Q 01/05

Abraham Lincoln was coming down with smallpox when he gave which speech in November 1863?

A) The Cooper Union Address

B) The Second Inaugural

C) The Gettysburg Address

D) The House Divided Speech

Answer · why

C) The Gettysburg Address

The Gettysburg Address was followed by fever and a rash; his doctors called it mild 'varioloid', but a 2007 review argues he had full smallpox and the...

Q 02/05

Which Cambridge graduate, sent home by the plague of 1665, began his greatest discoveries at his Lincolnshire family home?

A) Edmond Halley

B) Robert Boyle

C) Robert Hooke

D) Isaac Newton

Answer · why

D) Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton later said a falling apple first gave him the notion of gravitation in those years, yet he published the theory only two decades later.

Q 03/05

The viral 2014 Ice Bucket Challenge raised some $220 million worldwide for research into which disease?

A) ALS

B) HIV

C) COPD

D) MS

Answer · why

A) ALS

ALS charities gained hugely, yet the challenge also drew criticism as a publicity stunt that wasted water.

Q 04/05

Anne Frank is believed to have died at Bergen-Belsen in early 1945 of which louse-borne disease?

A) Typhoid

B) Typhus

C) Tuberculosis

D) Cholera

Answer · why

B) Typhus

Typhus killed Anne and her sister Margot in February or March 1945, only weeks before British troops liberated Bergen-Belsen on 15 April.

Q 05/05

Twenty dog-sled teams relayed diphtheria antitoxin almost 700 miles across Alaska in 1925 to save which town?

A) Juneau

B) Sitka

C) Nome

D) Kodiak

Answer · why

C) Nome

Nome got its serum after Togo's team ran the longest and most dangerous stretches, yet the fame went to Balto, who led the final leg.