Born on the 21st May Trivia Quiz

Answer: Raymond Burr

Raymond Burr (born 1917) was a Canadian actor who found fame on television playing 'Perry Mason' and 'Ironside'. Both parts portrayed men of steely dependability, which is quite a contrast with the reality. It appears that many of the details Burr gave about his early life and war record are unverifiable, including at least one marriage and the existence of a son. The known marriage, to Isabella Ward in 1949, lasted only a year and they were divorced four years later; neither seems to have re-married.
In the 1950s Burr met Robert Benvenides and they became a couple in 1960, remaining together until Burr's death from cancer in 1993.
Those who knew Burr liked him and he was known to be generous and charming, but he led a double life with his homosexuality known only to his closest friends, not surprisingly in a world where being known to be gay was professional suicide.
So, charming, unpredictable, unreliable? Sound like a Gemini to you?
The story of Burr's life is told in 'Hiding in Plain Sight' by Michael Seth Starr.

Answer: Mary Robinson

Mary Robinson was born in 1944, and had had a career in which she was President of Ireland from 1990-97, followed by work with the United Nations. She is a well-known anti-racist and a critic of the USA for its use of capital punishment. She has great legal knowledge and a strong intellect, and was instrumental in bringing about a huge improvement in Anglo-Irish relations.
Her period as President of Ireland, with her liberal views, brought about a transformation of the country. This is a woman who is not afraid of controversy, and Irish laws about sexual matters were considerably liberalised during her period if office, despite her having a close working relationship with he Church. In 2004 she was awarded the Amnesty International Ambassador of Conscience Award for her work on Human Rights. As a lawyer she is trained to keep her emotions under control. but she was visibly moved during a visit to Rwanda following the genocides, and spoke out with tears in her eyes against the suffering she saw.
Does this sound like a Gemini? A communicator, great speaker and filled with charm, she sounds like one to me.

Answer: Harold Robbins

Harold Robbins, (1916-1997) born 'Rubin', was the son of a Brooklyn pharmacist, but claimed to be a Jewish orphan raised in a Catholic Orphanage. This was just one of many fabrications about his own life, which was summed up in the 'author information' section of a 2008 Hodder & Stoughton reprint of one of his most famous books, 'The Carpetbaggers', as containing more fiction than his books.
Many of his stories were based on thinly-disguised portraits of famous people. 'The Adventurers' was based on Porfirio Rubirosa, the South American playboy, and 'The Betsy' on the Ford Motor dynasty.
According to a New York Times Sunday book review by Tom Carson in 2007, (who clearly disliked Robbins and everything he stood for), the great film-maker Alexander Korda described Robbins as being 'as odious in the days of his success as in the days of his failure'.

It seems that Robbins was a perfect example of some of most negative Gemini traits - unreliable and unpredictable, while at the same time being a great communicator and never boring (whatever you may think of his writing), but definitely not a charmer.

Answer: Mary Anning

Mary Anning (1799-1847) was born into the family of a poor cabinet maker who supplemented his income by hunting for fossils, which he sold to tourists. Mary and her brother Joseph proved to be very good at finding specimens, and when she was just twelve years old they found the skeleton of the first ichthyosaur to be identified.

They later found the first two plesiosaur skeletons ever discovered. Mary had a talent for reconstructing the fossils and made a deep study of her finds, to an extent remarkable in one of very little education.

Her gender and social status prevented her from taking her proper place in the scientific community and she often failed to get the acknowledgment she deserved, but as time went on she did get some recognition. Her talent for fossil hunting was not the only unexpected thing about her.

In 1800 she was under a tree with three women when it was struck by lightning - Mary was the only one to survive, and was said to owe her bright intelligence to the experience.

She was described by the geologist George William Featherstonehaugh as 'a very clever, funny creature' - not a bad description of a Gemini.

Answer: Kay Kendall

Kay was born in Yorkshire in 1927, and met Rex Harrison on the set of 'The Constant Husband' in 1955. They fell in love but Harrison, a notorious womaniser, was already married to Lili Palmer. Later, Harrison was starring in 'My Fair Lady' and went for a routine medical examination. Kay, who had been feeling unwell, also had a medical and was diagnosed with leukaemia, but her doctors decided it would be better not to tell her. Harrison still loved his wife, but the couple decided to divorce so that Harrison could marry Kay and look after her until the end.

They actually planned to re-marry at some point, but this never happened because Lili had, meanwhile, found someone else and married him instead. Nobody really knows if Kay guessed that her illness was terminal - she was told it was anaemia - but if she did, she never let on.

She died in 1959.

Answer: Andrew Neil

Andrew Neil has had a fabulously successful career, emerging from a working class background, via the University of Glasgow into the world of print journalism and subsequently into broadcasting at the BBC.

This is a man who can reinvent himself, from working class to successful journalist with a string of glamourous girlfriends and a home in the South of France, to a hardworking and politically savvy, aggressive broadcaster and communicator. Oh yes, and he has charm. A pretty good description of a Gemini? I think so.

Answer: Leo Sayer

Singer, song writer and entertainer Leo Sayer, born in 1948, hasn't had a chart hit for many years, but he continues to record and to perform in concert to very appreciative audiences. Resident now in Australia, he is an environmental activist. His music covers many styles, generally bouncy and tuneful.
Does any of this make him a typical Gemini?
Well, he certainly has a golden tongue in terms of his singing career, He's quite a performer and I think he has charm. Moving to Australia was somewhat unpredictable.
What do you think?

Answer: Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was a translator of Homer and a writer of poetry and satirical verse. He studied languages and was widely read both in contemporary literature and in the Greek and Roman classics.
As a young man with health problems, and a Catholic at a time when it was very disadvantegous, he was somewhat alienated from society, but in adulthood he had a wide circle of friends and mixed with the most prominent men of letters of his time.
He had a house built in Twickenham that featured a beautiful garden and an amazing grotto filled with shells, mirrors and trickling water. The house and garden are long gone, but the grotto survives beneath Radnor House School and is sometimes open to the public.
Judging by his literary output, Pope can be said to be a great communicator, and despite his health he managed to have many friends, including many women, so he seems to have had charm as well. His garden and grotto seem to indicate he has artistic talents as well as literary ones. Bright, intelligent and witty - the perfect Gemini.

Answer: Armand Hammer

Armand Hammer, (1898-1990) was the son of Julius Hammer, a Communist supporter. He went to Russia in 1921 and stayed there until the late 1930s, during which time he made a great many business deals that opened up trade for the Soviet Union, as well as making Hammer rich. On his return to the USA he continued to strike business deals and became even richer, using his money philanthropically and working for peace. He supported the survivors of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
Despite the undoubted good he did in support for charitable concerns, Hammer was suspected by J. Edgar Hoover of being an agent of the USSR, and he was watched until the end of his life. The CIA's James Jesus Angleton suspected him of being the 'Capitalist Prince', a 'turncoat US millionaire' working for the Russians. This side of Hammer was exposed in a book published by Random House in 1996, 'Dossier - the Secret History of Armand hammer' by Edward Jay Epstein.
Of course, perhaps Hammer was just one of Russia's 'useful idiots', or perhaps he was something much worse, a traitor. Maybe he was living a double life, which might have appealed to his nature as a Gemini.
Being a philanthropist doesn't preclude this possibility. Who knows?

Answer: Elizabeth Fry

Mrs Fry (1780-1845) was a member of the Quakers, or Society of Friends, and from a young age was concerned with bettering the lot of the poor wherever she found them. She was kind, generous, practical and humanitarian, and so impressed Frederick William IV of Prussia when they met during one of her tours of the Continent that he vowed to visit her at Newgate Prison and see for himself what she was achieving.

Her generous nature was typical of the Gemini character, and she was clearly an inspirational person. Would she have thought of herself as a typical Gemini?
I think she would have laughed at the very idea.