99 Fun Facts About José Rizal

In Noli Me Tángere, which mother loses her mind searching for her two young sons?

Sisa is driven mad when her boys, church sacristans accused of stealing, disappear; at the novel's end she dies in the arms of the elder, Basilio.

Which Filipino fable did Rizal draw as a picture story in a friend's album in Paris?

The Monkey and the Turtle filled an album owned by Juan Luna's bride-to-be, and Rizal later published the tale in a London journal, bringing it to European readers.

In Noli Me Tángere, what penalty falls on Ibarra after he attacks a friar who insulted his father?

Excommunication follows after Ibarra holds a knife to the friar at a town luncheon, letting him go only when María Clara pleads; the Captain-General later has the ban lifted.

Which woman became Rizal's common-law wife during his exile in Dapitan?

Josephine Bracken could not marry him in church because he refused to return to the Catholic fold, so the two simply lived together as husband and wife.

For what crime was Rizal executed?

Rebellion was the verdict of a Spanish court-martial, even though Rizal had written a manifesto from his cell disowning the uprising.

In his essay The Philippines a Century Hence, which power did Rizal predict might one day covet the islands?

The United States, he wrote, had interests in the Pacific and might dream of foreign possession; less than a decade later it took the islands from Spain.

In Noli Me Tángere, which friar is revealed to be María Clara's real father?

Padre Dámaso fathered her with the wife of her supposed father, and the friar who hounded Ibarra's own father then works to break the young couple's engagement.

What paid for the farmland Rizal bought during his exile in Dapitan?

A lottery prize: he shared the winning ticket with the Spanish commandant who was guarding him, then spent much of his share on land by the sea.

Rizal's paternal line traced back to Lam-co, a merchant from which Chinese province?

Fujian was the birthplace of Lam-co, who was baptised Domingo in Manila's Chinese quarter and later moved to Laguna to farm land leased from a friar estate.

On what charge was Rizal's mother jailed for more than two years when he was a boy?

Attempted poisoning: accused of helping a relative try to poison his wife, she was forced to walk to the provincial jail and held until the high court cleared her.

Which historical figure did Rizal pose as for Juan Luna's painting The Blood Compact?

Sikatuna, the Bohol chieftain who sealed a pact with the Spaniards in 1565, was modelled by Rizal, while his friend Trinidad Pardo de Tavera posed as Legazpi.

Whose fairy tales did Rizal translate into Tagalog for his nephews and nieces?

Hans Christian Andersen: while studying in Germany in 1886, Rizal put the Dane's tales into Tagalog and illustrated the little book himself for the children back home.

Which school gave the young Rizal the class title of 'emperor'?

Ateneo Municipal de Manila split each class into rival Roman and Carthaginian 'empires' that battled over recitations, and the best boy in each ruled as its emperor.

Which prize-winning Juan Luna painting did Rizal celebrate in a famous 1884 toast in Madrid?

Spoliarium, a huge canvas of dead gladiators being stripped beneath a Roman arena, had just won gold, and Rizal's toast declared that genius belongs to no single race or country.

What prize did Rizal's 1879 poem to the Filipino youth win?

A silver pen shaped like a feather was the prize for A la juventud filipina, the poem in which he called the Philippines, rather than Spain, 'my fatherland'.

Rizal's 1880 prize play El Consejo de los Dioses is set where?

Mount Olympus is where the gods weigh Homer and Virgil against Cervantes, because the play was written for a Manila contest held in the Spanish novelist's honour.

In the bedtime fable that most impressed Rizal as a boy, which creature ignores a parent's warning and dies?

A young moth burns in the flame it was warned against; real ones were circling the family's coconut-oil lamp as his mother read it, and the scene stayed with him for life.

At which French port did Rizal land in 1882 on his way to Spain?

Marseille ended a voyage begun in secret: his passport was in the name José Mercado, and his parents had not been told he was going abroad.

Which play by the German poet Schiller did Rizal translate into Tagalog in 1886?

William Tell, the drama of an archer who defies a foreign governor, appealed to Rizal as the story of a people winning its freedom, and he finished the Tagalog version while in Germany.

Which Noli Me Tángere character powders her face, poses as a Spaniard and marries a lame quack doctor?

Doña Victorina weds the Spaniard Tiburcio de Espadaña, passes him off as a physician, and doubles the 'de' in her new surname to sound grander.

Which brotherhood, condemned by the friars at home, did Rizal join as a student in Madrid?

The Freemasons of Madrid spoke against the friars in a way no one could in Manila, which is what drew Rizal to join one of their lodges in 1883.

Who was the 14-year-old Batangueña Rizal later called his first love?

Segunda Katigbak, a schoolmate's sister, sat for a portrait sketch by the shy student, but she was already engaged and went home to marry another man.

At the end of Noli Me Tángere, what does María Clara choose over marrying Linares?

Entering a convent is the only way out she will accept: believing Ibarra dead, she tells her godfather it must be 'the nunnery or the tomb', and he gives in.

Henry Kipping, the Englishman who married Rizal's long-time sweetheart, had what job?

Railway engineer Kipping had come to build the new line to Dagupan, where her family lived; her mother favoured him, and for a year Rizal's letters went unanswered.

Which statuette did the schoolboy Rizal carve with a pocket knife at one of his teachers' request?

The Sacred Heart of Jesus was meant to travel to Spain with the priest who asked for it, but it was left behind and hung on the boarders' dormitory door for some twenty years.

Why did the American George Taufer bring his adopted daughter to Dapitan in 1895?

To have his eyes examined: other doctors had failed to restore his sight, and he went home uncured, but his adopted daughter and the exiled doctor had fallen in love.

Rizal's only child, a son who lived a few hours, was named after whom?

His father Francisco gave his name to the boy, born early after a prank of Rizal's startled the mother; he lived only a few hours.

Rizal annotated a 1609 history of the Philippines by which Spanish author?

Antonio de Morga's book gave Rizal, working at the British Museum, the evidence he wanted that Filipinos had a civilisation of their own before the Spaniards came.

German police who questioned Rizal suspected him of spying for which country?

France and Germany were bitter rivals after their war of 1870, and Rizal had come to Germany from Paris.

To whom did Rizal dedicate his second novel, El filibusterismo?

Three executed priests, garrotted in 1872 after the Cavite mutiny, are named in the dedication as victims of the very evil the novel sets out to fight.

Which Prague-born scholar, who never visited the Philippines, was Rizal's closest friend in Europe?

Ferdinand Blumentritt met Rizal face to face only once, in 1887, yet they wrote to each other for a decade and one of Rizal's last letters before dying was to him.

Which Filipino reformist newspaper in Spain printed Rizal's essays under the pen name Laong Laan?

La Solidaridad ran his essays until 1891, when he stopped writing for it rather than keep up a feud over who should direct the movement.

Who was Rizal's rival in 1891 for leadership of the Filipino reformists in Spain?

Marcelo H. del Pilar's camp lost the vote: Rizal was elected leader, then declined the post, handed it to his rival and left Madrid for Biarritz.

Spanish writer Wenceslao Retana, whom Rizal challenged to a duel, later did what?

Became his biographer: Retana apologised in print rather than fight, turned admirer, and after Rizal's death published the life Vida y escritos del Dr. José Rizal.

Which envoy did Andrés Bonifacio send to Dapitan in 1896 to seek Rizal's support for a revolt?

Pío Valenzuela came back without Rizal's backing for an immediate rising, though his own accounts of the talk later differed; Bonifacio's men rose two months later.

Rizal's boys' school in Dapitan unusually taught which foreign language?

English joined Spanish on the timetable of the small school he ran on his own land, where lessons were mixed with farm work and practical skills.

Which religious order owned the Laguna estate that the Rizal family farmed as tenants?

The Dominicans raised the rents until Rizal led the tenants to challenge them in court; the order won, and the family was evicted from its home.

At the end of El filibusterismo, what does Padre Florentino do with the dying jeweller's treasure chest?

Hurls it into the sea: once the dying man has confessed who he is, the priest throws the treasure into the Pacific so it cannot feed greed, to wait until it can serve a just cause.

Which governor-general replaced the sympathetic Ramón Blanco shortly before Rizal's trial?

Camilo de Polavieja approved the court-martial's death sentence two days before it was carried out; Blanco, by contrast, had given Rizal letters of recommendation only months earlier.

What were Rizal's reported last words before the firing squad?

Consummatum est, 'it is finished', were Christ's last words on the cross; moments earlier an army doctor had taken Rizal's pulse and found it steady.

Who made up the firing squad that shot Rizal?

Filipino colonial soldiers were ordered to fire, while a line of Spanish troops stood behind them, ready to shoot the squad if it refused.

Which fellow Filipino did Rizal challenge to a duel over remarks about Nellie Boustead?

Antonio Luna, drunk at a party, insulted a woman both men had courted; he apologised once sober, and the two future heroes never fought.

In which British-run territory did Rizal plan a new settlement for the evicted farmers of his hometown?

North Borneo's British rulers were willing, and Rizal sailed there to look at land, but Manila's governor-general refused to let the families emigrate.

In El filibusterismo, which student snatches the jeweller's wedding-gift lamp and hurls it from the terrace?

Isagani acts to save the bride, Paulita Gómez, whom he still loves, and in doing so unknowingly wrecks the uprising the lamp was meant to start.

What initials did Narcisa have inscribed on the marble slab marking Rizal's secret grave?

RPJ is José Protasio Rizal backwards: reversing the initials let his sister mark the unlabelled grave in secret, without announcing whose it was.

The Rizal Monument at Luneta was designed by a sculptor of what nationality?

Swiss, though the design contest was won by an Italian: the contract went to the runner-up instead, by one account because the winner could not post the required bond.

Rizal's 1889 letter in Tagalog praised the young women of which Bulacan town?

Malolos was where a group of young women had petitioned the governor-general for a night school to learn Spanish, over their parish friar's objections.

Which Philippine law requires schools to teach Rizal's life and novels?

Republic Act No. 1425 passed in 1956 only after a compromise: a student may skip the uncut novels by sworn statement of religious objection, but not the course itself.

Which senator authored the 1956 Rizal bill and led the fight for it in the Senate?

Claro M. Recto told the Senate that those fighting the bill 'would blot out Rizal from our memory'; the measure became law that June.

Which unfinished novel did Rizal begin writing in Tagalog after El filibusterismo?

Makamisa, 'after Mass', opens with a town fretting over its angry parish priest; Rizal meant it for Tagalog readers rather than Europeans, but left only fragments.

José Rizal was born on June 19, 1861, in which town in Laguna?

Calamba is also where the family lost its home: after Rizal backed the town's tenants in a dispute over rents, the Rizals were evicted.

Rizal was the seventh child of Francisco Mercado and which mother?

Teodora Alonso outlived him by fourteen years; offered a state pension as the hero's mother, she turned it down, saying her family had never been patriotic for money.

In Noli Me Tángere, which wealthy Binondo host gives the dinner party in its opening chapter?

Capitán Tiago gives the party to welcome Ibarra home from Europe, and at it the friar who ruined Ibarra's father snubs the young man in front of the guests.

The Mercado family adopted 'Rizal' as a surname after an 1849 decree by which governor-general?

Narciso Clavería's decree handed out surnames from an official list; the family kept Mercado until José enrolled as 'Rizal', because his brother's ties to an executed priest had put the old name under suspicion.

In El filibusterismo, which farmer loses his land to the friars and becomes the bandit Matanglawin?

Kabesang Tales clears his fields from the forest only for a friar order to claim them; ruined by the lawsuit, he takes a revolver from the jeweller's case and joins the outlaws.

Rizal's first formal schooling was under Justiniano Aquino Cruz in which town?

Biñan struck the boy as 'large and rich, but ugly and dismal'; mocked there for his poor Spanish, he fought the classmate who teased him and won.

Rizal finished secondary school in Manila in 1877 with the highest marks and which title?

Bachelor in Arts was then the title that ended secondary school, not university, which is how he came to hold it at the age of 15.

Why did Rizal switch to medicine in his second year at the University of Santo Tomas?

His mother was going blind, so he trained to treat her himself, and years later he did operate on her eyes.

In 1882 Rizal sailed for Spain without his parents' knowledge, secretly backed by whom?

Paciano and uncle Antonio kept the plan from his parents; Paciano woke him before dawn on the day and went on sending the allowance he lived on in Madrid.

At the Universidad Central de Madrid, Rizal enrolled in medicine and which second course?

Philosophy and Letters was the course he shone in: he took that degree with the top grade on his 24th birthday, while his medical licentiate a year earlier was rated only 'fair'.

Rizal trained under the eye specialist Otto Becker in which German university city?

Heidelberg in spring moved him to write the poem To the Flowers of Heidelberg, asking the blooms along the river to carry his love back to the Philippines.

The 1884 Madrid party Rizal toasted celebrated Juan Luna and which other Filipino painter?

Félix Resurrección Hidalgo had won silver where Luna won gold, and Rizal's toast used the pair to argue that talent has nothing to do with skin colour or birthplace.

Noli Me Tángere, the Latin title of Rizal's first novel, translates as what?

Touch me not is what the risen Christ tells Mary Magdalene; Rizal borrowed it for a book about sores in his country so tender that no one had dared to touch them.

In which city was Noli Me Tángere printed in 1887?

Berlin was where Rizal, penniless and ill, came close to destroying the manuscript before a friend's loan paid the printer.

Who loaned Rizal 300 pesos to print 2,000 copies of Noli Me Tángere?

Máximo Viola was thanked with the galley proofs and the first copy off the press, inscribed to 'the first to read and appreciate my work'.

Charles Derbyshire's 1912 translation of Noli Me Tángere was published under which title?

The Social Cancer comes from the book's own dedication, where Rizal promises to expose a 'cancer' in his country's life as the ancients laid their sick on the temple steps.

In Noli Me Tángere, where did Ibarra's father die while his son studied abroad?

In prison: afterwards, on a friar's orders, his body was dug up to be reburied among the Chinese, and the gravedigger threw it into the lake instead.

Which boatman in Noli Me Tángere declares himself indebted to Ibarra after a crocodile incident?

Elías repays the debt twice: he warns Ibarra of a plot against his life, then is fatally wounded drawing off the pursuers so that Ibarra can escape.

Which woman is thought to have inspired Rizal's heroine María Clara?

Leonor Rivera wrote to him in code for years because her mother disapproved of the match, and in the end she was married to another man.

El filibusterismo was first published in 1891 in which Belgian city?

Ghent saw the novel through the press only because friends lent him the money; he was living on next to nothing there while he finished it.

In El filibusterismo, Ibarra returns after thirteen years disguised as a wealthy jeweler named what?

Simoun, his eyes hidden behind huge blue goggles, means to push the government into such abuses that the people will finally rise against it.

In El filibusterismo, what is hidden inside the pomegranate-shaped lamp meant as a wedding gift?

Nitroglycerin fills the lamp, set to explode when someone turns up its wick and to kill the colony's rulers gathered at the wedding feast.

Rizal annotated and republished which 1609 history of the early Spanish Philippines?

Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas appealed to him as a first-hand account by a man who had lived in the islands soon after the conquest; his notes argue with its European bias.

Besides Laong Laan, which pen name did Rizal sign to his writings for the reformist press?

Dimasalang was more than a byline: Rizal also went by it among his associates and signed private letters with it.

The Filipino reformists' newspaper was first published on February 15, 1889, in which Spanish city?

Barcelona saw the first issue under its editor Graciano López Jaena; the paper lasted until 1895, when the money to print it ran out.

In which Bohemian town did Rizal visit his pen-friend, a local schoolmaster, in 1887?

Leitmeritz, now Litoměřice in the Czech Republic, hosted the only meeting the two friends ever had; after those few days in May they never saw each other again.

Which Rizal sculpture shows a woman holding a torch aloft while standing on a skull?

The Triumph of Science over Death was sent to a friend in Europe with a companion piece in which death wins instead; a large copy now stands outside the University of the Philippines College of Medicine.

Rizal was reportedly conversant in how many languages?

Twenty-two is the usual count, from Tagalog and Spanish to German, Japanese and Latin; he switched between them so freely that his papers still give translators trouble.

In which Asian port did Rizal practise medicine in 1891 and 1892, joined there by his family?

Hong Kong was where, before sailing home in 1892, he left two sealed letters with a friend, each marked 'to be opened after my death'.

Rizal founded La Liga Filipina on July 3, 1892, at a house in which Manila district?

Tondo kept the league for just three days before its founder was arrested; one member, Andrés Bonifacio, later helped revive it and then turned to armed revolt.

Rizal was exiled to Dapitan, a town in which part of the Philippines?

Mindanao was where he spent four years of exile, and he filled them by building a school, a hospital and a piped water supply for the town.

The seaside barangay where Rizal farmed and taught during his exile was called what?

Talisay, a little bay near the town, grew from a single house into a farm, a boys' school and a hospital, and his mother and sisters came to live with him there.

Josephine Bracken, Rizal’s common-law wife, was born to parents of what origin?

She came to Dapitan in 1895 with her blind adoptive father, who was seeking treatment from Rizal.

Which animal that Rizal collected in Dapitan was named Draco rizali in his honour?

A flying lizard was one of three creatures he gathered around the town and sent to scientists in Europe that were named after him, along with a frog and a beetle.

Where was Rizal bound in August 1896 when he left Dapitan with Governor-General Blanco's permission?

Cuba needed army doctors for its yellow fever wards and Rizal had volunteered, but he was arrested on the way and shipped back to Manila for trial.

Before his execution Rizal was imprisoned in which Manila fortress?

Fort Santiago was where he spent his last days writing: the farewell poem and his final letters to his family and closest friend all came out of its cell.

Rizal's last poem was smuggled out of prison hidden inside what?

An alcohol stove went home with his belongings; he had murmured to a sister, in a language the guards did not know, that there was something inside it.

Rizal's farewell poem opens by bidding goodbye to what?

His homeland: 'Adiós, Patria adorada' are the first words; he left the poem untitled, and the name it now carries was added by others after his death.

Which US congressman recited Rizal's farewell poem in 1902 while pushing the Philippine Organic Act?

Henry Cooper read the poem aloud to colleagues who doubted Filipinos could govern themselves, asking where tyranny had ever claimed a nobler victim; the bill passed.

On what date was Rizal executed at Bagumbayan?

December 30, 1896 is now marked each year as Rizal Day; that morning he walked to the field in a black suit and hat, his arms bound behind him.

Immediately after the execution, Rizal was secretly buried where?

Paco Cemetery received the body without a coffin, in a plot left unmarked on purpose; his sister found it by noticing a fresh grave under guard.

Who signed the 1898 decree that first made the anniversary of Rizal's death a national day of mourning?

Emilio Aguinaldo's decree ordered flags flown at half-mast; the American colonial government later kept the date and made it a public holiday in 1902.

Who headed the Philippine Commission when it named a province after Rizal in 1901?

William Howard Taft headed it, but the name was a Filipino's idea: the scholar Trinidad Pardo de Tavera proposed honouring Rizal, and the Commission agreed.

At the end of El filibusterismo, how does the hunted jeweller die?

He takes poison on learning that soldiers are coming to arrest him, then uses his last hours to confess his true name and story to a priest.

The Rizal Monument at Luneta was designed by which sculptor?

Richard Kissling only came second in the design contest, yet the contract went to him; his bronze figures were cast in Europe, and Rizal's remains lie in the monument's base.

In El filibusterismo, what do the students petition the government to let them open?

A Castilian academy would let Filipinos learn the rulers' language from laymen, but the friars who control schooling smother the plan, and when angry posters appear it is the students who are arrested.

What was proclaimed at Rizal Park on July 4, 1946?

Philippine independence was formally recognised there, nearly fifty years after Rizal was shot on the same ground.

The 1956 Rizal Law, requiring courses on Rizal in all schools, was opposed by which institution?

The Catholic Church's bishops condemned the bill in a pastoral letter, calling parts of the novels impious; the law passed with an exemption for students who objected on religious grounds.

Rizal's elder brother had been a student and housemate of which priest, executed in 1872?

José Burgos was garrotted when José was ten, and the brother's known closeness to him left the family name suspect to the authorities for years afterward.