Posthumous Credit
This Serbian-American inventor developed AC electricity but died broke while Edison took most of the fame.
Who is Nikola Tesla?
This French word, meaning "already seen," describes the eerie feeling that you've experienced something before.
What is Déjà Vu?
This Italian dictator invented modern fascism, allied with Hitler, and was executed and hung upside down in a Milan plaza by his own citizens.
Who is Benito Mussolini?
This large, flightless bird went extinct in the 17th century and is now synonymous with extinction itself.
What is the Dodo?
This video game, released in 1980, features a yellow circle eating dots while being chased by ghosts.
What is Pac-Man?
This scientist's X-ray images of DNA were used without her knowledge to confirm the double helix structure.
Who is Rosalind Franklin?
This Japanese word describes the art of finding beauty in imperfection and impermanence, like a cracked bowl repaired with gold.
What is Wabi Sabi?
This Cambodian leader, inspired by Maoist ideology, evacuated entire cities and oversaw the genocide of nearly 2 million people in the 1970s.
Who is Pol Pot?
This species of hairy mammal went extinct around 4,000 years ago, with the last population surviving on a remote Arctic island.
What is the Woolly Mammoth?
This 1986 nuclear disaster in Soviet Ukraine released radiation across Europe and is considered the worst nuclear accident in history.
What is Chernobyl?
This Austrian monk's pea plant experiments sat unread for 35 years before becoming the basis of genetics.
Who is Gregor Mendel?
This Spanish word, literally meaning "little war," entered English to describe a specific type of irregular warfare.
What is Guerilla?
This North Korean founder and "eternal president" established one of the most isolated and oppressive regimes in modern history, still ruling through his dynasty today.
Who is Kim Il-Sung?
This prehistoric shark, whose name means "big tooth," went extinct around 3.6 million years ago and could grow up to 60 feet long.
What is the Megaladon?
This Michael Jackson album, released in 1982, became the best-selling album of all time.
What is Thriller?
This mathematician wrote the first algorithm for Babbage's unbuilt computer, recognized as the first programmer only after her death.
Who is Ada Lovelace?
This French word for a small cafe or bar became standard English for a casual dining spot.
What is Bistro?
This Ugandan dictator, self-proclaimed King of Scotland, expelled all Asians from Uganda in 1972 and is estimated to have killed 500,000 of his own people.
Who is Idi Amin?
This large flightless bird native to New Zealand was hunted to extinction by Polynesian settlers around 1300 CE, the largest bird to ever walk the earth.
What is the Moa?
This space shuttle disaster in 1986, watched live by millions of schoolchildren, led to a complete overhaul of NASA's safety protocols.
What is Challenger?
This Indian mathematician mailed groundbreaking theorems to Cambridge from obscurity, with his notebooks still being studied today.
Who is Srinivasa Ramanujan?
This Arabic word, literally meaning "the chemistry," gave English the name of an entire scientific field.
What is Alchemy?
This Romanian dictator ruled for 24 years before being tried and executed by firing squad alongside his wife on Christmas Day 1989.
Who is Nicolae Ceaușescu?
This reptile named Lonesome George was the last of his subspecies when he died in 2012.
What is the Pinto Island Tortoise?
This Soviet leader, who came to power in 1985, introduced the policies of Glasnost and Perestroika that ultimately led to the collapse of the USSR.
Who is Mikhail Gorbachev?