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Quiz about Famous Suicides
Quiz about Famous Suicides

Famous Suicides Trivia Quiz


No matter what we think of the act itself, suicide requires great willpower. Yet it can also be the result of derangement or suffering; as Seneca (who committed suicide himself) observed, "There is no greatness without a touch of madness."

A multiple-choice quiz by cosmonaut. Estimated time: 9 mins.
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Author
cosmonaut
Time
9 mins
Type
Multiple Choice
Quiz #
192,480
Updated
Dec 03 21
# Qns
10
Difficulty
Difficult
Avg Score
4 / 10
Plays
986
Last 3 plays: Guest 71 (7/10), Guest 175 (2/10), Guest 2 (3/10).
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Question 1 of 10
1. Suicide was widely practiced in the ancient world as a means of ensuring a dignified death when all other options had been extinguished. The great mathematician and geographer Eratosthenes of Cyrene measured the tilt of the Earth's axis with great accuracy and served as the third librarian of Alexandria - and according to some sources, he also committed suicide in the 2nd century BCE. Why? Hint


Question 2 of 10
2. Robert Stewart, known for most of his career as Viscount Castlereagh, was a talented but unpopular British politician in the early 19th century. He masterminded Britain's foreign policy for ten years, during which time the influence and power of that nation expanded considerably. However, he suffered from fits of paranoia and became unstable in the last year of his life. Following an interview with the King, he cut his throat with a pen-knife in August of 1822. What did Castlereagh reveal to the King during that interview? Hint


Question 3 of 10
3. Simone Weil was a philosopher, a mystic, an activist - and to some, a saint. Born in France to a middle-class Jewish family, she dedicated her life to examining and sharing in the afflictions of the poor. After distinguishing herself at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, she taught, wrote, worked in a factory, and served as a cook for the militias fighting against the fascists in Spain. Fleeing Hitler's armies, she worked tirelessly for the Free French in London, where she committed suicide in 1943. How did she kill herself, and why? Hint


Question 4 of 10
4. The first US Secretary of Defense, James V. Forrestal, oversaw the very difficult task of unifying the armed forces following WWII. The stress and fatigue of this monumental effort, foreign crises such as the Blockade of West Berlin and the coup in Czechoslovakia, and perhaps an underlying mental illness all conspired to provoke a nervous collapse. Committed to Bethesda Naval Hospital in March of 1948 - possibly against his will - he threw himself from a hospital window two months later. His suicide note was published and attracted much attention; which ancient Greek did Forrestal quote in his final message? Hint


Question 5 of 10
5. One of the greatest writers that Japan produced in the 20th century, Yukio Mishima was also a fanatical patriot who reverenced the ancient code of Bushido - the way of the warrior. In 1970 he publicly committed ritual suicide, or seppuku, in unusual circumstances. What were they? Hint


Question 6 of 10
6. Virginia Woolf's novels and essays show a refined, intellectual mind open to all the nuances of existence - but they also show that she knew great emotional pain and suffered from chronic anxiety and depression. It's well known that she tragically ended her life by filling her pockets with stones and wading into the River Ouse in 1941, but she also had plans to kill herself in another way. What was her alternate method? Hint


Question 7 of 10
7. The poet Gérard de Nerval was born in 1808 as Gérard Labrunie. He renamed himself 'Nerval' in the belief that he was somehow descended from the Emperor Nerva. He translated Goethe's 'Faust' into French, earning praise from Goethe himself, and wrote a number of original poems filled with strange, dreamy, and macabre images. However, he gradually lost the ability to distinguish fact from fantasy, and became notorious for his bizarre activities. He was committed to an asylum, and eventually hanged himself. Which of the following was one of the peculiarities attributed to Nerval in the years before his death? Hint


Question 8 of 10
8. Many great painters were afflicted with depression or outright psychosis, and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that intense creativity and the desire to annihilate the self are frequent companions. Which of the following artists did NOT kill himself? Hint


Question 9 of 10
9. George Eastman seemed to have everything - the inventor of roll film, he was thereby the father of both the motion picture and modern photography. As founder of the Eastman Kodak Company, he was an immensely wealthy man, and he devoted much of his later life to philanthropy (including the establishment of the prestigious Eastman School of Music). Yet he shot himself in 1932, leaving a very terse suicide note. What did it say? Hint


Question 10 of 10
10. On 11 June, 1963, a 66 year-old Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc sat in a meditative posture in a busy intersection of Saigon, the capital of what was then South Vietnam. He had himself covered in petrol and set himself ablaze. He maintained his posture and continued to meditate while the flames consumed his clothes and body, and he died without moving or showing any signs of suffering. What provoked him to this incredible act of protest? Hint



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Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. Suicide was widely practiced in the ancient world as a means of ensuring a dignified death when all other options had been extinguished. The great mathematician and geographer Eratosthenes of Cyrene measured the tilt of the Earth's axis with great accuracy and served as the third librarian of Alexandria - and according to some sources, he also committed suicide in the 2nd century BCE. Why?

Answer: He became blind, and chose to die rather than be a burden on others.

Though it isn't known for certain, it is thought that Eratosthenes starved himself to death - an excruciating process, but very much in keeping with the stoic values of the Hellenistic world. Incidentally, he invented a very useful method for discovering prime numbers called the Sieve of Eratosthenes, which you can try yourself.

The Sieve works like this: make a list of numbers from 1 up to any value you wish; then, starting with 2, cross out all the numbers that are multiples of 2. Go to the next remaining number (3) and cross out all of its multiples, then on to the next and so forth.

The numbers you have left will all be primes.
2. Robert Stewart, known for most of his career as Viscount Castlereagh, was a talented but unpopular British politician in the early 19th century. He masterminded Britain's foreign policy for ten years, during which time the influence and power of that nation expanded considerably. However, he suffered from fits of paranoia and became unstable in the last year of his life. Following an interview with the King, he cut his throat with a pen-knife in August of 1822. What did Castlereagh reveal to the King during that interview?

Answer: A blackmailer was accusing him of paying men for sex.

An internationalist in his foreign views, Castlereagh was a staunch conservative reactionary on domestic issues (like most of the other men who served in the government of the day). Shelley used Castlereagh's face as a metaphor for the indifference of the ruling class to the plight of the urban working classes in his poem 'The Mask of Anarchy':

I met murder on the way -
He had a face like Castlereagh -
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven bloodhounds followed him.

This poem was written before Castlereagh's demise (though published long after); perhaps Shelley in some way saw the fatality buried within the man.
3. Simone Weil was a philosopher, a mystic, an activist - and to some, a saint. Born in France to a middle-class Jewish family, she dedicated her life to examining and sharing in the afflictions of the poor. After distinguishing herself at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, she taught, wrote, worked in a factory, and served as a cook for the militias fighting against the fascists in Spain. Fleeing Hitler's armies, she worked tirelessly for the Free French in London, where she committed suicide in 1943. How did she kill herself, and why?

Answer: She refused to eat more than what the Nazis permitted people in occupied France, and starved to death.

After the Spanish Civil War, Weil had a mystical experience in which Christ 'came down and He took me.' She spent the rest of her life searching for the meaning of her experience. As her death attests, this remarkable woman's life was lived in total pursuit of her conviction that the essence of life is service to others. "No human being," she once wrote, "escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope."
4. The first US Secretary of Defense, James V. Forrestal, oversaw the very difficult task of unifying the armed forces following WWII. The stress and fatigue of this monumental effort, foreign crises such as the Blockade of West Berlin and the coup in Czechoslovakia, and perhaps an underlying mental illness all conspired to provoke a nervous collapse. Committed to Bethesda Naval Hospital in March of 1948 - possibly against his will - he threw himself from a hospital window two months later. His suicide note was published and attracted much attention; which ancient Greek did Forrestal quote in his final message?

Answer: Sophocles

Frenzy hath seized thy dearest son,
Who from thy shores in glory came
The first in valor and in fame;
Thy deeds that he hath done
Seem hostile all to hostile eyes ...
Better to die, and sleep
The never waking sleep, than linger on,
And dare to live, when the soul's life is gone.

-- from Sophocles' "Ajax". An appropriate quote for a man who made his career as Secretary of the Navy during the war -- incidentally, many see this passage as the root of Hamlet's soliloquy, another appropriate passage for a man caught in the middle of many 'slings and arrows'. Forrestal's death has been the source of controversy for decades; he himself was convinced that Israeli agents were spying on him which, it turned out, they were.
5. One of the greatest writers that Japan produced in the 20th century, Yukio Mishima was also a fanatical patriot who reverenced the ancient code of Bushido - the way of the warrior. In 1970 he publicly committed ritual suicide, or seppuku, in unusual circumstances. What were they?

Answer: On top of a barracks, after failing to rouse the soldiers to a coup d'état.

Mishima led a small clique of his students, called the 'Shield Society', on a visit to the commander of a local detachment of the National Defense Force. Taking the commander by surprise, they held him hostage and demanded that the troops be assembled to listen to Mishima's oratory.

When the troops refused to follow the writer in an uprising against what he viewed as the decadence and spiritual death of modern Japanese society, he cut open his stomach with the traditional tanto, or dagger. His great tetralogy, 'The Sea of Fertility' (a reference to a geographical feature of the Moon), exhibits many of his thoughts about the sterility of life in contemporary Japan.
6. Virginia Woolf's novels and essays show a refined, intellectual mind open to all the nuances of existence - but they also show that she knew great emotional pain and suffered from chronic anxiety and depression. It's well known that she tragically ended her life by filling her pockets with stones and wading into the River Ouse in 1941, but she also had plans to kill herself in another way. What was her alternate method?

Answer: Asphyxiating herself with fumes from the motor of her car.

Virginia and her husband, Leonard (who was Jewish) were both politically active and knew that they would be prime targets for the Nazis should they invade England - and in early 1941 it looked like they might do just that. Thus, they agreed to die together in the garage if the Germans landed; they did also get morphine (not barbiturates) from Adrian Stephen for a similar purpose. However, Virginia's suicide seems less related to contemporary events than to her lifelong struggle against mental illness. She wrote in one of her two suicide notes:

"I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came."
7. The poet Gérard de Nerval was born in 1808 as Gérard Labrunie. He renamed himself 'Nerval' in the belief that he was somehow descended from the Emperor Nerva. He translated Goethe's 'Faust' into French, earning praise from Goethe himself, and wrote a number of original poems filled with strange, dreamy, and macabre images. However, he gradually lost the ability to distinguish fact from fantasy, and became notorious for his bizarre activities. He was committed to an asylum, and eventually hanged himself. Which of the following was one of the peculiarities attributed to Nerval in the years before his death?

Answer: Walking a pet lobster on a leash through the gardens of the Palais Royal.

"Lobsters are the ideal pets," he is supposed to have said, "because they cannot bark, and they know the secrets of the sea." It may be apocryphal, but the tale of the lobster has become irrevocably bound to Nerval's name. Nerval's poetry can be haunting and beautiful (as in his 'Chimères'), and he was a devout believer in the idea of the 'Universal Soul'. Madness and melacholy sadly overtook Nerval, and he was found hanging from a grating covering a sewer vent (not from a lamp-post, as is often claimed).
8. Many great painters were afflicted with depression or outright psychosis, and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that intense creativity and the desire to annihilate the self are frequent companions. Which of the following artists did NOT kill himself?

Answer: Jackson Pollock

Van Gogh's is perhaps the most famous suicide in art history - he shot himself in a field while painting, before crawling back to the house where he was staying, to die. The brilliant Armenian-born painter Arshile Gorky hung himself in 1948, just as his career was beginning to take off. Mark Rothko's tranquil abstractions contrast with his inner life, which was turbulent and depressive; he slashed his wrists in 1970, not long after witnessing a Hopi animal sacrifice (which some speculate inspired him to his act). Pollock, although certainly self-destructive, died while driving from one bar to another on 11 August, 1956.
9. George Eastman seemed to have everything - the inventor of roll film, he was thereby the father of both the motion picture and modern photography. As founder of the Eastman Kodak Company, he was an immensely wealthy man, and he devoted much of his later life to philanthropy (including the establishment of the prestigious Eastman School of Music). Yet he shot himself in 1932, leaving a very terse suicide note. What did it say?

Answer: "My work is done. Why wait?"

Eastman gave away over $100 million during his lifetime, but he never married and found his social life was being restricted by his house-staff. In poor health, he had seen several of his close friends deteriorate physically and mentally, and many think he took his own life to avoid that fate for himself.
10. On 11 June, 1963, a 66 year-old Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc sat in a meditative posture in a busy intersection of Saigon, the capital of what was then South Vietnam. He had himself covered in petrol and set himself ablaze. He maintained his posture and continued to meditate while the flames consumed his clothes and body, and he died without moving or showing any signs of suffering. What provoked him to this incredible act of protest?

Answer: The South Vietnamese government's persecution of Buddhists.

Thich Quang Duc is regarded as a holy figure by many people living in Vietnam today. Forty days before his death, he wrote a letter to the government of Ngo Dinh Diem (who was a fanatical Catholic) pleading for an end to the official persecution of Buddhist monks and nuns and a respect for the traditional religion of the common people of Vietnam; in that letter, he also announced his intention to immolate himself as a way of drawing attention to the pressing urgency of his cause. Reportedly, his heart was not consumed by the flames, and today it is kept and venerated in a shrine.

A famous series of photographs of the event, taken by Michael Browne, serve as a moving reminder of human courage.
Source: Author cosmonaut

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor bloomsby before going online.
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