People So Cool, Airports Were Named After Them Quiz

Answer: Zulu

Shaka kaSenzangakhona was an influential character. He was king for only 12 years, but in that time he brought more than one hundred chiefdoms under his banner, creating the Zulu kingdom that survived his death.

He was born in inauspicious circumstances, likely from an illicit affair between his parents; and though his father acknowledged him and took responsibility for his upbringing, Shaka was tormented by the children of the Mthethwa and Langeni tribes. It is likely that this treatment fed his inner desire for power. He had the right physical build and presence to become a great leader and his feats and acts of courage on the battlefield led to his promotion in the army of Dingiswayo, in whose court he had come to live during the Great Famine.

Around this time Shaka was given the name Nodumehlezi, meaning "the one who when seated causes the earth to rumble". Later, he was given Dingiswayo's support (upon his father's death) to assassinate his older brother Sigujana, and to create himself the chief of the Zulus. After Dingiswayo's murder, Shaka assumed the leadership of Dingiswayo's forces and defeated and took control of surrounding chiefdoms, until no major rivals were left.

After Shaka's death at the hands of his half-brothers Dingane and Mhlangana and his bodyguard Mbopha, the Zulu kingdom had a profound influence on the course of South African history. Such was Shaka's influence that the South African airport at Durban was named for him.

Phoenix Rising's VegemiteKid was responsible for the accession of this question into the quiz.

Answer: Brazil

Brazil came to independence not through revolution but as a matter of the course of history. When Napoleon invaded Portugal the royal family fled to Brazil and ruled from there. At that time Brazil became a co-equal part of the Kingdom of Portugal and not just a colony. When Napoleon was defeated and the royal family returned to Portugal, Brazil remained a co-equal part of the kingdom. Not willing to surrender this position to the newly established constitutional government in Portugal, Brazil declared independence and became the Empire of Brazil in the 1820s.

Simon Bolivar is considered the liberator of South America because he played a major role in many countries becoming independent from their Spanish masters. He helped liberate the areas that now constitute the countries of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, and Bolivia.

Bolivar was born in Caracas and he became an officer in the army of the Spanish Empire. Just as the Napoleonic Wars caused great turmoil and upheaval in Europe, they had the same effect on South America. During the early 1800s Bolivar helped all of the countries mentioned gain independence through his military knowledge and leadership. His life is inextricably linked to his work in liberating South America. He married, but his wife died after only one year. He was romantically linked to the revolutionary Manuela Sáenz but they never married and never had children.

This question was entered into the quiz by Phoenix Rising member tazman6619 who lived in Venezuela for a year and a half in the 1970s.

Answer: She became Queen of Netherlands

Princess Juliana was the heir apparent when she landed at the new airport (opened a year earlier) in 1944 to officially name it. Saint Maartin was the Dutch side of the island, shared with France. The Dutch half is part of the Kingdom of Netherlands. In 1948 Queen Wilhelmina abdicated in favour of her daughter. Princess Juliana had married in 1938 Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld. They had four daughters. Queen Juliana herself abdicated in 1980 aged 71. Her eldest daughter Beatrix became queen. This was the first time that a European country had had three Queens serving consecutively.

If some of the other answers look familiar, that is because they are.

Question was inserted in the quiz with a discreet bow by Phoenix Rising team member 1nn1.

Answer: No

Born Jose Julian Marti Perez, he put his heart, soul and, ultimately, his life into the cause of liberating Cuba from the clutches of Spain. He would lose his life at the Battle of Dos Rios in 1895, making him a martyr for the cause and earning the sobriquet of the "Apostle for Cuban Independence".

Marti's passions for Cuba's liberty began at an early age and he travelled extensively through Spain, Latin America and the United States in an effort to generate support. His ability to set up the unification of the Cuban émigré in Florida went a long way in assisting the liberation. His great mind was behind many of the plans for the Cuban War of Independence.

Marti was more than a fireball of passionate activism. He was a deep thinker, a great philosopher and a prolific writer. He produced poems, essays, letters, lectures, a novel, and a children's magazine. He would set up a number of influential newspapers, in particular the Patria. A number of his entries in his anthology "Versos Sencillos" (Simple Verses) (1891) would become verses to the song "Guantanamera".

Marti was a giant in the shaping of Cuba's independence and his ideologies would become a major component in the shaping of Cuba's politics.

This question was written by Phoenix Rising's pollucci19.

Answer: Bill and Hillary Clinton

Bill and Hillary Clinton rose to international prominence in 1993 when Bill was inaugurated as the 42nd President of the United States of America and Hillary became his First Lady. After Bill's two terms in office came to an end, it was the turn of Hillary's political career to move to centre stage and she was elected as a US Senator in 2001, held office as US Secretary of State from 2009-13 and narrowly lost the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump.

While many former presidents and first ladies release autobiographies and memoirs of their time in the White House, both Bill and Hillary Clinton took larger steps into the literary world by co-authoring politically-themed novels that made it to the top of The New York Times Best Seller list. Bill co-authored "The President is Missing" with prolific novelist James Patterson in 2018, while Hillary's "State of Terror", co-authored with Louise Penny, was released in 2021.

This question was authored by Phoenix Rising's Fifiona81.

Answer: Konrad Adenauer

Konrad Adenauer was more statesman than politician. He was a devout catholic and was voted Mayor of Cologne (1917-33). He guided Cologne though the harsh realities of food shortages and ensured his citizens got as much food as the military. He invented the Cologne Sausage, a product made from soy as meat was in very short supply. So too was wheat, so he invented Cologne Bread (Brot), made from other, more readily available, grains.

In World War II he did not succumb to the Nazis and he was jailed for it relying on friends to feed him as he had no job when released. In a divided Germany he formed the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which he calculated would capture both Protestants and Catholics in one party. The first election to the Bundestag (in Bonn) of West Germany was held in August 1949, with Adenauer's CDU being the strongest party. Adenauer was elected Chancellor (head of government) and stayed there for 14 years where he demonstrated his adeptness at working with the French, British and Americans. He was popular in Germany and was the founder of the EEC (European Economic Community) which, in turn, became the European Union.

This question was written by Phoenix Rising team member 1nn1.

Answer: Corsica

Napoleone Buonaparte (more commonly known as Napoleon Bonaparte) was born in the Maison Bonaparte, on rue Saint-Charles in Ajaccio (capital of the island of Corsica) in 1769. As a youngster he had the nickname of 'little meddler'. Because he was born in Corsica, the nickname of 'the Corsican Fiend' was said to have been given to him by Sir John Stoddart, editor of The Times from 1812 to 1816.

He was educated at a military college in Brienne for five years with a year at a military college in Paris to follow. Garrisoned at Valence, he was made second lieutenant of artillery at a training school for officers. He was an avid reader of Voltaire and of Rousseau. In a highly politicized career, driven by ideology, Bonaparte was regarded as a protégé of Robespierre and was arrested at one stage as a conspirator. He was known for his overweening ambition and was unable to achieve a command rank he believed was equal to his prowess - people just didn't trust him.

Bonaparte eventually became commander of the Army of the Interior and as a result was across every political occurrence in France. It was during this time that he met and fell in love with Joséphine Tascher de La Pagerie. He had military successes in Europe and in Egypt but returned to France to take advantage of the political situation there; with the formation of the Consulate in 1799, he became the ruler of France, in the role of First Consul. It is said that he was hardworking, intelligent and decisive, and favoured men of reason to advise him (though public opinion wasn't important to him). He instituted a series of civil reforms before returning to military life when the British, a bit unkindly, declared war in 1803. Even with Spanish help, he was unable to turn the English back. He sought help from Alexander I of Russia who obligingly handed him power over half of Europe. By 1810 he was at the pinnacle of his powers but after disastrous campaigning in Europe, his force was depleted. When he came against Arthur Wellesley in June 1815, he suffered defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. Parliament forced Napoleon to abdicate in favour of his son and he was exiled to the island of St. Helena in the southern Atlantic. He died in April 1821, possibly of the same ailment, stomach cancer, that killed his father.

This question was marched inexorably into the quiz by Phoenix Rising member VegemiteKid.

Answer: North Macedonia

Mother Teresa was born in the city of Skopje, which is now the capital of North Macedonia. At the time of her birth, 1910, it was the Ottoman Empire. When she was eight years old her father had passed away, however, she was already fascinated by the stories of missionaries. Within four years, she was convinced that this was her calling. At the age of eighteen she moved to Ireland to join the Sisters of Loreto. This would be the last time that she would see the rest of her family. The following year (1929) she would move to Darjeeling in India to continue her training as a novitiate.

She took her solemn vows in 1937 and worked as a teacher in a school just outside of Calcutta. By 1944 she'd become the headmistress and also became distressed at the poverty within her region. Within four years she began her missionary work, spent several months in Patna learning basic medical and began approaching the Vatican for permission to commence a diocesan congregation. The approval came in 1950 and the Missionaries of Charity was born. Mother Teresa dedicated the rest of her life in aid of "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone".

Her life was not without controversy with her strong stance on abortion and contraception bringing the most strident of criticisms. Separate to that some also questioned her motives, in particular English journalist and antitheist Christopher Hitchens, who claimed, in a 2021 debate on CBS, that "she wasn't working to alleviate poverty", he said, "she was working to expand the number of Catholics." Mother Teresa would pass away in September 1997 from heart issues and would be beatified six years later. At the time of her death she had established 610 missions in 123 countries.

The question was written by Phoenix Rising's pollucci19, who ain't no saint.

Answer: First Prime Minister of Israel

David Ben-Gurion was the first Prime Minister of the state of Israel and led the nation in different capacities until 1963. His life was inextricably interwoven with Zionism and the fate of the Jewish people.

He was born in Plonsk, Poland in 1886 which was part of the Russian Empire. From an early age he advocated for Jews to return to Palestine and he did so in 1906. Palestine at that time was part of the Ottoman Empire. In 1915 he was deported to Egypt by the Ottoman government and he eventually ended up in America trying to raise a Jewish army to fight for the Ottomans. In New York he met his future wife Paula, a Russian Jew, and they married in 1917. In 1918, he joined the Jewish Legion of the British Army so he could return to Palestine.

After World War I, Palestine became part of the British Empire. During his time in Palestine Ben-Gurion worked tirelessly to support Zionism and the eventual establishment of a Jewish state. In 1919, his wife and young daughter, Geula, joined him in Palestine. They would have two more children, a son, Amos, and another daughter, Renana.

At the end of World War II, Palestine remained under British control but Ben-Gurion moved to make his dream of a Jewish state a reality. This, eventually, happened in 1948. Ben-Gurion's personal life and the life of Zionism and the eventual state of Israel are forever linked as one does not exist without the other.

This question was translated from the original Hebrew and entered into the quiz by Phoenix Rising's tazman6619.

Answer: Sukarno

Sukarno was a fierce nationalist who devoted his early life to Indonesia's independence movement. In 1927, at the age of 26, he formed the Indonesian National Party (PNI) and used it as a platform to speak out against the Dutch. It saw him arrested in 1930 and jailed soon after. He used his trial as a vehicle to deliver some long and vehement speeches against the colonialism and imperialism of the Dutch. This garnered great publicity, made him a national hero and helped gain his release a year later.

When the Dutch authorities arrested him again in 1934, they were not going to provide Sukarno with another platform and exiled him without trial. The arrival of the Japanese and World War II gave Sukarno the opportunity to align himself with the Japanese and their ideals. Consequently, he'd managed to secure sufficient power that when the war ended, he and Mohammad Hatta declared Indonesia's independence. Sukarno became the country's first President and Hatta it's first Vice President. The Dutch were not happy and tried to re-impose themselves, which led to conflict. They would not recognize Indonesia's independence until 1949.

Sukarno did what many considered impossible, he united a nation made up of so many ethnicities and cultural and religious backgrounds. However, his aggressive foreign policies and authoritative stance on anti-imperialism led to stronger ties with the USSR, which did not endear him to the United States. In 1965, General Suharto, with the support of the CIA, overthrew the Sukarno government. Sukarno remained in house arrest until his passing in 1970.

This question was written by Phoenix Rising's pollucci19.