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30 Cultural Icons

Can you name the cultural icons from their descriptions?


Cultural Icons Quiz

  1. He became NASA's first civilian astronaut to fly in space as command pilot of Gemini 8 in 1966.
  2. Credited with renaming the "backslide" to the moonwalk, which became his signature move.
  3. Artist who created a painting of the bombing of Guernica by German and Italian air forces during the Spanish Civil War.
  4. American lead vocalist and primary songwriter of the rock band Nirvana.
  5. She was crowned the "Queen of Soul" by disk jockey Pervis Spann in 1968.




  6. Best known for her role in the Montgomery bus boycott and her refusal to give up her seat.
  7. Screen legend born in Belguim who rose to fame in the 1953 film Roman Holiday.
  8. Play tap dancer Jerry Travers in the 1935 American musical comedy film Top Hat.
  9. Won the Pulitzer Prize for a 1956 volume of short biographies called "Profiles in Courage".
  10. Austrian neurologist who established psychoanalysis in the early 1890s.
  11. Won the Nobel Peace Prize on October 14, 1964.
  12. American singer and lead vocalist of rock band the Doors.
  13. Lawyer who served as the president of the ANC party from 1991 to 1997.
  14. Born Archibald Leach in 1904 in Bristol.
  15. Born in San Francisco in 1940 while his parents were visiting the city and sadly died on July 20, 1973, at the age of 32.
  16. Portrayed Jezebel in a 1926 film which won her a second Academy Award for Best Actress.
  17. Her image appeared on the reverse of the ten pound banknote from 1975 until 1994.
  18. Best remembered for organising the UK suffragette movement and founded the Women's Social and Political Union.
  19. The first person and the only woman to win the Nobel Prize twice.
  20. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as "arguably the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music".
  21. Founding father of artificial intelligence and during the Second World War worked for Britain's codebreaking centre.
  22. Known as the "Master of Suspense" and for his cameo roles in most of his films.
  23. Member of the the Bloomsbury Group who also wrote the 1925 novel Mrs Dalloway.
  24. The quotation "in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes" is often misattributed to this icon of popular culture.
  25. Mexican painter known for her art inspired by the country's popular culture who sadly died in 1954.
  26. Highly paid character actor in supporting roles, such as Jor-El in Superman and as Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now.
  27. British-Jamaican nurse and businesswoman who set up the "British Hotel" during the Crimean War.
  28. Eric Arthur Blair was better known by this pen name.
  29. The Persistence of Memory is a 1931 painting by this artist.
  30. The honorific "great-souled" or "venerable" was first applied to this cultural icon in 1914 in South Africa.

Answers

  1. Neil Armstrong
  2. Michael Jackson
  3. Pablo Picasso
  4. Kurt Cobain
  5. Aretha Franklin
  6. Rosa Parks
  7. Audrey Hepburn
  8. Fred Astaire
  9. John F. Kennedy
  10. Sigmund Freud
  11. Martin Luther King Jr.
  12. Jim Morrison
  13. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
  14. Cary Grant
  15. Bruce Lee
  16. Bette Davis
  17. Florence Nightingale
  18. Emmeline Pankhurst
  19. Marie Curie
  20. Jimi Hendrix
  21. Alan Turing
  22. Alfred Hitchcock
  23. Virginia Woolf
  24. Andy Warhol
  25. Frida Kahlo
  26. Marlon Brando
  27. Mary Seacole
  28. George Orwell
  29. Salvador Dalí
  30. Mahatma Gandhi (Mahatma means "great-souled" or "venerable" in Sanskrit)