Trivia Scavenger Hunt #2

[rkd]

Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Monet all suffered physiological maladies. What might the maladies have had in common?

Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but all are said to have had eyesight problems which may have significantly influenced their work. Late in life, Monet had a significant problem (cateracts?) which caused his paintings to be more and more red. After he had an operation (in the early 1920s, I think), he was horrified to see some of his reddish work and ditched his recent paintings. Cezanne is also said to have had vision problems which influenced his style. In van Gogh's case, I've heard suggestions that he had vision problems, but the evidence of that is rather elliptical at best. Van Gogh may have suffered from visual hallucinations, but that's not the same kind of vision problem as that which affected Cezanne and Monet. That's my answer, no longer in white.

--Raj Dhuwalia, who'll try to come up with a question

[missbitesalot]

I was referring to Cezanne's diabetes, Monet's cataracts, and Van Gogh's mental problems.

[rkd]

Alright, here's a question -- apologies again for vagueness. What (unusual distinction?) does historian William Prescott have in common with an Archbishop of Canterbury from the reign of Aethelred the Unready?

--Raj Dhuwalia

P.S. Since my previous question was answered, I'll give a little more info on it. The Dramatic Oil Company was founded in (I think) 1863 by John Wilkes Booth and three fellow actors, and the company searched for oil in Pennsylvania. They had a well which produced a meager-but-not-terrible 25 barrels a day, but they wanted more to balance the investment they'd made. They hired a local fellow in mid-1864 to blow out the bottom of the well with dynamite, in hopes of greatly increasing the yield of the well. But the plan backfired, and not only did the well fail to improve, it no longer produced the 25 barrels a day any more. Booth had spent a lot of time and money in Pennsylvania, and he lost a bundle on the company. One imagines that the success of the company would have drastically affected Booth's actions of the following year. I think I remember seeing that one of the other three actors stayed in oil prospecting and hit it big six weeks after the assassination, but I'm not sure of that part.

[WendellWit]

<SARCASM>You know, I see a remarkable similarity between Dramatic Oil Company partner John Wilkes Booth and Planet Hollywood's part-owner Arnold Schwarzenegger... (On the other hand, Sylvester Stallone's "Rocky 37" movie might be considered self-assassination)</SARCASM>

[missbitesalot]

Alright, here's a question -- apologies again for vagueness. What (unusual distinction?) does historian William Prescott have in common with an Archbishop of Canterbury from the reign of Aethelred the Unready?

I think you have the wrong Lyfing in mind. Nothing coincides between the two persons you've mentioned (W. Prescott and, I deduced: Lyfing, Archbishop of Canterbury), however, Lyfing, the Abbot of Tavistock has 1 thing in common with William Prescott in that they both suffered obtuse eye injuries. Prescott lost much his vision from a piece of toast "lodging in his eye temporarily" and the Abbot's eyes were "put out so clumsily" that he later died from the injury.

[polarea]

Since raj hasn't corrected himself yet, I'm making an assumption (perhaps incorrect) that he intended his question as he worded it, but I haven't come up with anything better than that St. Dunstan and William H. Prescott both were said to have formative moments in complete darkness:

On William H. Prescott:

His visit to the Azores, which was constantly broken by confinement to a darkened room, is chiefly noteworthy from the fact that he there began the mental discipline which enabled him to compose and retain in memory long passages for subsequent dictation;

On St. Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury:

His mother, Cynethryth, a woman of saintly life, was miraculously forewarned of the sanctity of the child within her. She was in the church of St. Mary on Candleday, when all the lights were suddenly extinguished. Then the candle held by Cynethryth was as suddenly relighted, and all present lit their candles at this miraculous flame, thus foreshadowing that the boy "would be the minister of eternal light" to the Church of England.

St. Dunstan is also the patron saint of blind people, of which William H. Prescott was one due to getting a piece of stale bread lodged in his eye.

The only other guess that I have is that William H. Prescott and one of the Archbishops of Canterbury from way back then both have the dubious distinction of being traced relatives of George W. Bush. I can confirm the William H. Prescott bit, and given that GWB is traceably related to Charles the II of England, I'm guessing stretching the family tree back to the religious elite of the previous millenium wouldn't be too hard to do.

Is any of this close? Or am I looking in the wrong place? I've tried all the random things I can think of: I don't think they had the same biographer, or were played by the same actor in historical depictions. They also didn't have any dates or names in common that I can find. Maybe I'm missing something still though. Dunstan seems to be the most famous of the archbishops of canterbury from that reign, but maybe I'm looking at the wrong one. No eurekas yet for me on this one.

[missbitesalot]

I bet you got the right one, pola! I was an idiot for assuming it was Lyfing and no one else--he was the first one I found so I figured he was the one that rkd was talking about.

[rkd]

Sorry -- in retrospect, it's just a badly-phrased question for which I needed to find a third relevant person, and even the connection itself is tenuous. I'd forgotten the question was here, or I would have tried to fix it, or at least mention that the bread-corner-in-the-eye was the right feature of Prescott. The Archbishop I had in mind was Alphege (with various spellings), who was killed in 1012 by the Danes. The common element ... both were injured/killed by flying food. In Alphege's case, he was badly injured after months of imprisonment by the Danes when, at a feast, they pelted him with animal bones. But in Alphege's case, he was then killed via ax-to-the-head by a fellow supposedly named Thurm, or perhaps Thrum.

So that's that. My blanket apologies again -- I remember looking for a third notable person injured or killed in a foodfight, but I thought I'd held off on posting the question. D'oh.

[mshray]

At the risk of being presumptuous, but since there's no active question at the moment, and since getting killed & Planet Hollywood founders were already mentioned...

Who is the only actor* to have been killed on screen by all three action-hero founders of Planet Hollywood (Ahnold, Sly & Bruce)?

*as opposed to a stuntman, this person has had numerous TV & movie roles.

[polarea]

It's: Robert Patrick
He has the distinction of being the only actor killed on screen by all three of the Planet Hollywood founders: Bruce Willis (in Die Hard 2 (1990)), Sylvester Stallone (in Cop Land (1997)), and most famously by Arnold Schwarzenegger (in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)).



Cool question! There's no risk of being presumptuous. I've posted a few more questions on the original thread, but feel free to come up w/ questions any time they come to you. (I think I speak for everyone)