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People in History by Wikipedia Descriptions #2

Can you name these people in history by excerpts from their Wikipedia pages?
Some excerpts have been altered slightly
Quiz by Quizmaster
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Last updated: September 25, 2019
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First submittedSeptember 24, 2019
Times taken27,058
Average score61.1%
Rating4.28
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Excerpt
Person
On the Ides of March, 44 BC, he was assassinated by a group of rebellious senators.
Julius Caesar
At 5 feet 2 inches, he was the height of an average French male.
Napoleon
Victory in the 1982 Falklands War and the recovering economy brought a resurgence
of support, resulting in her decisive re-election in 1983.
Margaret Thatcher
He became an ardent proponent of Rastafari, taking its music out of the socially
deprived areas of Jamaica and onto the international music scene.
Bob Marley
As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod and bifocals.
Benjamin Franklin
By his request, his body was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in Mongolia.
Genghis Khan
Xenophon and Plato agree that he had an opportunity to escape.
Socrates
The common term lesbian originates from the name of the island
of Lesbos, where she was born.
Sappho
She was the first woman to head a TV production company: Desilu, which she
had formed with Arnaz.
Lucille Ball
Her costume, consisting of only a girdle of artificial bananas, became her most
iconic image and a symbol of the Jazz Age.
Josephine Baker
He later became troubled with the institution of slavery and freed his slaves in a 1799 will.
George Washington
He gave Cortés the gift of an Aztec calendar, one disc of crafted gold and another of silver.
Cortés later melted these down for their monetary value.
Montezuma
Many historians and scholars regard him as the prime exemplar of the "Renaissance Man".
Leonardo da Vinci
Most European navigators reasonably concluded that a westward voyage from
Europe to Asia was unfeasible.
Christopher Columbus
... a scandal caused by her extramarital affair with co-star Richard Burton.
Elizabeth Taylor
Although he did not invent the automobile or the assembly line, he developed the first
automobile that many middle-class Americans could afford.
Henry Ford
After a reputed 49 days of meditation, he is said to have attained Enlightenment.
Buddha
He was a conservative Prussian statesman who dominated German and
European affairs from the 1860s until 1890.
Otto von Bismarck
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40 Comments
travelfan
+3
Level 67
Sep 24, 2019
Remembered Josephine Baker's last name just as the counter hit zero. Damnit.
Danno
+8
Level 68
Dec 23, 2019
I kept trying to type Carmen Miranda.
buck1017
+2
Level 78
Jun 16, 2021
HAHA. Me too
islabonita
+4
Level 45
Sep 25, 2019
The Christopher Columbus question is posed as a statement not a question.
Yanni47
+13
Level 78
Sep 25, 2019
Technically, none of these "questions" are questions, but statements taken from Wikipedia. What islabonita means is, the Columbus statement doesn't directly refer to him - or anyone - as a person.
cornflakesfu
+8
Level 87
Sep 27, 2019
And yet 80% of people still get that one right. Not a direct description of Columbus, no, but still a fairly transparent reference to him.
CMC315
+1
Level 59
Jan 31, 2021
I agree. That question is phrased very poorly. Just because people still answered correctly doesn't change that.
Dimby
+2
Level 79
Feb 25, 2022
It’s a quote from the Wikipedia page for the person, not a question.
Jango
+1
Level 64
Feb 26, 2022
Agree! All you'd need to do is add something like 'he proved them wrong'
HTownBoyz
+4
Level 52
Dec 23, 2019
Why is Khan not accepted for Ghengis Kahn If I can use Colombia for Christopher Colombus?
YantheMan
+4
Level 66
Dec 23, 2019
"Khan", I believe, is a title, like King.
camus
+7
Level 78
Dec 23, 2019
I imagine the following Wikipedia description: "Genghis Kahn, who emerged from a fusion between Genghis Khan and Oliver Kahn, is known as the most aggressive entity in the history of mankind."
bkemp2001
+1
Level 61
Dec 25, 2019
When it didn't accept Khan, I figured he must not be the right answer. Glad I'm not the only one.
TheCrusher
+3
Level 71
Jan 11, 2020
Did that incur your wrath?
Lemondance
+3
Level 67
Jul 16, 2021
I find it weird that standard Jetpunk procedure is to accept "Caesar" for Julius (and others) but not "Khan" for Genghis (and others), given they are both titles. (For the record, I think no titles should be accepted except for Christ since most people don't even know that's a title)
FunGhoul
+3
Level 53
Feb 25, 2022
For dear old Julius, it was, in fact, his name. The title came later and was a reference to him. The only-known-by-his-title-guy is Augustus (Octavian).
MrMagoo
+2
Level 84
Feb 25, 2022
For that matter, why is Temujin not accepted either?
teke
+8
Level 65
Dec 23, 2019
Napoleon's height of 5 feet 2 was from the old French measurement or 168.9 centimeters, so he wasin fact 5 feet 6 1/2 using the imperial measurements of the UK and the USA. Not very short by today's standards and a little over average for the France of his day.
Tramp
+5
Level 76
Feb 28, 2020
People always point out that Napoleon was of an average height for his day, but that was when the majority of French men were malnourished peasants. He probably WAS short for a member of the aristocracy.
brandybuck96
+3
Level 83
Sep 28, 2021
Same logic as the thing whereby life expectancies were low throughout history thanks to high infant mortalities. If you made it out of childhood, you had a decent chance of living to quite an old age.
Quizmaster
+2
Level ∞
Nov 18, 2021
That's not really true @brandybuck96. It's somewhat correct in that a person who made it to age 5 might expect to live well past the "life expectancy" of 25 or whatever.

But, until recently, very few people ever made it to age 80. Mortality was higher at all ages, and people dying in their 30s, 40s, and 50s was quite common.

FunGhoul
+2
Level 53
Feb 25, 2022
Also, Fun Fact, a high child mortality is not necessarily documented for most periods of history, but instead a projection backwards from the less pleasant episodes of modernity, when childrens' deaths were first systematically recorded. It was often just assumed that earlier epoches must have been worse due to a progress narrative. There are certainly not enough child skeletons in graveyards and burial grounds to support it.

That propably does something to the statistics.

raneman11
+1
Level 67
Feb 25, 2022
Most periods of history don't have recordings. I can assure you the ones that do have a way higher child mortality rate than what we have today. And that's just normal years, not during famines or plagues or wars, all three of which had a tendency to be comorbid.
brandybuck96
+2
Level 83
Jan 16, 2023
@QM I said "quite an old age" as a relative statement. I didn't mean that people were routinely living into their 80s. Just that the life expectancy is vastly skewed and that plenty of people lived well past it.
Marla0
+1
Level 21
May 11, 2022
I'm from France and have never heard such a weird way of speaking about Napoleon's height! (I mean: comparing it to average french people of that time). Never!

Really wonder how that comes from... Did american people build some legend on that?!

jennywren21
+4
Level 63
Dec 24, 2019
Playing Civilization helped with more than a couple of answers.
elcampeador
+3
Level 79
Nov 16, 2021
I feel like Josephine Baker is wildly out of place here.
Quagga50
+1
Level 83
Feb 25, 2022
Meh, after looking her up, she seems to be about as famous as a few other answers, but her fame just happens to be concentrated mostly in Europe.
sciencyguy
+3
Level 46
Feb 27, 2022
Unfortunately, that's a pretty common misconception in the US. In fact, she leveraged her original exotic/erotic appeal into a life of service and innovation...but she couldn't bring it to the US because segregation and racism made it impossible for her to do so...even though she had served the US military during WWII as a courier.
JWatson24
+2
Level 71
Dec 20, 2021
I know this may be controversial... but I think that statement says a lot about Washington compared to some of the other Founding Fathers. Looking at his Wikipedia page, his view of slaves changed significantly between the beginning of his life, when he was just like any other Southerner, and the end of his life, where he fully committed to abolition and freed his slaves. He also, relative to other people of his time, didn't necessarily see black people as inferior; he employed black doctors and soldiers and said that black people deserve to be educated and given citizenship.

Compare to Jefferson, who had an belief that black people were inherently inferior, had a relationship with Sally Hemmings, and sold most of his slaves in his will to pay off his debts. I'll grant that Jefferson's views were also complicated, but at the end of the day I feel like he was a slaveowner through and through who would have never been able to do what Washington did.

spingospungo
+2
Level 57
Aug 24, 2022
His grand morality would be rather more convincing if he'd freed them before he died.
GrammarBeane1
+2
Level 83
Feb 25, 2022
I couldn't manage to spell Montezuma well enough to be accepted before time ran out :-(
SpartanLlama
+1
Level 70
Feb 25, 2022
Missed Liz Taylor, Sappho, and Josephine Baker
martay
+1
Level 70
Feb 25, 2022
Well, the good news is you probably know them better now. Supposedly, using an individual's name shortly after learning it will help you remember it in the future.
Azerk
+1
Level 65
Feb 25, 2022
Completely forgot how to spell Sappho
AlexThirkell
+1
Level 75
Feb 25, 2022
It's like this: S - A - P - P - H - O
Feech
+2
Level 49
Feb 26, 2022
Still hate her
hampterGD
+1
Level 45
Feb 26, 2022
i knew it was buddha but i thought i had to write his normal name which i couldnt remember
cledun2
+1
Level 91
Jul 24, 2024
Napoleon was 5 foot 6 inches
DarthKnight
+1
Level 86
Oct 12, 2024
I'm very happy to see that 97% of people the first name of Mr. Dynamite.
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