Leading Ladies Trivia Quiz

Answer: Literature

Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlof became the first female writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature when she was awarded it in 1909 "in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writing". She was born on Marbacke, the family estate, in Varmland in western Sweden, where most of her stories are set. Excerpts from her first book "Gosta Berlings Saga" were published in 1890 in a journal running a literary competition which she won. Internationally, she is probably best known for "The Wonderful Adventures of Nils Holgersson" ("Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige"), a children's story about a boy who journeys round Sweden on the back of a goose.

In 1914 she became the first woman to be elected to the Swedish Academy, the body that is responsible for deciding the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was also the first non-mythical woman to be depicted on a Swedish banknote.

Of the incorrect answers, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Physics was Marie Curie. Elinor Ostrom was the first woman to be awarded the prize in Economics and Bertha von Suttner was the first female recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Answer: Break the sound barrier

On May 18 1953, at Rogers Dry Lake, California, Jacqueline Cochran became the first woman to break the sound barrier when she piloted a Canadair F-86 Sabre jet borrowed from the Canadian Royal Air Force at an average speed of 652 miles per hour.

Rising from a background of abject poverty in Florida, this former beautician and hairdresser turned pilot has a string of "firsts" to her name which mark her as one of the legendary aviators of all time. They include being the first woman to take off and land from an aircraft carrier; the first woman to win the Distinguished Service Medal, which she was awarded in 1945 for her services in World War II where she ran the Woman's Air Force Service Pilot's Programme. In 1971 she became the first woman to be inducted into the Aviation Hall of Fame. She died at her home in Indio, California in 1980.

Answer: Liberia

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was sworn in as the 23rd president of Liberia on 16 January 2006, becoming both the first female and the first black woman to be elected head of state in Africa. Born in Monrovia on 29 October 1938, she attended high school at the College of West Africa. She then moved to the United States to study, earning degrees from Madison Business College, the University of Colorado and Harvard.

Returning to Liberia, she served as Assistant Minister of Finance but was forced to leave in 1980 when the government was overthrown in a coup led by Samuel Doe. She again returned to Liberia in 1985, but was imprisoned for speaking out against the regime of Doe before settling in Washington DC in 1986. She supported the efforts of Charles Taylor to remove Doe from power but disagreed with his methods. She ran against him in the 1997 presidential elections and finished second. Charged with treason by Taylor, she went into self-imposed exile in Cote d'Ivoire. In 2005 she took over the leadership of the Unity Party and won that year's presidential election over footballer George Weah. She was reelected in the 2011 election.

In 2011, together with Leymah Gbowee of Liberia and Tawakkul Karman of Yemen, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Answer: Japan

On 16 May 1975 Junko Tabei from Japan became the first woman to scale the world's highest mountain when she and her Sherpa guide, Ang Tshering, reached the summit of Mount Everest. She was a member of the Japanese Women's Everest Expedition, a fifteen strong all-woman's team sponsored by the Japanese media to attempt to conquer Everest. Taking the same route along the South East Ridge used by Sir Edmund Hillary twenty two years earlier, Tabei had to overcome the injuries caused by an avalanche which had swamped her expedition's camp some twelve days earlier. This had left her buried in snow and she was rescued just in the nick of time by the guides.

Born in Fukushima Prefecture in Japan on 22 September 1939, Tabei climbed her first summit at the age of ten. After graduating with a degree in English and American Literature from Showa University, she formed the Joshi-Tohan (Ladies Climbing Club: Japan) in order to pursue her dreaming of climbing the world's highest summits. On 28 June 1992 she added a further record to her name when she became the first woman to complete the Seven Summits when she reached the top of Puncak Jaya in Indonesia.

Answer: Ella Fitzgerald

At the first Grammy Awards ceremony held on 4 May 1959 Ella Fitzgerald became the first African American woman to win a Grammy when she collected the awards for the Best Jazz Performance - Individual and the Best Vocal Performance - Female. These were the first two of the thirteen Grammy Awards and a Lifetime Achievement Award she would garner over her career.

Born in Newport News, Virginia on 25 April 1917, Ella Fitzgerald made her singing debut at Harlem's Apollo Theatre in November 1934 where she won the local amateur night competition. She joined the Chick Webb Orchestra the following year and in 1942 began her solo career. The rest as they say is history. She recorded over 200 albums and has sold over 40 million albums. She became known for her "Songbook" series in which she recorded the songs of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter and Duke Ellington amongst others. She was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Reagan in 1987 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George H W Bush.

In later life she suffered severe health problems including diabetes. She made her last recording in 1984 and gave her last public performance in 1991. She died at her home in Beverly Hills on June 15 1996.

Answer: International Monetary Fund

When she became the 11th Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund in July 2011, Christine Lagarde became the first woman to head the influential organization which was created to promote global monetary co-operation and stability. She was also the first woman to become the Finance Minister in both her native France and in any G-8 country.

Born Christine Lallouette in Paris, France on 1 January 1956, she is a former member of the French national synchronized swimming team and worked as an anti-trust and labour lawyer before joining the French government when she was appointed Minister for Foreign Trade in 2005. She then became Finance and Economies Minister in June 2007. In 2000, she was made a Chevalier (Knight) of the Legion d'Honneur.

Answer: Kathryn Bigelow

The 2009 Academy Award for Best Director was won by Kathryn Bigelow for her movie "The Hurt Locker. This was the first time a woman had triumphed in this category in the history of the Oscars. Born in San Carlos, California on 27 November 1955, Kathryn Bigelow was a talented painter who studied art at the San Francisco Art Institute and at the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program. She then earned a scholarship at Columbia University and switched to film making.

Her first film was the short movie "The Set Up" in 1978 and she made her first feature length film "The Loneless" with William Dafoe in 1981. She was married to the film director James Cameron of "Titanic" and "Avatar" fame from 1989 to 1991. Ironically, he was one of the nominees for Best Director in 2009 whom she beat to the prize.

Answer: Cross both polar caps to reach the North and South Poles

In February 1993 Ann Bancroft successfully led the American Women's Expedition across the ice to the South Pole thus becoming the first woman to cross both polar caps and reach the North and South Poles. She had previously reached the North Pole on 1 May 1986 as the only female member of the Will Steger International North Pole Expedition, the first woman to achieve this milestone. She also became the first woman to ski across Greenland from east to west, a feat she accomplished in 1991.

Born in Mendota Heights, Minnesota on 29 September 1955, Ann Bancroft gave up her position as a gym teacher at a Minnesota school in 1986 to follow her dream of polar exploration. In 2001 she added another record to her name when she and her partner, Liv Arneson, became the first women to ski across Antarctica when they completed a 2747 kilometre trek across the continent. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1995.

Answer: Nancy Astor

On 1 December 1919, the American-born Nancy Astor became the first woman to take up a seat as a Member of Parliament in the British House of Commons, although she was the not the first woman to be elected to that body. Constance Markievicz had been elected in the previous year's election, but did not take up her seat as she was a member of Sinn Fein and would not swear the oath to the King. Nancy Astor, standing for the Conservative Party, won a by-election in the constituency of Plymouth Sutton by beating the Liberal Party candidate, Isaac Foot. The seat had become vacant when its incumbent, Nancy's husband, Waldorf Astor, inherited the title of 2nd Viscount Astor, which put him in the House of Lords.

Born Nancy Langhorne in Danville, Virginia, she moved to England following a divorce and there met and married Waldorf Astor in 1906. Although she was faced with resentment because of her gender, she used her parliamentary role to campaign for temperance and woman's suffrage. This brought her into conflict with Winston Churchill who, for a long time, was known to disapprove of woman having the vote. The acerbic exchanges between the two are the subject of many a dinner party tale. During one such encounter, it is reputed that she told Churchill "If I were your wife, I would poison your tea" to which Mr Churchill replied "Madam, if I were your husband, I would drink it".

Answer: Baseball

Her gravestone is inscribed "She loved baseball" and, in 2006, Effa Manley was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Negro Leagues Committee, the first woman to be so honoured. Born in Philadelphia, Manley's racial background is uncertain but she was raised by her white mother and her black stepfather and she considered herself black. Together with her husband, Abe, she was the co-owner of the Newark Eagles in the Negro League from 1936 until his death in 1946 and continued as sole owner until 1948. She saw her team win the 1946 Negro League World series and a scrapbook she kept of her time in baseball now resides at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Active in the civil rights movement, Manley used both her position in baseball and the club to campaign for better deals for blacks. In 1934 through her Citizens for Fair Play organization, she organized a boycott of Harlem stores who refused to employ blacks using the slogan "Don't buy where you can't work". She was an advocate of better deals for players and with her 1944 sale of Monte Irvin to the New York Yankees, she established the precedent that MLB clubs had to honour the contracts of Negro League Clubs. She died in 1981 and is buried in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City.