They're Dead, Jim (1890-1899) Trivia Quiz

Answer: Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853 and was named after his stillborn older brother, which meant he got to grow up seeing a gravestone with his own name on it. That's the happiest part of his story. Throughout his life, he battled severe depression, hallucinations, and periods of psychosis. He bounced from career to career before turning to painting, which consumed him.

Once he committed to art, he committed hard. In about a decade, he produced over 860 oil paintings, none of which made him even remotely famous while he was alive. Today, he's a major early influence of Post-Impressionism and you can buy replicas of his paintings at Walmart and Amazon. At the time he was just that weird guy who paints too fast and uses too much yellow. His brushstrokes and color choices in works like "The Starry Night", "Sunflowers", and "Café Terrace at Night" would eventually help to redefine modern art.

But his mental health crises were equally legendary. I'm guessing you know about the whole ear thing, but there were hospitalizations, and other episodes that he later tried to paint his way through. On July 27, 1890, Van Gogh walked into a French wheat field and shot himself in the chest before calmly walking back to the inn where he was staying. It wasn't a peaceful way to Gogh. He lingered for two days, smoking his pipe and apologizing for being a burden. He was 37. His fame and artistic import, of course, soared only after his death.

Answer: P. T. Barnum

Before becoming America's most famous showman, Phineas Taylor Barnum built a career on hoaxes, oddities, and publicity stunts, some of which were ethically... dubious, others merely theatrical. From "The Feejee Mermaid" (a monkey's head and torso sewn onto a fish tail, because why not) to the "Swedish Nightingale" Jenny Lind (who was, for the record, entirely real and very talented), Barnum had an uncanny talent for turning curiosity into cash.

In 1881, he partnered with James A. Bailey to form the legendary Barnum & Bailey Circus, billed as "The Greatest Show on Earth," combining acrobatics, trained animals, exotic acts, and what were then labeled "freak shows," a practice that later faced serious and well-deserved criticism. Beyond the circus tents, Barnum also dabbled in politics, serving as mayor of Bridgeport and championing causes like temperance and the abolition of slavery. He died there on April 7, 1891, at age 80, leaving behind an entertainment empire... and lots of ethical debates for the future.

Answer: Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was the Victorian era's most well-known poet. His work was ever so lofty, musical, and endlessly quotable. He succeeded William Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850 and held the post until his death in 1892, producing everything from "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (famous for "Theirs not to reason why...") to "In Memoriam A.H.H.", which contains the oft-quoted line "'Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all." He spent his later years between his Isle of Wight home and Aldworth (near Haslemere) in Sussex, where he died at the family house on 6 October 1892 at age 83 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, an honor which seems to be a pretty big deal across the pond.

Answer: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky produced some of the most recognizable works in Western music: "Swan Lake", "The Nutcracker", "Sleeping Beauty", and the "1812 Overture , which - not unkindly - poses the question, "What if classical music had more explosions?" Despite his fame, he was very anxious about conducting, suffered frequent bouts of self-doubt, and worried so much about stage fright that he sometimes held his chin with one hand while conducting to "keep his head from falling off."

Tchaikovsky's death in 1893 was officially attributed to cholera, supposedly contracted from drinking unboiled water, a very un-Romantic ending for such a dramatically inclined composer. But stories have long circulated suggesting it may have been suicide, the result of personal scandal or crushing social pressures. Historians still debate the subject.

Answer: Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson was a storyteller who could turn a map, a locked chest, or a suspiciously one-legged seaman into someone's favorite obsession. He wrote "Treasure Island," "Kidnapped," and "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde", stories still being adapted, parodied, and quoted whenever people need a good dramatic line or just want to wear a pirate hat. He battled poor health for much of his life, but that didn't stop him from being ridiculously productive: novels, essays, travel writing, and enough letters to keep the local post office busy for a while.

In search of healthier climes and adventure, Stevenson settled in Samoa in 1889, where locals nicknamed him Tusitala or "teller of tales." He became involved in local affairs and defended Samoan rights against colonial pressures. On December 3, 1894, at the age of 44, he suffered a stroke near his home on the slopes of Mount Vaea and died soon after.

Answer: Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey) escaped from slavery around 1838 at about age 20 and went on to become the nation's most famous Black orator, a prolific writer (including the "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave"), and the publisher of the abolitionist paper "The North Star". He lectured across the U.S. and Europe, advised presidents, and spent a lifetime arguing that freedom and equal rights were kind of important to everyone.

A committed supporter of women's suffrage as well as Black rights, Douglass attended a meeting of the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C., on February 20, 1895. After returning to his home at Cedar Hill in Anacostia that afternoon, he died of a heart attack at about age 77.

Answer: Alfred Nobel

Alfred Nobel made a fortune inventing explosives (most famously dynamite) and improving blasting technology, reshaping mining, construction, and, less pleasantly, warfare. He was a very busy guy. He is credited with roughly 355 patents across chemistry and engineering, most involving blowing things up.

Despite the grim uses of his inventions, Nobel's lasting decision was much more optimistic... or at least morally ambitious. In his will he directed most of his fortune to create the Nobel Prizes, to reward people who conferred "the greatest benefit on mankind" in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace (economics came along later). He died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Sanremo, Italy, on December 10, 1896, at age 63.

Answer: Isaac Pitman

If there was ever a champion of the notion "there has to be a faster way to do this", it was Isaac Pitman. A schoolteacher turned linguistic tinkerer, he developed Pitman shorthand, a system of lightning-fast squiggles that let clerks, journalists, and court reporters write at speeds that left normal handwriting needing a reassuring hug. His 1837 book "Stenographic Sound-Hand" laid out the method, and it became the international gold standard for shorthand.

Pitman was also a passionate to the point of stubbornness about spelling reform, insisting that English could be written in a way that actually resembled the sounds it made. He believed that simplifying spelling would save people time, and thus life itself. (If the time it takes to correct these quizzes is any indication, I'd say he's definitely not wrong.) He died in Bath, England, in 1897 at age 84, leaving behind a world that still writes too slowly and spells too strangely.

Answer: Otto von Bismarck

Otto von Bismarck was the original master of freaking out statesmen with his eagerness to get things done. Through a carefully orchestrated trio of wars (against Denmark, Austria, and finally France) he pieced together the modern German state like a very efficient, very stern political jigsaw puzzle. As the first Chancellor of the German Empire, he mastered realpolitik, forged alliances, and generally made Europe nervous for decades at a time.

Even after Kaiser Wilhelm II booted him from office (it was kind of adorable how the young Kaiser thought he could handle things himself), Bismarck's policies continued shaping Europe. His fingerprints were on everything from diplomatic alliances to social welfare programs... and his ghost lingered over the battlefields of World War I.

Answer: Horatio Alger

Horatio Alger Jr. made a career out of the rags-to-respectability story. His 1867 "Ragged Dick" and the many sequels and imitations that followed established a marketable formula: daring, morally upright boys from poverty who, through hard work, luck, and strong morality, climb all the way up to the middle class. The tales were earnest, very repetitive, and wildly popular.

Alger wrote quite a lot during his career, including hundreds of short works and dozens of books, and later he spent his years in Massachusetts. He also engaged in philanthropy and supported causes aimed at helping youth and education. Alger died July 18, 1899, reportedly of cardiovascular disease. He was inspirational to many, simplistic and morally didactic to some, and an important part of American popular culture at the time whichever way you tend.