Q 01/05

Which queen apologised to her executioner for stepping on his foot on the way to the scaffold?

A) Marie Antoinette

B) Anne Boleyn

C) Mary, Queen of Scots

D) Lady Jane Grey

Answer · why

A) Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette said 'Pardonnez-moi, monsieur. Je ne l'ai pas fait exprès', 'I did not do it on purpose', on 16 October 1793; her most quoted line, '...

Q 02/05

Which former British Prime Minister is said to have declared 'I'm bored with it all' before slipping into a coma in 1965?

A) Harold Macmillan

B) Clement Attlee

C) Anthony Eden

D) Winston Churchill

Answer · why

D) Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill reportedly said it to his son-in-law Christopher Soames after his last stroke, then sank into a coma; he died on 24 January 1965, th...

Q 03/05

Which Irish wit reportedly said near death, 'My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death'?

A) Oscar Wilde

B) George Bernard Shaw

C) Samuel Beckett

D) William Butler Yeats

Answer · why

A) Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde, weeks before he died at the Hôtel d'Alsace in Paris on 30 November 1900; the popular short version is 'Either this wallpaper goes, or I d...

Q 04/05

Which revolutionary thinker, dying in London in 1883, supposedly snapped 'Last words are for fools who haven't said enough'?

A) Friedrich Engels

B) Karl Marx

C) Mikhail Bakunin

D) Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Answer · why

B) Karl Marx

Karl Marx supposedly snapped it at his housekeeper, though Engels, who called that afternoon, wrote only that Marx was left alone for two minutes and ...

Q 05/05

Which Spanish surrealist reportedly asked 'Where is my clock?' just before his death?

A) Pablo Picasso

B) Joan Miró

C) Luis Buñuel

D) Salvador Dalí

Answer · why

D) Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí painted the melting watches of The Persistence of Memory, which is why the line stuck to him, though where the story began is unclear.