Historical Figures Who Were Roommates
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Historical Figures Who Were Roommates — Daily trivia Sunday, July 26, 2026: questions and answers
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Q 01Which future two-time Oscar winner shared an apartment with Marilyn Monroe in the 1940s?
- AShelley Winters
- BEve Arden
- CGloria Grahame
- DThelma Ritter
Show answer
Shelley Winters
Winters later turned the stories into three bestselling memoirs, and said her wit and nerve gave her a love life to rival her old flatmate's.
Q 02Which future Microsoft CEO lived down the hall from Bill Gates at Harvard and beat him in a national maths contest?
- ASteve Ballmer
- BSatya Nadella
- CPaul Allen
- DSteve Case
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Steve Ballmer
He was hired as Microsoft's 30th employee and its first business manager in 1980, leaving a Stanford MBA unfinished to take the job.
Q 03John Lydon and John Ritchie squatted in Hampstead as teenagers. What did Lydon's pet hamster give Ritchie?
- AA stage costume
- BHis nickname
- CA criminal record
- DA broken finger
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His nickname
The hamster was called Sid, after Syd Barrett, and it bit Ritchie, who became Sid Vicious. Lydon himself was renamed Johnny Rotten by a bandmate over the state of his teeth.
Q 04Which future US Vice President shared a Harvard dorm room with the actor from *Men in Black*?
- AAl Gore
- BDick Cheney
- CJoe Biden
- DGeorge H.W. Bush
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Al Gore
They shared rooms in Dunster House in the late 1960s. Erich Segal said he based Oliver, the lead of Love Story, partly on the two of them, and Jones then played a Harvard student in the film.
Q 05Which actor met Danny DeVito at a Connecticut theatre centre in the 1960s and later shared his New York apartment?
- ARobert De Niro
- BAl Pacino
- CMichael Douglas
- DJack Nicholson
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Michael Douglas
They met at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, which Douglas's stepfather had helped found. Nearly twenty years later Douglas produced Romancing the Stone and cast his old flatmate in it.
Q 06What was available only on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at Paris's Beat Hotel?
- AHot water
- BElectricity
- CMail delivery
- DRoom keys
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Hot water
It was a 'class 13' hotel, the lowest legal grade, with one bathtub on the ground floor and bedspreads washed once a year, every spring.
Q 07Which third actor shared New York apartments with Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman in the 1960s?
- AJack Nicholson
- BRobert Duvall
- CJon Voight
- DJames Caan
Show answer
Robert Duvall
The three rotated through apartments in two-person combinations while none of them could get work. Hackman waited tables at Howard Johnson's, where a former instructor told him the job proved he would never amount to anything.
Q 08Which future author of On the Road shared a 1945 New York apartment with William S. Burroughs and Joan Vollmer?
- AJack Kerouac
- BAllen Ginsberg
- CNeal Cassady
- DGregory Corso
Show answer
Jack Kerouac
That apartment is where the Beat Generation effectively formed. Burroughs had met the group in 1943 and was the older, wealthier outsider among them.
Q 09Which New York School poet and art critic roomed with Edward Gorey at Harvard in the late 1940s?
- AJohn Ashbery
- BKenneth Koch
- CJames Schuyler
- DFrank O'Hara
Show answer
Frank O'Hara
Gorey studied French at Harvard after two years in the Army at a Utah proving ground. He and his roommate later helped found the Poets' Theatre in Cambridge with John Ashbery and Donald Hall.
Q 10Who was Byron's personal physician at Villa Diodati in 1816, author of the first modern vampire tale?
- AJohn Polidori
- BJoseph Bell
- CErasmus Darwin
- DThomas Beddoes
Show answer
John Polidori
The same three rainy days produced Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The Shelleys were only visitors, renting a smaller house on the waterfront nearby.
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