Trivia Quiz: Identify These People

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Tell who these people are/were:

  1. Abe Fortas
  2. Cubby O’Brien
  3. Eddie Gaedel
  4. Fritz Haber
  5. Rene F. A. Sully Prudhomme
  6. George Wunder
  7. Helaine Lembeck
  8. Grace Hopper
  9. Harriet Tubman
  10. Beverly Cleary
2

  1. Grace Hopper - One of the early computer pioneers. She developed the first compiler, and is also famous for the first computer “bug” which was literally a moth that got stuck between relay contacts. I have a copy of the famous “bug” page from her notes hanging in my cubicle.

  2. Harriet Tubman - a former slave who became a prominant figure in the “underground railroad”

I’m drawing a blank on the rest.

3

!. Abe Fortas - SUpreme Court Justice
10. Beverly Cleary - Author of the Henry Huggins series of childrens books

4

The only ones I know of are Beverly Cleary (“Ribsy!”) and Harriet Tubman, the Underground Railroad lady.

I’m not a Yank, by the way.

5

This one is easy for me : French poet (19th century)

6

[QUOTE=dougie_monty]
Tell who these people are/were:

  1. Abe Fortas - Former SCOTUS justice.

  2. Cubby O’Brien - Original Mouseketeer.

  3. Grace Hopper - First female programmer (?)

  4. Harriet Tubman - Underground Railroad heroine.

  5. Beverly Cleary - author of the Ramona series and the Henry Higgins books.

7

And I’ll take bad coding for $1000, Alex.

8

Supreme Court justice

Star of the Mickey Mouse show

Only midget to play in major league baseball history

Synthesized ammonia

Won the first Nobel Prize in Literature

Did comic strips

Actress, appeared in “Welcome Back, Kotter”

Worked with computers

Assisted with running the Underground Railroad

Kids’ book author

And no, I didn’t cheat.

9

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper is best known as the creator of COBOL.

10

There is a story, which may or may not be true, that Admiral Hopper originated the use of the word ‘bug’ to describe errors in a computer program. The story goes that something wasn’t working right, and she ascribed the error to the presence of a moth flitting around inside the computer cabinet.

11

Yes, I guess we aren’t allowed to cheat (search engines, books) so I am making this entry from memory.
I remember reading about Fritz Haber in one of Isaac Asimov’s book of science facts. Mr Haber was an early (if not the first) experimenter in chemical warfare. He worked on the German side in World War I. He devised a method (the Haber process ?) whereby, a HUGE amount of chlorine gas could be produced on a level that made it practical to be used as a lethal battlefield weapon. Despite Haber’s best efforts :rolleyes: , Germany still lost. There’s more.
Eventually, when the Nazis gained power, Fritz Haber fell out of Germany’s good graces (he was Jewish) and I believe he fled to England. He was then involved with working with allied scientists, who needless to say hated his guts. I believe he died shortly thereafter.
More information than anyone probably ever wanted to know about Fritz Haber. (Voted LEAST likely to win the Nobel Peace Prize in his high school yearbook :smiley: )

12

Just curious, but what’s the connection among all these people? Or is it up to us to guess?

13

Heh, Ammoniac. Haber won the Nobel Prize for the Haber Ammonia Process that synthesized ammonia. It’s better known today as the Haber-Bosch Process after Bosch further developed it for industrial scale.

Germany got most of it’s fertilizer from bat guano in South America (I think this is correct, it’s been a long time) and the Haber-Bosch Process allowed them to synthesize ammonia to use as fertilizer instead of shipping bat guano.

14

The honor of first female programmer (and first programmer as well) generally goes to Lady Ada Lovelace. The programming language “ADA” is named after her.

Here is the “bug” page from Grace Hopper’s notes. You can see the actual moth taped to the page, with the inscription “relay #70 panel F (moth) in relay”.

While generally accepted as the first computer “bug” it appears that the term was in use before then. Grace herself wrote “first actual case of bug being found” in her notes, which implies that they were using the term before then and this happened to be the first one where the bug actually turned out to be a bug.

15

You’re correct, wolf_mersier. :slight_smile:
Before World War I, Germany, like most other countries, bought nitrates from Chile–the Atacama Desert, then as now, was a major source of nitrates for fertilizers and explosives.
But then World War I started and the British controlled the seas. Germany was blockaded from shipping nitrates fronm Chile. They started running low on material for explosives, and Haber worked out a process to heat hydrogen under pressure, with certain metals as catalysts, in air, causing it to combine with the nitrogen in air and produce ammonia.
Haber wouldn’t have been able to win the Nobel Prize anyway, after a few years: When German pacfist Carl von Ossietzky won the Peace Prize for exposing Hitler’s secret re-armament, Hitler forbade Germans to accept the Nobel Prizes.
Here’s another ten:

  1. Tenzing Norkhay
  2. Marc Connelly
  3. Arch Ward
  4. John Rutledge
  5. Robert Webber
  6. Simon Rodia
  7. Sam Ervin
  8. Adah Isaacs Menken
  9. Gladys Emerson Cook
  10. Mac Brazel (sp?)
16

  1. Tenzing Norgay was the sherpa who reached the Everest summit with Hillary.

  2. Mack Brazel was the ranch hand who reported the Roswell, NM UFO.

That’s the only ones I know, non Google

17

Oh, 7. Sam Ervin was the head of the Nixon Watergate investigation IIRC.

18

Arch Ward was a sportswriter (don’t remember which paper - St. Louis Post-Dispatch?)who first came up with the idea for the MLB All Star game.

Gladys Emerson Cook - my mother’s favorite artist. Famous for painting cats, IIRC.

19

Ward was from Chicago.
As for Ms. Cook :slight_smile:

20

Tenzing was the Sherpa who guided Hillary to the top of Mt Everest.