The New Monday Quiz Classic

It's:

Hey, it's a national holiday here in the United States of America! I'm taking the day off!  In the meantime, please enjoy this New Monday Quiz Classic^tm that first appeared in January 2011.  

Meanwhile, I've been cooking up an ALL-NEW QUIZ CONCEPT that will debut new week.  You'll love it.

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1. Originally an Italian banker, he took part in early exploratory expeditions to South America in the service of Spain and Portugal and wrote (or had ghost-written) accounts or their discoveries. Today, he is famous only for his name. Who are we talking about?

2. Igor Stravinsky dismissed his music as "the same concerto 400 times." What Baroque composer is probably 18th Century Italy's most famous redhead?

3. Charlotte Brontë wrote a few other books aside from Jane Eyre. Her second most famous might be one about an English woman named Lucy Snow who works as a teacher in a fictional city that bears a remarkable resemblance to Brussels. What is the name of the fictional city, which is also the title the novel?

4. Where is this?

5. Louis Pasteur was among the first to suspect their existance, after all that work with his microscope failed to turn up a cause for rabies. What are they?

6. Where's this?

7. The Koran calls her سورة مريم, and Greek manuscripts say that she was a παρθένος. Who are we talking about?

8. What's this?  I mean, the bit in the green circle.

9. The element with atomic number 23 isn't found in its pure form in nature, but it was isolated and named in 1831. It's often used in steel alloys. What's it called, again?

10. Who wrote The Age of Louis XIV, Essay on the Customs and the Spirit of the Nations, Zadig, Micromégas, and, oh yeah, Candide?

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Give it the old college try!  Or, if you didn't go to an old college, flaunt your independent book larnin'!