Those We Lost in 2009 Pt II Trivia Quiz

Answer: Elsie B. Washington

Washington's day job was as a journalist for various newspapers and magazines. "Entwined Destinies" was written whilst she worked as an associate editor on "Newsweek" magazine. The novel's storyline featured a young black female journalist and her encounter and subsequent romance with a black male oil executive.

It was to be the only novel that Washington was to publish although she was the author of two works of non-fiction. Her influence as a novelist opened up opportunities for African-American authors in the romance genre. Ultimately, this led to Brenda Jackson becoming the first black romance novelist to appear in the "New York Times" Best Seller lists in 2008.

Answer: Michael Jackson

Jackson was found unconscious in his bedroom by his personal physician, still alive but not breathing. The physician attempted to revive him but was unable to, so Jackson was taken to hospital where further resuscitation attempts were made. He was pronounced dead one hour later.

There was much speculation about the cause of Jackson's death right from the moment it was announced. Just 50 years old, Jackson had been in rehearsal for an eight-month series of live performances in London for which more than one million tickets had been sold. Much of the speculation centred around Jackson's intake of painkillers and drugs to combat his insomnia. In August 2009, the Los Angeles coroner declared Jackson's death to be a homicide. The cause of death was declared to be as a consequence of a mixture of anaesthetic and sedative drugs in his system.

Answer: M. Butterfly

Bernard Boursicot, the junior official in the French embassy, was unaware of Shi Pei Pu's secret for more than twenty years. Shi told him that he had been born as a woman but had been brought up by his mother as a boy. In order to keep up the pretence, Shi feigned a pregnancy just as Boursicot was due to return to France, producing a "son" on his return to Beijing four years later.

It wasn't until 1983, when Shi and his "son" visited Paris as part of a Beijing Opera tour, that the secret began to unravel. Both Shi and Boursicot were investigated by the French secret service over the passing of sensitive documents to the Chinese. Shi insisted still that she was a woman but the French authorities decided on a thorough gender test, after which he was sent to a male prison. When Boursicot heard the news on the radio in his prison cell, he attempted suicide. Both men were found guilty of espionage and were sentenced to six years in prison.

Answer: Walter Cronkite

The significant twentieth-century events that Walter Cronkite reported on for the United Press and as the anchor of the CBS evening news show are too many to list here, but amongst the more memorable were a scathing editorial on America's performance in Vietnam in 1968 that allegedly drew the comment from President Lyndon Johnson, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost Middle America."

Cronkite headed the evening news for eighteen years, in the course of which time he became a national icon and a much-loved personality. The epithet of "most trusted man in America" came from a poll conducted in 1972. A poll conducted by "Time" magazine shortly after Cronkite's death resulted in Jon Stewart being chosen as the nation's "most trusted newsreader".

Answer: World War I

Henry Allingham spent his last years making public appearances to highlight the sacrifices made by his generation in World War I. Allingham had joined the Royal Naval Air Service on the death of his mother in 1915, at the age of 19. His initial duties involved preparing aircraft for flight, and it was in this capacity that he served on HMS Kingfisher in the Battle of Jutland. In 1918, he became a founding member of the RAF. At the time of his death, Allingham had been the oldest man in the world for just short of thirty days and the oldest Briton ever.

Harry Patch was the last soldier alive to have served in the trenches of World War I. A gunner in the Light Infantry, Patch fought at the Battle of Passchendaele which began in July 1917, until he was injured and shipped home in September of that year. Having not talked about his experiences for decades after the war, Patch became a public and strident critic of war in his later years, describing the war that he had fought in as "nothing better than legalised mass murder", opining that "politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves".

Answer: Frank McCourt

"Angela's Ashes" was certainly not a light read but its unrelenting depiction of the hardships of living in a post-Depression Ireland made for a riveting story. His father's drunkenness, which robbed his family of what little income it made, the loss of three siblings and the dirty and damp home struck a chord with many readers but caused anger among others, particularly in Ireland. McCourt was challenged over the veracity of some of his recollections, not least by his own mother who claimed it was all "a pack of lies". Whatever the truth of his childhood may have been, the book he wrote was a phenomenal success, selling in the millions and winning McCourt the Pulitzer Prize in 1997.

Answer: Sir Bobby Robson

Robson's club managerial career saw him win many trophies. At Ipswich Town he brought the club its first ever FA Cup triumph which was followed three years later by their first European trophy, the UEFA Cup. He won two Dutch championships with PSV Eindhoven and two Portuguese titles with Porto. A brief spell as Barcelona head coach also saw him win the European Cup Winners' Cup.

Robson's tenure as England manager, however, was far from an unqualified success. His first tournament in charge saw England fail to qualify for the European Championships and his second tilt at the same competition saw the team exit the finals after losing all their games, despite going into the tournament as second favourites. He had a more successful time at the World Cup, taking England to the quarter finals in Mexico in 1986 where they were defeated by eventual champions, Argentina.

The 1990 World Cup finals were preceded by the announcement that Robson would be leaving the England job after the tournament to take up a managerial post at PSV, which led to accusations of treachery from the English press. Robson rode above the unfair criticism to lead England to their best ever performance in a world tournament away from home and end his tenure as a hero. His public standing grew even greater as he battled five times with cancer and set up a charitable foundation to fund various cancer projects in his native north-east England.

Answer: Corazon Aquino

Cory Aquino's entry into politics came as a result of her husband's murder. He was shot dead on the runway of the airport that has since borne his name as he returned to the country after three years of exile in the US. He had been exiled by President Ferdinand Marcos, of whom he was a fierce critic and political challenger, after six years in prison on trumped-up charges of murder and treason.

Following Benigno's death, Cory Aquino became involved in public demonstrations against the Marcos government. When Marcos surprisingly called a general election for 1986, Aquino was persuaded to stand against him. Hugely popular with the Philippine public, she was seen as the best bet for beating Marcos at the polls.

The initial declaration of the results had Marcos winning by a comfortable majority of around 1.6 million votes, whereas an independent election monitor had it that Aquino had won by around half that amount. The declaration prompted a series of peaceful demonstrations against Marcos and his authoritarian government, known as the "People Power Revolution". Each new demonstration saw the number of protesters rise and culminated in the capture of the government TV station, Channel 4. Eighteen days after the disputed election, Marcos stood down as President in favour of Aquino and fled to Hawaii. Aquino served as President for six years, the maximum allowed in the Philippine constitution.

Answer: Les Paul

Despite not having any expertise in the field, Paul started experimenting with electronics in the 1930s to try and warp the sound of a guitar. He also attempted to solve the problem of feedback on electric guitars by stuffing towels into their f-holes.

He learned musical instruments in a similar way, picking up the harmonica as a young child and teaching himself how to play it based on the musicians he heard on the radio. From the harmonica he moved on to learning the banjo and then the guitar, influenced mainly by the great jazz guitarist, Django Reinhold. His first solid-body guitar, which he nicknamed "the log" was completed in 1941, made from a block of wood, a neck taken from another guitar and some strings.

Answer: Ted Kennedy

Ted Kennedy was described in an obituary in the National Review as "a man with intense personal charisma, and he needed all of it." To have recovered from the events at Chappaquiddick in 1969, to be elected again to the Senate multiple times and to end his political career as the third-longest serving member of the Senate ever, shows that this charisma did indeed serve him well.

After a party on Chappaquiddick Island for the backroom staff of Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign of 1968, Kennedy offered a lift to one of the staff, Mary Jo Kopechne. According to the testimony given at the inquest, Kennedy took a wrong turn on the road leading away from the party and drove his car off a bridge into a tidal channel. Kennedy escaped the vehicle and fled the scene. Kopechne's body was found, still in the car, the next day. Though he withdrew from the 1972 presidential campaign due to the fallout from this incident, Kennedy did make one more attempt on the presidency in 1980. He stood against the incumbent Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination, but was unsuccessful.