LongeCity - Longevity History Trivia

Historically, the pursuit of longevity has been full of interesting and unexpected facts. How well do you know the following six?

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The man credited to be the father of gerontology, the science that studies the causes of aging, was Russian. Which of these people was it, and why?
Biologist Nikolai Koltsov, because of his studies on cellular aging
Geneticist Sergei Chetverikov, because he discovered the first aging-promoting genes
Zoologist Élie Metchnikoff, because he came up with the word "gerontology" itself
Vladimir Putin, because of his ability to give everyone grey hair

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Élie Metchnikoff was a fervent life extensionist who thought that aging should be treated like any other disease. He had his own hypothesis about what causes us to age. What did he think was the reason?
He theorized a constant struggle between functional and harmful tissues
He firmly believed that aging evolved as a way of ensuring genetic diversity
He attributed aging primarily to oxidative stress
He thought it was caused by hearing too often that death is natural and good

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We humans have sought rejuvenation for nearly as long as we've existed, and, historically, attempts to induce rejuvenation consisted in rather bizarre practices by today's standards, including injections of dog testicle extracts. Why was it thought that this might produce rejuvenation?
Sex glands were thought to contain a hypothetical "vitality substance" that allowed newborns to be born young, despite their parents being much older
Because they could supplement deficient hormones
They were thought to contain young, more efficient immune cells that would then take over in the recipient's body and clear out unwanted waste products
Because of faith: it was a dog-ma

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Humanity's first great work of literature was the Epic of Gilgamesh, in which the title character, the king of Uruk, journeyed in search of a mythical item that could confer eternal youth. What was this item?
A flower growing underwater
The water flowing out of from a legendary spring atop the Cedar Mountain
The fruit of a magical cedar tree in the Cedar Forest that was always young
A sporty new car

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Another weird try at attaining eternal youth and even immortality was allegedly what caused the untimely death of the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang. How did the emperor kill himself in an attempt to cheat death?
He swallowed a pearl that he ordered his servant to find, and choked on it
He underwent repeated bloodlettings more and more frequently as he aged in order to eliminate the toxins that his physicians thought would accumulate with time
He ingested mercury pills prepared by his alchemists and court physicians
He took calorie restriction a step too far and took on eating only every other year

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According to a Greek myth, Tithonus was the lover of the goddess of dawn, Eos, who pleaded with Zeus to make Tithonus immortal so that they could be together forever. However, while Zeus did grant Tithonus immortality, he did not grant eternal youth. What was the consequence of this?
He embarked on a journey to find the fountain of youth and found it; he then boasted about how he had fooled Zeus, which angered the father of the gods to the point that he struck him down with a thunderbolt
He lived forever, but kept becoming more and more frail, and, according to some tellings, he then became a cricket constantly begging for death
He lived for several hundred years in increasing misery, until Zeus took pity and made him mortal again, the whole episode being a lesson that Zeus wanted to impart to Eos
Both he and Zeus died of exhaustion as they bickered endlessly about how being immortal without eternal youth is a physical impossibility

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