Q 01/05

Abraham Lincoln was coming down with smallpox when he gave which famous 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 delivered while Lincoln was, modern clinicians believe, already incubating smallpox; a mild case with a rash followed withi...

Q 02/05

Which Cambridge graduate, sent home by the plague of 1665, worked out gravity at Woolsthorpe?

A) Edmond Halley

B) Robert Boyle

C) Robert Hooke

D) Isaac Newton

Answer · why

D) Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton spent the two plague years at his family home developing calculus, optics and the law of gravitation, all before he turned 25.

Q 03/05

The viral 2014 Ice Bucket Challenge raised $100 million in weeks for research into which disease?

A) ALS

B) HIV

C) COPD

D) MS

Answer · why

A) ALS

ALS, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, had been heard of by only half of Americans before the stunt, the ALS Association said. Monthly views of its Wi...

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 swept Bergen-Belsen in an epidemic that killed some 17,000 prisoners, and witnesses recalled Anne and her sister Margot showing symptoms by Feb...

Q 05/05

Which lead dog of musher Leonhard Seppala ran over 260 miles of the 1925 diphtheria serum relay to Nome?

A) Fritz

B) Laika

C) Balto

D) Togo

Answer · why

D) Togo

Togo covered far more of the trail than any other lead dog, across its most treacherous stretches, yet the news went to Balto, who ran the final leg. ...