The Famous Five Trivia Quiz

Answer: Julian

Julian Assange is an Australian activist who founded the site WikiLeaks in 2006. Through this site he published intelligence that he'd received from a US Army analyst that could have implicated the USA in alleged war crimes. This exposure led to Assange being the recipient of many media awards and the ire of the US government.

A Swedish police investigation in 2010, on a matter unrelated to the above, saw Assange arrested in the United Kingdom, but he was released on bail albeit under strict conditions. Fearing extradition to the United States, in relation to WikiLeaks, he breached his bail conditions and took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he sought and received asylum.

When asylum was withdrawn in 2019, he was immediately arrested by the UK police. Without hesitation, the US government sought his extradition, but it remained a battle that was fought until 2024. During this time Assange remained in custody in London. A High Court ruling in 2024 granted him a full appeal against the extradition. Assange and his lawyers were able to plea bargain with the US, with Julian pleading guilty to certain breaches of the Espionage Act in return for a sentence of time already served.

Answer: Julian

Julian Lennon, the son born of John Lennon's union with his first wife, Cynthia, was the inspiration behind three songs released by the Beatles - "Lucy in the Sky (With Diamonds)" (1967), "Hey Jude" (1968) and "Goodnight" (1968). Despite the burden of his father's name and achievements on his shoulders, Julian was able to forge his own moderately successful music career, releasing six studio albums. Among these was 1984's "Valotte", which produced the hit single "Much Too Late for Goodbyes".

His varied career paths have seen him create several children's books, hold exhibitions to showcase his fine art photography, found the White Feather Foundation, which deals with environmental and humanitarian causes, and he has been at the helm of a number of documentary films. Most notable among these was "Whaledreamers" (2006) which collected a slew of international awards.

Answer: Richard

Richard Milhouse Nixon became the 37th President of the United States in 1969, a position that he held until his resignation, the first by any US President, in 1974. Whilst his terms in office produced a number of high points - the first landing by man on the moon, the reduction of the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, along with the detente achieved with both China and the Soviet Union - his presidency will never walk away from the shame that was the "Watergate" scandal.

Answer: Richard

Richard Branson showcased his entrepreneurial skills at an early age, creating a successful magazine while at school, appropriately, named "Student". He was sixteen at the time. Four years later he'd create a mail-order record business which grew into a chain of music stores named Virgin Records. That brand name, Virgin, would become one of the totems of the high flying 1980s, developing into a recording label and then an Atlantic airline. In the 1990s he set up Virgin Rail, seizing an opportunity when the British government decided to privatize its railway service.

Knighted in 2000 for his services to entrepreneurship, Branson continued to expand, this time into space tourism with the launch of Virgin Galactic in 2004. Aside from his business activities, Branson has made a name for himself as an intrepid adventurer which, among others, includes crossing the Atlantic in a hot air balloon and kite-surfing across the English Channel.

Answer: Anne

Anne was the youngest of the highly talented and widely regarded Bronte family. Like her sisters, she wrote under a pseudonym. In an age where women's talent was scoffed at, the women took on a male moniker to ensure that their works were published. In Anne's case the name she took on board was Acton Bell, which also retained her AB initials.

Sadly, Anne would pass away before reaching her thirties as a result of, most believe, pulmonary tuberculosis. Her writing career, consequently, was short but that didn't mean that it didn't shine brightly. Aside from some poetry that she'd pieced together, she published two novels that are now considered literary classics. "Agnes Grey" was released in 1847, which was followed by "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall", a year later. The latter novel is often cited as one of the first feminist novels to be published.

Answer: Anne

To many, Anne Boleyn is best known as the second wife of King Henry VIII and, as a consequence, the Queen of England between the years 1522 and 1536. Her relationship with the king would wind up making her the focal point of the turbulence that led to the English Reformation.

In 1526 Henry became enarmoured with her, but Anne refused to be his mistress. This put Henry on the path to seeking an annulment to his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, an action that would put him at odds with the Catholic Church. Henry's response to their negative dictum was to start breaking down the power of the church and close their monasteries. Gaining the annulment, he then married Anne in 1533 and this action led to his excommunication by Pope Clement. Henry's retaliation was to engineer a complete break from the Catholic Church and then take control of the Church of England.

In September of 1533 Anne gave birth to Elizabeth, who would eventually be the first of her name to rule England... but, it wasn't the son that Henry strongly desired. Accordingly, after the three miscarriages that followed, Henry lost interest in Anne and began to court Jane Seymour. To remove Anne from the scene Henry had her arrested, tried and found guilty of treason and incest and then put to death by beheading. The charges were considered flimsy, at best, and, on Elizabeth's ascension to the throne, she did not exonerate her, for fear of destabilizing the Tudor dynasty, but had her venerated as a martyr.

Answer: George

In his lifetime "Big George" Foreman has been an ordained minister, an entrepreneur and an author but, those aside, he became one of the greatest heavyweight boxers to have ever entered the ring.

Taking up boxing as a means to step out of the clutches of a troubled upbringing, Foreman, at nineteen years of age, would win the gold medal in the heavyweight division at the 1968 Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City. Four years later he would stun the world by knocking out the undefeated Joe Frazier in the second round of the contest for the World Heavyweight title.

Foreman would defend his title on two occasions before the famous "Rumble in the Jungle" in 1974. Here he would suffer his first professional loss and hand the title over to Muhammad Ali. Three years later, as a youthful twenty eight year old, Foreman retired. However, he would return to professional boxing in 1994, now at the not so youthful age of forty five, whereby he, once again, stunned the world by knocking out Michael Moorer and unifying the WBA and IBF titles. He relinquished the WBA title, defended his IBF title against Alex Schulz and then relinquished that title as well. He retired again, this time as the world's oldest heavyweight champion the sport had produced to that point.

Answer: George

George Lucas is one of the most significant figures of the New Hollywood film movement that emerged in the latter quarter of the 20th century. Along the way he helped to establish two of cinemas greatest franchises in "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones". His first film, which he wrote and directed, "THX 1138" in 1971, was hailed as a critical success but it failed at the box office. Undeterred, he wrote and directed "American Graffiti" (1973), a story based on his own growing up. Not only did the movie sit well with both the critics and the audience, it also garnered nominations for five Academy Awards. This would give him some gravitas when it came to do, what would become, a very hard sell for his 1977 space opera "Star Wars". The studio, Twentieth Century-Fox, was, initially, not interested and it took some hard bargaining on George's part to get the funding.

Gaining the go-ahead to make "Star Wars" was only half the battle for Lucas as the technology available at the time would be unable to match his vision for the film. To achieve what he wanted, Lucas became a pioneer in the creation of special effects with the setting up of Industrial Light & Magic, and in sound effects with the establishment of the audio company THX Ltd. The end result, "Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope" would become one of the early films to usher in the age of the blockbuster. By the time George had sold his enterprise to Disney in 2012, he had either written or directed ten of the highest grossing movies (inflation adjusted) that had come out of Hollywood to that point.

Answer: Tim

Sir Tim Berners-Lee is a scientist and an academic but, most importantly, he is a visionary. That visionary, in 1989 while working at CERN, invented the World Wide Web. The following year he wrote the first web client and server and the specifications URI (Uniform Resource Identifiers) better known as web addresses, HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) or, in layman's term, the rules for communicating on the Web and HTML (HyperText Markup Language), the language used to create and structure web pages.

The vision, however, did not stop there and here lays the beauty of Berners-Lee foresight... he established and now directs the World Wide Web Foundation. The mission of the foundation is to, not only, protect and enhance the future of the Web but to ensure that it is freely available to humanity, that it is global public good and, importantly, that it is a right for every individual.

Answer: Tim

Born Samuel Timothy McGraw, Tim is an American country music star and actor. By the year 2023 he'd released seventeen studio albums, the last being "Standing Room Only" (2023), ten of which managed to top the Billboard 200 Country Music charts.

Releasing his debut album in 1993, he became a bona fide superstar with the launch of the swaggering singles "Indian Outlaw" (1994) and "I Like It, I Love It" (1995). These were songs that were built on a foundation influenced by rock music and lent themselves, perfectly, to large arena performances that were being swallowed by the legions of young country music listeners. That said, McGraw would sustain his success by showcasing his tender side. His first number one song on the country charts being the sensitive "Don't Take the Girl", which was released in 1994.

Over the next two decades Tim would make subtle shifts in his sound without compromising his integrity to the genre. This has kept McGraw at the top of the country music tree and seen him produce a songbook that bears such staples as "My Next Thirty Years" (2000), "Live Like You Were Dying" (2004), "The Highway Don't Care" (2013), and "Humble and Kind" (2016).