Who Put That There? Trivia Quiz

Answer: Neil Armstrong

The honour is shared by two of the U.S. astronauts on the same spacecraft; Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped foot on the moon and planted the American flag there on July 20th, 1969 and made history in doing so. Both members of the Apollo 11 mission (along with Command Module Pilot Michael Collins), it made them household names and key figures in the history of space exploration.

Answer: Ai Weiwei

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, known for his massive installation pieces, is the one linked to this event as it was his exhibit, "Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds)", which filled the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern with handmade porecelain sunflower seeds to a depth of 10 centimetres.

While it lasted in London for seven months (2010 to 2011), it took a massive team of Chinese porcelain makers two and a half years to make enough seeds for the project. Like many of Weiwei's other works, the piece was a critique on Chinese censorship and sociopolitical state.

Answer: Francis Crozier

An officer of the Royal Navy, Francis Crozier was the captain of the HMS Terror while Sir John Franklin captained its companion ship, the HMS Erebus, as they made their way through the Arctic Ocean seeking the long sought-after Northwest Passage. Unfortunately for all of them, they never found it; both crews perished somewhere off King William Island nearly two years after they left Europe.

The Northwest Passage wouldn't be crossed by sea until 1906 while the wrecks wouldn't be located until 2014.

Answer: Erwin Schrödinger

Famous for the Schrödinger's Cat theory, Erwin Schrödinger won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933. The cat experiment didn't come about until 1935 when Schrödinger proposed a theory: a cat is placed into a box with a radioactive substance and a poison, and while that box is sealed and closed, if the radioactivity rises, the poison is released. Until it is seen as either alive or dead, the cat is technically neither...or both.

There are many hypotheses that've spun off from this, but it remains this scientist's legacy whether or not he actually put the cat in the box.

Answer: Banksy

Though UK artist Banksy had been creating controversial street art for decades, his "Love is in the Bin" project was a particularly interesting take on his "Girl with Balloon" piece made more than fifteen years earlier. Put up for auction as a framed piece in 2018, Sotheby's auction-goers were treated to the live destruction of the art; as the gavel came down, the print shredded out the bottom of its frame.

Its recipient paid £1,042,000 for the piece before it was destroyed. It would return to auction in its shredded form in 2021, selling at a new high-water mark of £18,582,000.

Answer: Dante Alighieri

One might take this literally -- Dante was exiled from Florence after living most of his life there in the thirteenth century -- but it could also be approached from a slightly more literary angle as Dante inserted himself as the narrator of his epic poem, "Inferno", which he wrote later in his life (and followed up with "Purgatorio" and "Paradiso"). "The Divine Comedy", as the trilogy would be referred to, would follow Dante's journey into the underworld and, eventually, take him on an ascent to Heaven.

It would become regarded as one of the most important tales written in the Middle Ages and a key piece of Italian literary history.

Answer: John Hancock

Amongst the fifty-six men who signed the U.S. Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, John Hancock was not only the first, but signed with the largest signature of the bunch. The first Governor of Massachusetts, he became more famous for having been this key member of the Founding Fathers, so much so that the name John Hancock has become somewhat synonymous with signatures in North America.

Answer: Louis Pasteur

Though pasteurization comes to mind when people think about milk production, nineteenth-century French scientist Louis Pasteur didn't originate this process in milk; he originated it in wine, aiming to reduce the dangers of unwanted microorganisms in his drinks to reduce chances of their spoiling.

The process would be a successful one in a number of regards, leading to safe consumption of dairy products (especially) and longer shelf life (improving its capability to last through the shipping process in modern grocery sale). And all it takes is proper regulation of heat and cooling!

Answer: Marcel Duchamp

Conceptual artist Marcel Duchamp, hailing from France, was popularized alongside creators like Pablo Picasso at a time when art styles transitioned to Modernism. Duchamp was amongst artists who pushed the envelope to force his audience to question the medium, and "L.H.O.O.Q.", his ready-made art depicting the Mona Lisa with a fake moustache, was a Dadaist and satirical take.

It wasn't all too surprising though, in hindsight. After all, his earlier sculptural piece, "Fountain", was nothing more than an autographed and displayed urinal.

Answer: Tom Anderson

Perhaps one of the least problematic of the social media creators of the 2000s, Tom Anderson founded MySpace before it faded into obscurity as a leading social media platform in the mid-2000s (before Facebook took prominence). Though he sold MySpace for the sum of $580,000,000 USD in 2005, he'll probably be remembered most for being the default friend on every user's profile until 2010. Pictured in a white t-shirt, looking back at the camera, he was at one time one of the most recognizable internet celebrities and perhaps one of the most well-connected.