Tough Trivia, 5/19/21

Science for today’s Tough Trivia question: The Saturn V rocket stack was the super heavy-lift launch vehicle that took the US manned space program to the Moon. It was—and remains—the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful rocket brought to operational status. It holds the records for the heaviest payload launched and largest payload capacity to low Earth orbit (310,000 pounds). It is also, still, the only launch vehicle to carry humans beyond low Earth orbit. Fifteen were built, but only thirteen were flown, all launching from Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, between November 9, 1967 (the uncrewed Apollo 4) and May 14, 1973 (Skylab). Do you know how tall it was? How heavy? And what percentage of the stack actually returned to Earth from the Apollo missions to the Moon?

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Rembrandt_Harmensz._van_Rijn_132
Rembrandt

Yesterday’s question was: It seems our most famous artists are either mononymous or pseudonymous, but before they were artists, they were children who were given full names by their parents. How many of these noms d’art can you fill out as they would have appeared on their birth certificates (if birth certificates had been a thing when and where they were born): Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, El Greco, Rembrandt, Hokusai, Hiroshige, Grandma Moses, Toulouse-Lautrec, Erté, Christo, Jeanne-Claude?

The answers are:

Donatello: Donato di Niccolo di Betto Bardi (born circa 1386, lived his whole life in Florence, died December 13, 1466)

Michelangelo: Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (born March 6, 1475 in Caprese, Republic of Florence [now Tuscany, Italy]; died in Rome on February 18, 1564)

Raphael: Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (born March 28 or April 6, 1483, in Urbino, Italy; died April 6, 1520, in Rome)

Titian: Tiziano Vecelli (born circa 1488–1490, lived his whole life in Venice, died August 27, 1576)

El Greco: Domenikos Theotokopoulos (born in Heraklion, Crete, on October 1, 1541; died in Toledo, Spain, on April 7, 1614)

Grandma_Moses_NYWTS
Grandma Moses in 1953.

Rembrandt: Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (born in Leiden, Dutch Republic, on July 15, 1606; died in Amsterdam, Dutch Republic, on October 4, 1669)

Hokusai: Katsushika Hokusai (born about October 31, 1760, lived his whole life in Edo, Japan, died May 10, 1849)

Hiroshige: Utagawa Hiroshige (born in 1797, lived his whole life in Edo, Japan, died on October 12, 1858)

Grandma Moses: Anna Mary Robertson Moses (born in Greenwich, Connecticut, on September 7, 1860; died in Hoosick Falls, New York, on December 13, 1961)

Toulouse-Lautrec: Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa (born in Tarn, France on November 24, 1864; died in Saint-Andre-du-Bois, France, on September 9, 1901)

Erté: Romain de Tirtoff (born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on November 23, 1892; died in Paris, France, on April 21, 1990)

Christo: Christo Vladimirov Javacheff (born in Gabrovo, Bulgaria, on June 13, 1935; died in New York City on May 31, 2020)

Jeanne-Claude: Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebohn (born in Casablanca, Morocco, on June 13, 1935; died in New York City on November 18, 2009). Christo and Jeanne-Claude met in Paris, discovered that they shared a birthday, and created installation art projects together for the rest of their lives.

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Ian’s Tough Trivia is a daily feature of this blog (Monday’s category is History; Tuesday is Arts; Wednesday is Science; Thursday is Entertainment; and Friday is Grab Bag). Each day, I post a tough question, as well as the answer to the previous day’s question. Simply comment on this post with your answer. I’ll approve the comments after the next question is posted. Sure, you can probably find the answers by searching the web, but what’s the fun in that?

And if you’ve got a favorite trivia question—or even just a topic for which you’d like to see a question—let me know! Reader participation is warmly encouraged.

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