"The 'Larry King' Quiz" OR "How I learnt that life is all about Xs and Ys, and sometimes even Zs"

1. "X" is a former Major League Baseball player and manager. He played almost his entire career for the New York Yankees and was elected to the baseball Hall of Fame in 1972. He was one of only four players to be named the Most Valuable Player of the American League three times and one of only six managers to lead both American and National League teams to the World Series.

"Y" is a fictional cuddly bear who appears in animated cartoons created by Hanna-Barbera Productions, who made his debut as a supporting character in The Huckleberry Hound Show.

The name "Y" is often seen as being derived from "X", though Hanna and Barbera denied this intent.

Identify "X" and "Y".

2. "X" noticed that, with the electric telegraph, news no longer required days or weeks to travel long distances. In 1850, the 34-year-old "X" was based in Aachen, close to the borders with the Netherlands and Belgium, and he began using the newly opened Berlin–Aachen telegraph line to send news to Berlin. However, there was a 76-mile (122 km) gap in the line between Aachen and Brussels, the Belgian capital city and the financial center of that country. "X" saw there was an opportunity to speed up news service between Brussels and Berlin by using homing pigeons to bridge that gap in the telegraph lines.

These were the humble beginings of which famous company?

3. "X" was an American radio and television broadcaster and entertainer who was sometimes introduced by his nickname, The Old Redhead. No television personality of the 1950s enjoyed more clout or fame than "X" until an on-camera incident undermined his folksy image and triggered a gradual decline; the then-ubiquitous "X" helmed two CBS-TV weekly series and a daily 90-minute television mid-morning show through most of the decade but by the early 1960s found himself reduced to hosting an occasional TV special. Arguably the most prominent of the medium's early master commercial pitchmen, he was strongly identified with one of his many sponsors, Lipton Tea.

4. "X", 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, was a British Prime Minister, parliamentarian, Conservative statesman and literary figure. He served in government for three decades, twice as Prime Minister. A teenage convert to Anglicanism, he was nonetheless the country's first and thus far only Prime Minister of Jewish heritage. He played an instrumental role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party after the Corn Laws schism of 1846.

His first novel is "Y", which includes the first use in print of the word "millionaire": "Were I the son of a Millionaire or a noble, I might have all".

Identify "X" and "Y".

5. "X" was a famous American singer and actor also known as "Ol' Blue Eyes".

His daughter "Y" is also a singer and actress. Her version of a particular song (see video) was used in the cult classic "Z".

Identify "X", "Y" and "Z".

6. This is an extract from a conversation:

-"What name are you going to use?"

-X said, "What are you talking about?"

-"Well, you can't use ______ Zeiger. It's ethnic. People won't be able to spell it out or remember it. You need a better name."

And thus was born one of television's most famous personalities. Who is he?