I'm a Phobiaphobic! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Edward R Murrow

Morrow's words came in a piece to camera during a special report of his current affairs show "See It Now" in 1954. The 30 minute report highlighted the hypocrisies of the crusade of Senator Joe McCarthy against high profile so-called Communists in American society.

The report found its target effectively and diminished the standing of the Senator in the eyes of the American public, an effect that McCarthy was unable to reverse when Murrow gave him the right of reply on his show.

The story of the special report, its making and its aftermath was re-told in the 2005 film "Good Night, Good Luck" starring David Strathairn as Murrow.

Sociophobia is the fear of society.

Answer: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Coleridge, along with fellow poet William Wordsworth, is most commonly associated with the development of the English Romantic movement from the end of the 18th century. But Coleridge was more than a poet; his literary criticism, focusing on the biographical influences of authors, was highly regarded and influential.

Before fame was bestowed on him, Coleridge dabbled in political philosophy. Along with Robert Southey, another of the Lake Poets, he contemplated the creation of a utopian society known as a Pantisocracy (government by all the people) in Pennsylvania, USA. When Southey came to doubt the viability of their project, the intended destination was moved to Wales with which Coleridge disagreed, leading to the abandonment of the idea.

Politicophobia is the fear of politics and politicians.

Answer: The United States of America

Burke, who spent his formative years in Ireland, became a Whig politician after his move to England. Despite the Whigs being the forerunners of the 20th century Liberal Party, Burke is seen as the father of modern conservatism.

Burke was a vocal supporter of the right of the American colonies to be self-governing, particularly in the matter of taxation, arguing that the colonists were English by ancestry and therefore "devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas and on English principles."

Ashenophobia is the fear of weakness (or fainting).

Answer: John Kennedy

Kennedy's inaugural speech addressed the idea of finding common ground with the Soviet Union and thereby improving relations between them rather than opening the divide wider.

His call for the US and its adversaries to explore the possibility of bringing "the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations" was drawn into sharp relief in October 1962 when it was discovered that Nikita Khrushchev, the Russian Premier, was shipping nuclear warheads to Cuba, just 90 miles off the US coast. The resulting diplomatic stand-off led to the tensest period of the Cold War and convinced many around the world that a nuclear war was imminent.

Only the secret agreement by Kennedy to remove US weapons from Turkey convinced Khrushchev to turn the Soviet ships around.

Nucleomituphobia is the fear of nuclear weapons.

Answer: Aeschylus

"The Oresteia" was a trilogy of plays concerning the family of King Agamemnon of Argos. The first two plays, "Agamemnon" and "The Libation Bearers", tell of the death of the king at the hands of his wife, Clytemnestra, who in turn was avenging the death of their daughter. Clytemnestra is then killed by her son Orestes in collusion with his sister, Electra.

The third play, "The Eumenides", sees the goddess Athena demand that Orestes be put on trial for his actions, rather than be killed by The Eumenides (or Furies), who in Greek myth act as the avengers of the dead. When the jury fails to agree on his fate, Athena decides to act mercifully and spare Orestes, also declaring that this should be the future action in all trials where no verdict is reached.

The trilogy portrays the progression of Argos from a kingdom of vengeance to a democratic state and proposes the idea that reason in justice is primary.

Dikephobia is the fear of injustice.

Answer: Japan

In spite of his doubts over the ability of Japan to win a war against the might of the United States, Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander-in-chief of the Japanese Navy in World War II, masterminded the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

The words attributed to him were used in the 1970 film "Tora! Tora! Tora!", whose producers claimed that they came from both a diary entry and a letter sent by Yamamoto to the Japanese Admiralty. Neither source has ever been produced and verified.

Poinephobia is the fear of punishment.

Answer: Atlanta

After the capital Richmond, Atlanta was the second most important city held by the Confederacy due to its communication and industrial strengths. In May 1864, with a Presidential election looming, General William Sherman laid siege to the city with a lot of Abraham Lincoln's election hopes depending on his success. After three months of battle, the Confederate General John Hood fled the city, ordering its destruction in his wake.

Mary Chestnut was the wife of James Chestnut Jr, an aide to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Her diary is a fascinating historical resource, recounting the day-by-day developments and fluctuations of the Confederate cause during the course of the Civil War.

Kakorrhaphiophobia is the fear of defeat or failure.

Answer: Brigitte Bardot

After starring in such films as "And God Created Woman" and "Viva Maria!", Bardot became an international superstar and sex symbol but the trappings of fame and celebrity left her cold. She began to withdraw from public life in the 1960s, preferring a life of seclusion in her St Tropez home, and in 1973 she announced her retirement from acting to concentrate on campaigning for animal rights.

The effects of her solitude may account for the retired Bardot's frequent outbursts to the French press that have seen her labelled as homophobic and racist, with convictions for inciting racial hatred in 2004 and 2008.

Isolophobia is the fear of being alone.

Answer: Titanic

Legendarily, the RMS Titanic was described as "unsinkable" although this only seems to have appeared in print after its sinking. Built by The White Star Company as the rival to Cunard's Lusitania, the ship is rightly described by satirical newspaper, 'The Onion' as "a representation of man's hubris". Approximately 1,500 lives were lost when the ship went down after a collision with an iceberg in the North Atlantic.

Neophobia is the fear of anything new.

Answer: The Greeks

The modern adage has it as "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts" but Virgil's original text "Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes" means "I fear the Grecians even when they bring gifts".

The story told in "The Aeneid" is that of the end of the war between the Greeks and the Trojans. After nine years of battles, the Greeks departed the scene of the battle leaving behind a gift; a giant wooden horse, a sacred animal to the Trojans. Inside the horse were 30 men from the Greek army.

Though Laocoon warns against the acceptance of the gift, when he is subsequently killed by a serpent, the people of Troy interpret his death as a sign of displeasure of the goddess Minerva (Athena) for showing disrespect to the horse. The gift is accepted and wheeled into Troy through the city walls that the Greeks had been unable to penetrate. After a night of celebration at the end of war by the Trojans, the Greeks disembarked, killed the guards on the city walls and invited the remainder of the Greek army into the city to slaughter its inhabitants.

Hellenophobia would mean the fear of Greeks if it existed as a word.