A Sleep with the Fishes Trivia Quiz

Answer: stones

Virginia Woolf met her maker on 28th March 1941. She committed suicide due to an overwhelming depression not unlike the ones she had previously suffered. She filled the pockets of her coat with stones and walked into the River Ouse, to be discovered three weeks later.

Answer: Prime Minister of Australia

Harold Holt, Prime Minister of Australia, disappeared on 17th December 1967. Holt was swimming at Cheviot Beach, near Portsea in Victoria, and sight of him was quickly lost. The search for his body went on for 2 days, after which the government announced that Holt was presumed dead. To this day, Holt's body has never been found.

Answer: Cleopatra VII

Ptolemy XIII died on the 13th January, 47 BC. Having been married to his sister, Cleopatra VII, she continued to rule Egypt, unchallenged, and later named her younger brother, Ptolemy XIV, her co-ruler. The reason why Ptolemy XIII drowned whilst crossing the Nile is unclear, due to the lack of sources from that time.

Answer: Ophelia

Ophelia dies in a state of insanity towards the end of the play. This lunacy is probably induced by the death of her father, and the fact that Hamlet leaves her heartbroken at the conclusion of his famous 'to be or not to be' soliloquy. She is later found dead in the nearby river.

Answer: Canary Islands

Robert Maxwell passed away on 5th November 1991. Maxwell literally built his empire from nothing, having come from a poor family. Maxwell's companies, during the 1980s, owned several of the 'big' newspapers, including the Daily Mirror and the Sunday Mirror. His death caused his empire to collapse when it was discovered that he had made fake transactions in order to sustain his business.

Answer: California

Perhaps one of the most famous celebrities to drown, Natalie Wood drowned on 29th November, 1981. According to the coroner who investigated her death, had Natalie not been drunk when she fell overboard, she would have realised that her coat would fill with water and pull her under.

Answer: Titanic

Guggenheim, along with his chauffeur, valet, mistress, and her maid, boarded the RMS Titanic from the French port of Cherbourg on the 11th of April 1912. Guggenheim, his valet, Giglio, and his chauffeur, Pernot, drowned when the ship hit an iceberg and sank. His mistress and her maid made it to safety, due to the 'women and children first' rule.

Answer: Cyanide

Although the details of Rasputin's death are not fully known, it is mostly accepted that he was fed wine and cakes containing cyanide. This appeared to have no effect on Rasputin, so he was shot in the back and left on the floor of the hotel room. However, when one of his assailants returned to the room, he leapt up and attacked the man. Three more shots were fired and Rasputin fell again.

He struggled to get to his feet, and, seeing that he was still alive, his assailants wrapped him in a bed sheet and threw him into the Moika River, where he finally drowned.

Answer: Sir Arthur Sullivan

Gilbert drowned on the 29th of May, 1911. He was teaching two women to swim, when one slipped and cried for help. Gilbert jumped into the water to rescue her, but in doing so, suffered a heart attack and subsequently drowned.

Answer: wax

Determined to escape from Crete, Daedalus, Icarus' father, created for himself and his son a pair of wings each, made from wax and feathers, to fly away. Despite warnings from his father to not fly too close to the sun or too close to the sea, Icarus, in his wonder of flying, flew too close to the sun, which melted the wax that held the wings to his body, causing the wings to fall off.

He fell into the sea and drowned.