This LL Study Guide spans global football politics, record‑breaking streaming TV, Olympic dominance, medieval dynastic branding, dark fairy‑tale morals, and Irish traditional music. Gianni Infantino’s 2016 election to lead FIFA, the 211‑member world governing body for association football, beach soccer, and futsal, anchors the current‑events angle. On the pop‑culture side, USA Network’s legal drama Suits (2011–2019) found a second life on streaming in 2023, racking up 57.7 billion viewing minutes and edging out The Office’s 2020 record. The sports history question revisits hurdler Edwin Moses’s surreal 122‑race undefeated streak in the 400‑meter hurdles between 1977 and 1987.

The history and literature questions probe how the Plantagenet dynasty (from Henry II’s accession in 1154 through the cadet branches of Lancaster and York) set the stage for the Wars of the Roses, and how Charles Perrault’s 1697 Little Red Riding Hood distilled anxieties about sexual predation into a grim cautionary tale without any last‑minute rescue. Finally, Irish cultural history appears via The Chieftains, the traditional band founded in Dublin in 1962 by piper Paddy Moloney and named—on poet John Montague’s suggestion—after his 1964 short‑story collection Death of a Chieftain.

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Study Notes

Question 1: FIFA and Gianni Infantino

In February 2016, Swiss-born attorney Gianni Infantino was elected president of what international association, winning re-election in 2019 and 2023?

Core fact: Gianni Infantino has been president of FIFA, the international governing body for association football, since his first election on 26 February 2016; he was re‑elected on 5 June 2019 and again by acclamation at the 73rd FIFA Congress in Kigali, Rwanda, on 16 March 2023.

FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) is a self‑regulating global body that oversees international soccer (plus futsal and beach soccer), founded in Paris in 1904 and now comprising 211 national member associations headquartered under Swiss law in Zürich. Infantino is a multilingual lawyer who previously served as UEFA’s legal director, deputy general secretary, and ultimately secretary general before winning the FIFA presidency in the wake of the Sepp Blatter corruption scandal.

Connections

  • FIFA corruption and reform narratives: Infantino’s rise followed the 2015 U.S. Department of Justice indictments that exposed systemic bribery and wire fraud within FIFA; the DOJ’s 2015 charging documents describe FIFA’s structure and its role in marketing World Cup rights. His tenure is often framed—fairly or not—as part of FIFA’s attempt to move past the Blatter era.
  • World Cup controversies: Under Infantino, FIFA awarded and delivered the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, which drew global criticism over migrant‑worker deaths, human‑rights issues, and his own combative defense of the tournament. Trivia about Infantino can surface whenever Qatar 2022, World Cup expansion to 48 teams, or debates over “too much football” are in the news.
  • UEFA vs. FIFA power struggle: In 2024–26 reporting, UEFA has considered a possible criminal complaint against Infantino in Switzerland over his abandoned plan to sell future World Cup commercial rights to a private‑equity vehicle, illustrating tensions between Europe’s confederation and FIFA’s central leadership. Headlines about this fight are fertile ground for current‑events clues.
  • North American World Cup: Infantino is also the public face of the expanded 2026 World Cup hosted by the U.S., Canada, and Mexico; questions about that tournament, its 48‑team format, or record ticket pricing often mention him.

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Question 2: Suits and Streaming Records

What legal drama, which originally aired on USA Network from 2011–19, became a streaming phenomenon in 2023, breaking the Nielsen record set by The Office three years earlier for the most viewing minutes in a year?

Core fact: The show is Suits, a legal drama that aired on USA Network from 2011 to 2019 and then became the most‑streamed program of 2023 in the U.S., with Nielsen measuring 57.7 billion viewing minutes—surpassing the 57.1 billion minutes Americans spent watching The Office in 2020.

Nielsen’s 2023 “Streaming Unwrapped” report notes that Suits, licensed to Netflix and Peacock, topped all other series (original and acquired) in total minutes viewed, while The Office had previously held the all‑time record for a single year’s streaming minutes.

Connections

  • The “Netflix effect” on old cable shows: Nielsen’s analysis highlights that Suits—a basic‑cable drama that had ended four years earlier—caught fire once full seasons hit Netflix and Peacock, underscoring how library content can dominate over flashy originals. This is a pattern you also see with NCIS, Grey’s Anatomy, and Bluey in the same rankings.
  • USA Network’s “blue‑sky” era: Suits belongs to USA’s early‑2010s roster of slick, character‑driven procedurals like Psych, White Collar, and Burn Notice, a style often cited as perfect “comfort TV” for binge‑watching. Trivia clues may lean on that shared network identity or tone.
  • Royal connections via Meghan Markle: One of Suits’ breakout stars, Meghan Markle, left the show after season 7 and later married Prince Harry, becoming Duchess of Sussex; rewatch interest in 2023 overlapped with intense media coverage of the royal family and the couple’s Netflix docuseries.
  • Streaming metrics as pop‑culture news: The idea that Americans collectively spent more time with Suits in 2023 than with any other show—and more than they did with The Office in 2020—became a media story in its own right, making Nielsen view‑minutes charts a trivia‑worthy artifact.

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Question 3: Edwin Moses and a 122‑Race Streak

Name the American athlete who lost to West Germany’s Harald Schmid in the 400-meter hurdles on August 26, 1977, and did not lose again in that event until June 4, 1987 (a span of 122 consecutive races).

Core fact: The athlete is Edwin Moses, an American 400‑meter hurdler who, after losing to West Germany’s Harald Schmid in West Berlin on 26 August 1977, went unbeaten in the 400‑meter hurdles for nine years, nine months, and nine days—winning 122 consecutive races (107 finals) before finally losing to Danny Harris in Madrid on 4 June 1987.

Moses, a two‑time Olympic gold medalist in the event (1976 and 1984), repeatedly broke the world record and ended his career with a best of 47.02 seconds set in 1983, a mark that stood for nine years and still ranks among the fastest times ever.

The 400‑meter hurdles is a one‑lap race over ten evenly spaced hurdles 91.4 cm (3 feet) high, demanding a mix of sprint speed, stamina, and precise stride pattern; Moses’s innovation was taking 13 strides between hurdles for much of the race, an aggressive rhythm that helped separate him from rivals.

Connections

  • Olympic boycotts and “lost” medals: Moses almost certainly would have been favored for a third consecutive Olympic title at Moscow 1980, but the U.S.‑led boycott kept him out of those Games, a classic example of geopolitics intersecting with sports trivia.
  • Engineering meets athletics: Moses studied physics and industrial engineering at Morehouse College; profiles from IEEE and Morehouse highlight how he applied analytical thinking to hurdle spacing, stride patterns, and aerodynamics, a nice cross‑disciplinary angle between STEM and sport.
  • Doping reform and athlete governance: Beyond the track, Moses chaired U.S. and international anti‑doping efforts, helping design random out‑of‑competition testing, which appears in discussions of sports ethics and governance.
  • Legend status in track & field lore: World Athletics and Hall‑of‑Fame write‑ups routinely rank Moses among the greatest hurdlers or even greatest track athletes ever, so he shows up in GOAT debates alongside modern stars like Karsten Warholm and Rai Benjamin—a context that can surface in contemporary articles and quizzes.

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Question 4: The Plantagenets, Lancaster, and York

The rival English royal houses of Lancaster and York were continuations of what other royal dynasty, which began with Henry II in 1154 and was traditionally said to have been named after Henry II’s father Geoffrey (and the sprig of broom he sported in his cap)?

Core fact: Lancaster and York were cadet branches of the House of Plantagenet, a dynasty that began with Henry II’s accession to the English throne in 1154 and lasted (counting all cadet lines) until 1485. The name “Plantagenet” is traditionally linked to Henry II’s father, Geoffrey of Anjou, who was said to wear a sprig of broom (Latin planta genista) in his cap, giving rise to the nickname later applied to his descendants.

The Houses of Lancaster and York, which fought the Wars of the Roses between 1455 and 1487, were both male‑line offshoots of Edward III’s Plantagenet line, symbolized by their red and white rose badges. Understanding that they are continuations of the broader Plantagenet story helps organize late‑medieval English history and many Shakespeare histories.

In this context, a “cadet branch” means a junior line of a dynasty descended from a younger son; Lancaster stems from Edmund Crouchback and later John of Gaunt, while York descends from another of Edward III’s sons, making their rivalry literally a civil war within the same extended family.

Connections

  • Wars of the Roses and Shakespeare: The Plantagenet civil wars between Lancaster and York are the backdrop to Shakespeare’s Henry VI trilogy and Richard III; modern histories and documentaries routinely call the combatants “rival branches of the Plantagenet house.” Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire famously draw inspiration from this conflict.
  • Dynastic branding and hindsight: Medieval rulers rarely used “Plantagenet” as a surname; it was popularized by later historians and Tudor‑era genealogists, but has become standard in textbooks. This can be a trap in clues that juxtapose contemporary self‑identities (e.g., “Yorkist”) with retrospective labels (“Plantagenet”).
  • Botanical clue hooks: Because the name derives from the broom plant, quiz‑writers like to connect the dynasty to questions about plant etymology, heraldic badges, or yellow flowering shrubs in Europe—“planta genista” literally means “broom plant.”
  • From Plantagenet to Tudor: The dynasty’s effective end came when Henry Tudor defeated Richard III at Bosworth Field (1485), then married Elizabeth of York, fusing Lancastrian and Yorkist claims; that union is symbolized by the Tudor Rose, which combines red and white petals.

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Question 5: Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood

Predating the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault’s 1697 version of what fairy tale is a morality tale involving a straightforward metaphor for sexual predation, makes no mention of a woodsman, and ends in the lupine devouring of two humans?

Core fact: The story is Little Red Riding Hood. Charles Perrault’s 1697 French version, Le Petit Chaperon rouge, published in Histoires ou contes du temps passé, is the first literary record of the tale, framed explicitly as a moral warning about predatory men and ending with the wolf eating both the grandmother and the girl, with no rescuing woodsman or hunter.

Perrault appends a moral in verse that likens “wolves” to smooth‑talking gentlemen who lurk in salons and streets, making the allegory of sexual predation unmistakable; scholars such as Jack Zipes and Catherine Orenstein emphasize that this didactic, eroticized tone was softened in later versions. By contrast, the Brothers Grimm’s nineteenth‑century “Little Red‑Cap” adds a huntsman who cuts open the wolf’s belly, allows the girl and grandmother to escape, and then kills the wolf, turning the gruesome cautionary tale into a story of rescue and redemption.

In this question, “lupine” simply means “wolf‑like”; Perrault’s plot culminates in the wolf devouring both humans, which later sanitised children’s editions often obscure or rewrite.

Connections

  • Psychoanalytic and feminist readings: Critics from Bruno Bettelheim to Jack Zipes and contemporary feminist scholars have read Perrault’s version as a rape‑warning narrative about naive young women, with the red hood, bed scene, and “what big teeth you have” exchange all coded as sexual danger. This interpretive tradition shapes how modern retellings handle agency and blame.
  • Grimm, Disney, and sanitization: The Grimms themselves toned down sexual elements and added the huntsman rescue, and many twentieth‑century children’s books and films further reduce violence or imply the wolf is merely scared off, showing how cultural norms reshape folklore.
  • Horror and dark fantasy adaptations: Works like Angela Carter’s story The Company of Wolves and Neil Jordan’s film of the same name re‑sexualize the tale, while countless horror comics, games, and movies use Red Riding Hood imagery—blood, hood, wolf—as shorthand for the intersection of innocence and menace.
  • Comparative folklore: Scholars trace motifs from Little Red Riding Hood to older European and Asian tales like “The Story of the Grandmother” and “The Tiger Grandmother,” which sometimes include cannibalistic elements (the girl unknowingly eating parts of her grandmother), highlighting how Perrault’s text distilled but did not invent the darker material.

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Question 6: The Chieftains and John Montague

Formed in Dublin in 1962 by uilleann piper Paddy Moloney, and arguably the most internationally famous traditional Irish instrumental group, what band took its name, suggested by poet and short-story writer John Montague, from his then-forthcoming 1964 collection Death of a [REDACTED]? (Note: the band name is a pluralized form of the redacted word.)

Core fact: The band is The Chieftains, a traditional Irish instrumental group formed in Dublin in 1962 by uilleann piper Paddy Moloney (along with Seán Potts and Michael Tubridy) that took its name, on John Montague’s suggestion, from his 1964 short‑story collection Death of a Chieftain.

The Chieftains specialize in Irish traditional dance tunes and airs and became one of the world’s best‑known Irish folk groups, earning multiple Grammy Awards and even an official designation as “Ireland’s Musical Ambassadors” from the Irish government in 1989. John Montague’s Death of a Chieftain and Other Stories, first published in London by MacGibbon & Kee in 1964, is widely noted in literary and music references as the source of the band’s name.

Uilleann pipes, the instrument Moloney plays, are Ireland’s characteristic bellows‑blown bagpipes, played seated with the bag under the arm (from Irish uilleann, “elbow”), producing a sweeter, quieter tone than the Scottish great highland bagpipe and capable of complex ornamentation central to Irish dance music.

Connections

  • Folk revival and global collaborations: The Chieftains were key figures in the post‑1960s Irish folk revival and became famous for collaborations with artists like Van Morrison, The Rolling Stones, and Ry Cooder, appearing on soundtracks such as Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (their version of “Women of Ireland” is especially noted). This means they crop up in discussions of film music and rock history, not just Celtic folk.
  • Literature–music cross‑pollination: Montague not only named the band but later collaborated with them on projects like The Wild Dog Rose, blending poetry and traditional music; this makes The Chieftains a neat example of Irish literary and musical circles intertwining.
  • State‑sponsored cultural diplomacy: Being dubbed “Ireland’s Musical Ambassadors” and touring for decades positioned The Chieftains as soft‑power symbols of Irish identity abroad—useful context when quiz questions touch on national branding, tourism, or St Patrick’s Day pop culture.
  • Instrumentation as clue fodder: Questions might pivot on the specific sound or construction of uilleann pipes, contrasting them with Scottish pipes or other folk instruments, or on the band’s lineup of tin whistle, fiddle, bodhrán, and harp.

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