Trivia Quiz: Famous People Who Were Gone Too Soon

Just for fun, here’s a trivia quiz featuring 10 clues on people who died before age 50, with 5 bonus clues after that. Test yourself and score yourself but, please, don’t give away the answers in the comments!!

CASUALTIES OF WAR: Napoleon, Prince Imperial, the only son of Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie, died at age 23 in 1879 in the Anglo-Zulu War in what is now this country

EXPLORERS: He was one of the commanders of the Corps of Discovery that explored the Pacific Northwest from 1804 to 1806; the Grim Reaper came for him only 3 years later at age 35

MUSIC: This “Rhapsody in Blue” and “Porgy and Bess” composer is believed to have died at age 38 from a brain tumor that was diagnosed too late

RAP ARTISTS: This rapper and singer, who was featured on 50 Cent’s 2003 No. 1 hit “21 Questions”, passed away at age 41 from heart failure

OPERA: This French composer died of a heart attack at age 36, three months after the premiere of his opera “Carmen”

MARTYRS – Joan of Arc lost her life at the age of 19 in this French city

REWRITING HISTORY: A California Highway Patrolman disputes the 1955 sheriff-coroner’s jury’s verdict that this 24-year-old “East of Eden” star was speeding at the time of his fatal accident

LITERATURE: The youngest Brontë sister, at 29, she was the first to die a year after publishing “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall”

This “Raisin in the Sun” playwright left terra firma at the age of 34.

BONUS CLUES: Can you identify these people?

1. Poet Thomas Moore penned a mocking epitaph for this Lake Poet that begins: “Beneath these poppies buried deep, / The bones of Bob the bard lie hid”; the poem’s subject wasn’t even dead yet!

2. The remains of this popular Pope, who died in 1963, were placed in a glass coffin and put on display in St. Peter’s Basilica in 2001

3. “Died aug 2, 1876 by pistol shot age 39 years. Custer was lonely without him” is the inscription on the grave of this frontiersman and sometime army scout, who died six weeks after the Battle of Little Big Horn

4. “The Best is Yet to Come”, the title of a song this Hoboken, NJ native made popular in 1964, is engraved on his tombstone

5. One of the original “The Magnificent Seven” 1960 cast, his gravestone says “schauspieler” under his name, meaning “actor”

Scoring Suggestion:

11 to 15 Right: Go take the Jeopardy! test

5-10 Right: Study a little more, than go take the Jeopardy! test

1-6 Right: Do not take the Jeopardy! test