England and Queen consort of Spain. Mary is considered the first queen regnant. Philip was given the title King Philip of England, but only as long as Mary was alive.

Mary proclaimed that no one had to follow Catholicism just because she was Catholic. They could still be Protestant. Mary became ill in May 1558; they believe now she may have had ovarian cysts or uterine cancer. She died on November 17, 1558, at the age of 42.

Answer: Author

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was born on August 30, 1797, in London, England. She is best known as the author of "Frankenstein," or "The Modern Prometheus," which she wrote in 1818.

Mary's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died eleven days after giving birth to Mary. Her father raised Mary and informally educated her as well. He also taught her his political philosophy of anarchism. When she was around 17, she started to date someone in her dad's political group named Percy Bysshe Shelley, even though he was already married at the time. They, along with Mary's stepsister, went to Europe for two years, traveling, during which time she became pregnant with Shelley's child. This caused them to be shunned, and their baby, born prematurely, died. In 1816, she married Shelley after his current wife died by suicide.

That same year, while in Switzerland, she got the idea for "Frankenstein." The book was published on New Year's Day in 1818. It is believed Percy helped his wife, but the extent to which he helped is debated. Also, the first three editions have differences that may be due to his editing.

Percy Bysshe Shelley died in 1822, and for a year, Mary lived with his family in Genoa. She then moved in 1823 to live with her father and stepmother. She was determined to continue writing and take care of her son, Percy. In 1823, they went to see "Presumption; or the Fate of Frankenstein," a stage adaptation of her novel. It was so popular that they had to do a second printing of her novel. This also led to more theatrical adaptations.

Her last novel, "The Last Man," was published in 1826. Starting in 1839, Mary Shelley became ill, suffering from headaches and partial paralysis. She passed away on February 1, 1851, at the age of 53. It is believed she had a brain tumor. She wrote six books, of which "Frankenstein" is the most well-known.

Answer: Actress

Mary Tyler Moore was born on December 29, 1936, in Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn, New York City, NY. She was the oldest of three children. Both of her parents were alcoholics, and she and her siblings were occasionally placed in the care of other relatives. When she was eight, her family moved to Los Angeles, California. When her sister was 21, she passed away from a drug overdose, and her brother died when he was 47 from kidney cancer.

Moore started her career in 1955 as a dancer on a Hotpoint home appliance commercial. She was "Happy Hotpoint," a dancing elf. She auditioned to play Danny Thomas' daughter in "The Danny Thomas Show." She did not get the part, per Danny Thomas, "No daughter of mine could have a nose that small." She was regularly heard on "Richard Diamond, Private Detective," but only her legs and hands were seen. Moore asked for a raise after 12 episodes and was fired. She had other guest spots, and then in 1961, she landed the role that became her breakout.

Carl Reiner created a new show called "Head of the Family." Reiner was to play the lead, but the test pilot did not go well. CBS liked the premise, but not Reiner as a leading man. A new man was found, Dick Van Dyke, and the show was completely recast and renamed: "The Dick Van Dyke Show." They needed someone to play his wife, Laura Petrie. The show's producer, Danny Thomas, remembered Mary Tyler Moore and recommended her. She lied about her age to be old enough to be Rob's wife and got the job.

In 1970, Moore landed her own show, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." She created the show with her then-husband Grant Tinker, playing Mary Richards, associate producer for a news show working for Lou Grant (Ed Asner). The show won 29 Emmy Awards, a record held until "Frasier" broke it in 2002. Moore herself won three of those Emmy Awards, for Best Actress in a Comedy Series.

She also appeared on Broadway in shows such as "Whose Life Is It Anyway?" and "Sweet Sue." She also made several movies (both TV movies and big screen), including "Operation Mad Bell," "Something About Ameilia," "Change of Habit (starring Elvis Presley), and "Ordinary People." She was nominated for an Oscar for the latter. She also wrote two memoirs: "After All" in 1995, and "Growing Up Again: Life, Loves, and Oh Yeah Diabetes" in 2009. In the first, she discussed her battle with alcoholism (she became sober in 1984), and in the second, she discussed living with type 1 diabetes. She was diagnosed with the disease when she was 33 years old, in 1969.

By 2014, she was nearly blind due to complications from diabetes. She also had heart and kidney problems. She was an active supporter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund (JDRF). She was also an animal rights activist. Mary Tyler Moore died on January 25, 2017, due to cardiopulmonary arrest, complicated by pneumonia. She was 80.

Answer: Olympic gymnast

Mary Lou Retton was born on January 24, 1968, in Fairmont, West Virginia. When she was eight years old, she watched Nadia Comaneci in the 1976 Summer Olympics. Inspired, she knew she also wanted to one day compete in the Olympics. At first, she was coached by Gary Rafaloski, but seeing she had promise, the family moved to Texas so she could be coached by Bela and Marta Karolyi, the two coaches who coached Comaneci, and had defected to the United States from Romania.

In 1983, she won the American Cup for gymnastics; however, she missed the World Gymnastics Championships that year after injuring her wrist. She did win Japan's Chunichi Cup and the American Classic that year, and she won the latter again the following year.

In 1984, she injured her knee during a routine at a local gymnastics center. Five weeks before the 1984 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles, California, she had to have a knee operation. She recovered just in time to go to tournaments and the Olympics that year; most of the Soviet Union boycotted that year, except for Romania. Romania's Ecaterina Szabo and Retton were neck and neck for the all-around gold medal. Then Retton scored perfect tens on her floor and vault, the latter was especially amazing since it was not long ago she had her knee operation. She won the gold medal by only 0.05 points, and became the first female outside of Eastern Europe t win the individual all-around.

That year, she was "Sports Illustrated" "Sportswoman of the Year," and appeared on the box of Wheaties cereal. In 1986, she retired. In 1992, she was inducted into the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame. In 1997, she was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame. In 2020, she was inducted into the Houston Sports Hall of Fame.

Answer: Fashion Designer

Barbara Mary Quant was born on February 11, 1930, in Woolwich, London, England. She wanted to study fashion in college, but her parents did not like that idea, so she studied illustration and art education. However, after she graduated from Goldsmiths College, she became an apprentice to Erik Braagaard, a hatmaker in the high-class society.

After meeting Archie McNair, he, his friend, and later her husband, Alexander Plunket Greene, and Quant collaborated to buy Markham House, which would become her clothing store, Bazaar. Her bolder designs drew attention from "Harper's Bazaar," an American fashion magazine. Also, her mannequins were not the typical mannequins. They were all posed in fun designs that drew in customers to see how they would be posed. When they came, they bought. Her designs especially appealed to young people, and during the late 1950s and early 1960s, she was one of only two high-class designers to do so.

Today, Quant is most associated with the miniskirt. Some claim she invented the style, but this has been disputed. However, she did name them "miniskirt." She named them after her favorite car, the Mini, a British car model in existence from 1959 until 2000. She has also been associated with the colored tights, often worn with miniskirts. Again, it has been disputed as to whether or not she invented the colored tights as well.

On April 13, 2023, Quant died at age 93 in her home in Surrey, England. Throughout her career, she won many awards, including the "Dress of the Year" award in 1963 (the first to win it), being appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1966, the British Fashion Council Hall of Fame Award in 1990, and being appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2015.

Answer: Musician

Mary Jane Blige was born on January 11, 1971, in the Bronx, NY, but grew up in Savannah, Georgia, and then returned to NYC. Blige dropped out of school in the eleventh grade. She was at the mall with friends, where she covered Anita Baker's "Caught up in the Rapture" at a karaoke booth. The recording was passed around family and friends until it ended up getting to Andre Harrell, the C.E.O. of Uptown Records. She signed her first record deal when she was 21.

Blige's first album was "What's the 411?" produced by Sean Combs. The album reached number six on the "Billboard 200." It reached number one on the "Top R&B/Hio-Hop Alumbs" chart. She won two Soul Train Music Awards for the album: Best New R&B Artist and Best R&B Album, Female. She was also given the title of the "Queen of Hip-Hop."

Blige loved singing but found fame hard. She was very shy and did not like to give interviews. She often would be confrontational with reporters and not look directly at them. She also started drinking and using drugs. This gave her a bad girl representation, which she deeply resented. In 1993, she took a development class to learn how to do interviews.

In 1996, Blige won her first Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for "I'll Be There For You/ You're All I Need to Get By" with Method Man. By 1997, she was no longer working with Combs and now worked with the Trackmasters. During this time, she recorded her third album, "Share My World." It was also during this time that she worked on getting clean and sober. She also ended her abusive relationship with artist K-Ci Hailey.

Her fourth album, the self-titled "Mary," was released in 1999. The album was more adult contemporary than hip-hop. It was reminiscent of the 1970s and 1980s soul music. The album went double platinum. In 2001, her fifth album, "No More Drama," became her first number-one album on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2021, she formed her own record label - Mary Jane Productions. It was in conjunction with 300 Entertainment. She also produced two new singles. "Good Morning Gorgeous," and "Amazing."

Answer: Scientist

Mary Somerville was born on December 26, 1780, in Jedburgh, Scotland. She grew up in Burntisland, Fife, Scotland. When she was ten years old, she was sent to a boarding school in Musselburgh, Scotland. When she returned, she spent her free time on the beach looking at starfish and sea urchins. She also started to collect seashells. She also had to do domestic duties and schoolwork. However, after her aunt Janet came to live with them, she complained that Mary read too much and did not sew enough, so she was sent to a local school to learn needlework. Mary was annoyed that it was considered bad for her to want to acquire knowledge. When she was 13, her mother sent her to a school in Edinburgh to improve her writing and learn math.

Mary secretly taught herself to read Latin so she could read more of the books at her home. She confessed this to her Uncle Thomas Somerville, a doctor, when visiting him and her aunt. He supported her and read Virgil with her to help her Latin become even better. She later learned Greek as well. While her father was a Tory, Mary was a Liberal. She was against the unfair treatment of women and also against slavery. To protest against slavery in the West Indies, while harvesting the sugar, she and her brother Sam refused to use sugar in their tea.

In 1804, she married a distant cousin, Lieutenant Samuel Greig, and they lived in Britain. They had two children, but she was unhappy. Greig did not approve of women being intellectuals. She learned French during that time, as French was deemed more appropriate for women to learn than math, Science, Greek, or Latin. He died in 1807, and she went back to Scotland. The money she inherited allowed her to study what she was interested in, trigonometry and other mathematical subjects. In 1811, she won a silver medal after solving a diophantine problem. She also studied different sciences, including astronomy, microscopy, and electricity.

In 1812, she married again, another cousin, Dr. William Somervile. They had four children, and he encouraged and helped his wife study the physical sciences. Dr. Somerville was elected to the Royal Society (a learned society), and she quickly became a well-known scientist. She worked on experiments to find the relationship between light and magnetism, publishing a paper in 1826 on "The magnetic properties of the violet rays of the solar spectrum." While her conclusions were faulty, the topic was of interest and made her noticed in scientific circles.

She was one of the scientists who supported the idea that there was another planet past Uranus. In 1846, Neptune was discovered, showing their hypothesis to be correct. Mary Somerville died in Naples, Italy, on November 28, 1872, at the age of 91. The following year, her autobiographical book, "Personal Recollections," was published.

Answer: Artist

Mary Cassatt was born on May 22, 1844, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh). She was one of seven children, two of whom died in infancy. For her, growing up, travel was part of the learning experience, and she spent five years in Europe, where she learned German and French. It was then that she also learned music and artistic skills.

While her parents were against her becoming an artist, she went to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) to study painting anyway. She was only 15. While there, she also learned about the feminist movement and equal rights for both sexes - the rest of her life, she was an advocate. She studied there for four years before she dropped out to study "the old masters" on her own, after becoming frustrated with the male-dominated academy.

In 1866, she moved to Paris, France, with her mother and family friends as chaperones. Women at that time were not allowed to attend Ecole des Beaux-Arts, so she had to study privately with the art masters at the school. While she was there, the Impressionist art movement was starting. Cassatt stuck to the traditional painting she knew.

In 1870, she returned to the United States and continued living at home. Her father was still against her choice to be an artist. She tried to sell paintings in NY, and people looked but did not buy. She tried to move to Chicago to try there, but the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed some of her early paintings. However, Bishop Michael Domenec of Pittsburg saw her work. He commissioned her to paint two copies of paintings by Correggio in Parma, Italy. She returned to Europe with fellow artist Emily Sartain.

While there, she sold one of her own paintings, "Two Women Throwing Flowers During Carnival." In 1874, she decided to permanently move to France. Her sister, Lydia, moved to France to live with her. There, Cassatt opened an art studio. She saw that women artists were still mostly dismissed unless they had a man backing them, which meant flirting, and she refused to flirt to win men over for her art. She often fought with Sartain, who found Cassatt too outspoken. They eventually parted ways.

The Impressionist movement continued to grow. Her friend Edgar Degas invited her to see the works he and the others had done. The group had one female artist, Berthe Morisot, and she and Cassatt became friends. Cassatt joined the movement, becoming the first American in the Impressionist movement.

She was diagnosed with diabetes, rheumatism, neuralgia, and cataracts. By 1914, she had to stop painting as she was mostly blind. Cassatt passed away on June 14, 1926, in France. Some of her more well-known paintings include "Portrait of Madame Sisley" (1873), "Lydia Leaning on Her Arms, Seated in Loge" (1879), and "Woman with a Pearl Necklace in a Loge" (1879).

Answer: Politician

Mary Thesese Winifred Bourke was born on May 21, 1944, in Ballina, County Mayo, Ireland. Both of her parents were medical doctors. She studied law at Trinity College Dublin, and in 1965 was elected a scholar. At the time, the Catholic Church had a ban on Catholics attending the school, so she was required to get special permission to go. She was often outspoken and critical of some of the Catholic teachings. This was seen in her inaugural address as auditor of the Dublin University Law Society in 1967. In her speech, she advocated for removing divorce from the Irish Constitution, as well as allowing contraceptives, and making homosexuality and suicide legal.

In 1969, she was appointed Reid Professor of Criminal Law at Trinity College. She was also elected to Seanad Eireann as an independent senator that same year. Her goal was to separate Catholicism from criminal law and allow the aforementioned things in her speech. She married Nicholas Robison in 1970. Together, they have three children. In 1973, Ireland joined the European Economic Community (EEC), and two of its goals were achieved: equal pay for women in public service, and the marriage bar for civil service was lifted. As a lawyer, she won many court cases. Robinson won a case on behalf of her husband in which widowers were not allowed to get a pension, but widows could. Her last day as senator was July 5, 1989.

She ran for president of Ireland after winning the nomination over former Minister for Health Noel Browne. She was the first candidate nominated as well as the first female. "The Irish Times" newspaper backed her, which also helped. Brian Lenihan was favored to win the presidency. Robinson was now also backed by the Workers' Party. During the campaign, it also came out that Lenihan had pressured the then-president, Patrick Hillery, to refuse to dissolve the Dail (Irish parliament). The scandal cost Lenihan the presidency and almost destroyed the Irish government. On December 3, 1990, Robinson was sworn in as president of Ireland, becoming the first female president the country ever had.

She was a very popular president. Lenihan, not long before death, said that Robinson was a better president than he ever would have been. She also became the first sitting president to meet Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. She also signed two bills she lobbied for while running for president: to allow contraceptives and to legalize homosexuality. She also signed a bill to make the age of consent equal for both sexes. Her popularity reached 93% halfway through her term in office. On September 12, 1997, she resigned as president to accept the High Commissioner's office, leaving Ireland without an official president for three months until Mary McAleese was sworn in. Robinson later said she regretted her decision and should have stayed in office until her term was finished.