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No.20
1) What began in Pudding Lane in London in 1666?
2) The Chincha Islands War of 1864-66 was fought over control of what natural resource located on these small islands off the coast of Peru?
3) Who wrote The Last of the Mohicans?
4) What caused 7,343 deaths in Britain in 1934?
5) What form of dance and dance music is this? Originating in Bohemia in the 1830s, it derived from traditional folk music and is a very lively genre. It quickly became popular across Europe, especially in France where it was referred to as a “mania” in Paris in the early 1840s. Popular until the end of the century, it underwent a revival in the immediate post-war years through Polish refugees and migrants, especially in the USA. Most recently it has become a large part of the repertoire of the hugely successful Andre Rieu and his orchestra.
6) Name two of Emily Pankhurst’s three daughters, all suffragette activists.
7) From 1925 till 1979, the Pahlavi Dynasty ruled which nation?
8) In 1450, Johann Gutenberg set up the first printing press in the city of Mainz. Thirty-six years later Mainz hosted a further book-related first. What was that?
9) What happened at Kill Devil Hills in North Carolina in December 1903?
10) Name two of three men who were at various times deputy leader of the Labour Party when Harold Wilson was leader.
11) What was the name of the play that Abraham Lincoln was attending at Ford’s Theatre when he was assassinated?
12) Who is this? One of Britain’s most famous foreign secretaries who held that office for the longest tenure of any. One of his brothers was killed by a lion; another by a buffalo. He wrote the definitive book on fly-fishing. He was British tennis champion in 1889, 1891, 1895, 1896 & 1898. He went blind in his later years, ironically perhaps, since it was he who uttered the immortal phrase, “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.”
ANSWERS (No.20)
1) The Great Fire of London
2) Guano, or bird shit. The war was fought between Spain on one side (with the fourth-largest navy in world), and Peru, Chile, Ecuador and Bolivia. It was a purely naval conflict, although Bolivia didn’t have a navy – or a coastline.
3) James Fenimore Cooper
4) Road accidents. By contrast, there were only 1,732 in 2015.
5) The Polka
6) Christabel, Adela, Sylvia
7) Persia, which then became Iran, which is actually a revived and much older name for the nation.
8) Censorship. The first thing to be banned was vernacular translations of the Bible.
9) The Wright brothers made the first powered and controlled heavier-than air flight. It is four miles south of Kitty Hawk.
10) George Brown, Roy Jenkins, Edward Short
11) “Our American Cousin”
12) Sir Edward Grey
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No.15
1) What information guide was issued in Britain for the first time in 1931 and included the recommendation to drivers of horse-drawn vehicles that they should “rotate the whip above the head; then incline the whip to the right or left to show the direction in which the turn is to be made”; and to motorists that they should “sound their horn when overtaking”. 2) What historical first did Valentina Tereshkova achieve in 1963? 3) Who was elected to the Westminster Parliament in 1981 but never took his seat because he was in jail at the time? 4) In 1981 the British embassy in Tehran moved its main entrance from the front of the building to a smaller side-street entrance. Why? 5) The Hamidiye Cavalry set up in 1891 by the Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II was made up entirely of men from which ethnic group? 6) Born in Germany and the United States in 1919; died in Germany and the United States in 1933 – what two constitutional phenomena are being described? 7) What novel did Charlotte Brontë publish under the pseudonym, Currer Bell? 8) What contest debuted in 1891 in London at the Royal Agricultural Hall with 2000 competitors? 9) What siege lasted from February 23rd until March 6th 1836 and ended with the deaths of all the defenders? 10) Who was President of France when she became the first major Western power to recognise the People’s Republic of China? 11) Where did the largest tank battle in history take place in July and August 1943? 12) What was the Asiento which existed between 1543 and 1834? It led to the War of Jenkins Ear (1739-48) fought by Britain against Spain in order that the former could continue to benefit from what the Asiento allowed British traders to do.
ANSWERS (No.15)
1) The Highway Code 2) The first woman in space 3) Bobby Sands. Elected as the Anti-H Block/Armagh Political Prisoner candidate, he died in prison a month later. 4) The Iranians had changed the name of the street where the front entrance was located from Winston Churchill Boulevard to Bobby Sands Street, and the embassy did not want to have the name Bobby Sands appear on its letterhead. 5) Kurds 6) The Weimar Republic and Prohibition (18th Amendment) 7) Jane Eyre 8) Crufts dog show 9) The Alamo in Texas 10) Charles de Gaulle (1964) 11) Kursk, Russia 12) Permission from the Spanish government to other countries to sell slaves to Spain’s colonies.
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No.14
1) Calpurnia was the wife of which Roman emperor? 2) What was Eleanor Roosevelt’s maiden name? 3) What ceremony took place for the first time in May 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel? 4) In 1839, Samuel Cunard was awarded a government contract to carry what between Liverpool and Halifax in Canada and Boston in the USA? 5) Who was Commander-in-Chief of the WWI British Expeditionary Force in France before Douglas Haig took over? 6) What was the name of the last imperial dynasty to rule China? 7) Cardinal Mazarin was Chief Minister to which two French kings? 8) Who was Prime Minister when Victoria ascended to the throne in 1837? 9) In what city did Jimi Hendrix die in September 1970? 10) What did John Maynard Keynes describe as a “Carthaginian Peace”? 11) What 15th century Islamic sex manual was first translated into English by the explorer, Sir Richard Burton, in 1886? 12) What did David Dale sell in the early 1800s to a partnership which included Robert Owen, the Welsh utopian socialist? 13) Who, in 1910, become head of the British section of the Order of Oriental Templars, practitioners of “sexual magic” and supposedly descendants of the Knights Templar? 14) St Sava of Serbia, who lived from 1174 to 1236, is famous for two major achievements in his native land. Name one of them. 15) In World War I, which unit of the British Army was the only one to reach the crest of the bluffs at Gallipoli, and was also involved in the capture of Baghdad? 16) Who was Mary Rose, after whom Henry VIII’s famous warship was named?
ANSWERS (No.14)
1) Julius Caesar 2) Eleanor Roosevelt – she was Franklin Roosevelt’s fifth cousin on her father’s side. 3) The Oscars/Academy Awards 4) Mail 5) Sir John French 6) The Qing or Manchu dynasty (1644-1912, revived briefly 1917, and reinstalled as a Japanese puppet government 1932-45 in Manchuria) 7) Louis XIII & Louis XIV 8) Viscount Melbourne (William Lamb) 9) London 10) The Treaty of Versailles 11) The Perfumed Garden 12) New Lanark Mills 13) Aleister Crowley 14) He founded the Serbian Orthodox Church and wrote the first Serbian constitution. 15) Gurkhas 16) His younger sister
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No.13
1) Which army was defeated at the Horns of Hattin in 1187? 2) To within three years, when was Gay News founded? 3) In 1890, what did Britain get in return for trading the island of Heligoland to Germany? 4) In 1921, what did the the English Football Association ban? 5) What did Lyndon Johnson, his wife and his two daughters have in common with regard to their names (other than Johnson)? 6) Existing in Japan between 1881 and 1945, what was the Kempetai? 7) Who captained the English cricket team during the notorious 1932-33 Bodyline Ashes tour of Australia, and where was he born? 8) Later to become Chancellor of West Germany, who was the Mayor of West Berlin in 1961 when the Wall was built? 9) Name three of the Cambridge Five ring of Soviet spies. 10) Alaric, who sacked Rome in 410 AD, was king of which tribe/people? 11) Who moved the capital of Russia from Moscow to St Petersburg in 1712? 12) Founded in 1868 in Prussia, what is the official language of the Universal Postal Union which coordinates international mail? 13) Who was the king of Persia during the wars with Alexander the Great? 14) Emerging in the 16th century, Cabinets of Curiosity were the forerunners of what institutions? 15) Composed largely of Bosnian Muslims and and founded in 1944, of what larger military unit was the Handschar Division part? 16) The Clapham Sect, a grouping of Evangelical Anglicans active at the start of the 19th century, are best remembered for their successful opposition to what?
ANSWERS (No.13)
1) Christian crusaders 2) 1972 3) Zanzibar 4) Women’s football being played on grounds used by its member clubs 5) All four had the initials LBJ – Lady Bird, Lynda Bird and Lucy Baines (he also had a dog called… Leader Blair Jamie). 6) Officially and institutionally, the Military Police arm of the Japanese Army. However, they operated more like the Gestapo. They performed the functions of a secret police and were also in charge of POW camps during WWII. 7) Douglas Jardine, born in India to Scottish parents 8) Willy Brandt 9) Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt & John Cairncross 10) Visigoths 11) Peter the Great 12) French (hence the term Par Avion on airmail) 13) Darius III 14) Museums 15) Waffen SS 16) Slavery and the slave trade
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No.12
1) What left Paris and arrived in Vienna for the first time in June 1883? 2) What millenarian religious organisation was founded in 1870 by Charles Taze Russell in Pennsylvania, although its current name was only adopted in 1931? 3) Who was the last king of Italy before it became a republic? 4) In which French city between 1309 and 1377 did seven successive popes reside? 5) Dame Barbara Mary Plunket Greene, famous fashion designer of the 1960s, is better known by what name? 6) What region was the centre of the Kingdom of Dacia (82 BC-106 AD), ruled by Bulgaria between the 9th and 11th centuries, then the Hungarian monarchy for 500 years, followed by the Habsburg Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then Romania in 1918, divided between Hungary and Romania in 1940, before reverting back to Romania in 1945? 7) Who founded the Black Star Line, a shipping company, in 1919 with the aim of providing passage for black Americans to settle and set up businesses in Liberia as part of a Pan-Africanist movement? 8) Who was the first Southern US President elected to office after the American Civil War? 9) Jardine-Matheson, currently one of the largest conglomerate firms in the world, began trading in the 1840s in the Far East in tea, cotton and what? 10) Two Scots, James Thomson and David Mallett, wrote what jingoistic song in 1740 that is still trotted out annually at the Last Night of the Proms? 11) US Civil War general, diplomat to the Ottoman Empire, Governor of New Mexico who granted a pardon to Billy the Kid, Lew Wallace is better known for writing which book, turned into a blockbuster film in 1959? 12) Which football team began life in 1878 as the Newton Heath LYR (Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway) Football Club? 13) What was the name of the German cruiser which was scuttled after the Battle of the River Plate in 1939? 14) What did Tsar Alexander II sell to the United States in 1867? 15) What opened in 1936 in Skegness, followed by Clacton in 1938 and Filey in 1939? 16) What multinational firm run by the Rockefeller family was declared an illegal monopoly by the US Supreme Court in 1911, its break-up producing the Exxon, Mobil and Chevron companies among others?
ANSWERS (No.12)
1) The Orient Express. In October 1883, the destination was extended to Constantinople (Istanbul). 2) Jehovah’s Witnesses 3) Umberto II (reigned May 1946 – June 1946) 4) Avignon 5) Mary Quant 6) Transylvania 7) Marcus Garvey 8) Woodrow Wilson (Virginia) in 1912. Andrew Johnson (North Carolina) as Vice-President succeeded Abraham Lincoln in 1865 but was not elected to the office. 9) Opium – smuggling it into China. 10) Rule Britannia 11) Ben-Hur 12) Manchester United 13) Admiral Graf Spee 14) Alaska 15) The first Butlins Holiday Camps 16) Standard Oil
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No.11
Treaties:
1) The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) was signed by which two countries? 2) The Treaty of Verdun (843) ended what war? 3) The Treaty of Amity and Commerce (1858) [sometimes called the Harris Treaty] was signed by which two nations? 4) The Treaty of Sèvres (1920) was signed by France, Britain, Italy, Japan, Armenia and which other state? 5) Name any three of the five signatories of the Treaty of Bucharest (1913). 6) What treaty in March 1918 compelled Russia to withdraw from WWI, hand over all the Baltic states to Germany and recognise the independence of Ukraine? 7) The Treaty of Waitangi (1840) was signed by which two parties? 8) The Treaty of Westphalia (1648) ended what war?
General History:
9) Timothy the Tortoise, who died in 2004, was the naval mascot of HMS Queen. What was the first war which he experienced? 10) To within five years, what was the first year after the US Civil War ended in 1865 during which no African-American was reported lynched? 11) In 1659, Puritans in America banned the celebration of what? 12) Name the three Kaisers of the German Empire (1871-1918). 13) How many children did Queen Victoria produce? 14) In what modern-day countries in South America did the Thousand Day War (1899-1902) take place? 15) When Benjamin Disraeli was given a peerage, what was his title? 16) Geronimo (1829-1909) was a leader within what Native American tribe?
ANSWERS (No.11)
Treaties:
1) United States & Mexico following the Mexican-American war of 1846-48 2) Carolingian Civil War 3) United States & Japan 4) The Ottoman Empire, which was divided up and became the truncated state of Turkey 5) Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Montenegro and Greece. The Treaty ended the Second Balkan War 6) Brest-Litovsk 7) Britain and various Maori chiefs from New Zealand’s North Island 8) The Thirty Years’ War
General History:
9) The Crimean War (1853-56) 10) 1949 11) Christmas 12) Wilhelm I (1871-1888); Friedrich III (March 1888-June 1888); Wilhelm II (1888-1918) 13) Nine 14) Colombia and Panama 15) 1st Earl of Beaconsfield 16) Apache
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No.10
Scottish History:
1) Which Scottish king was killed at the battle of Flodden in 1513? 2) Which regiment was the first to be referred to as the Thin Red Line at the battle of Balaklava in 1854? 3) Which former schoolteacher founded the Scottish Workers Republican Party, was appointed Bolshevik consul in Scotland in 1918, was arrested multiple times for sedition, and was one of the foremost participants in the Red Clydeside Movement? 4) In 1853, Alexander Wood invented what medical instrument based upon the design of a bee’s stinger? 5) Which Scottish football club won the World Championship title in 1902, beating Tottenham Hotspur 3-1 on aggregate? 6) Which Scottish football club won the the Association Football Championship of the World title in 1887, beating Preston North End 2-1? 7) In 1727 in Dornoch in Sutherland, a woman called Janet Horne was the last person in the British Isles to experience what? 8) In 1700, Daniel Defoe described which Scottish city as “the cleanest and beautifulest city in Britain, London excepted.”
General History:
9) Name two of Margaret Thatcher’s three Chancellors of the Exchequer. 10) The last time Sweden went to war was in 1814. Who was she fighting? 11) Where were the second (1900) modern Olympic Games held? 12) Only one of the six points of the People’s Charter of 1838 has not been met. What is it? 13) In 1973 the Nobel Peace Prize was jointly awarded, but one of the recipients, Le Duc Tho, turned it down. Who was the one who accepted it, and what was the prize for? 14) Who succeeded Indira Ghandi as Prime Minister of India after her assassination in 1984? 15) Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, Roman emperor from 37 to 41 AD, is better known by what name? 16) Who was the first European to reach India by sea in 1498?
ANSWERS (No.10)
Scottish History:
1) James IV 2) The Sutherland Highlanders 3) John Maclean 4) Hypodermic needle 5) Heart of Midlothian 6) Hibernian 7) Being burned as a witch 8) Glasgow
General History:
9) Geoffrey Howe, Nigel Lawson, John Major 10) The Norwegians. The victors against Napoleon decreed that Denmark must cede Norway to Sweden, but the Norwegians put up a fight which resulted in a compromise whereby Norway accepted the Swedish monarch as their sovereign but retained autonomy in everything except foreign affairs. 11) Paris 12) Annual parliaments 13) Henry Kissinger, for work on the Paris Peace Accords which helped end the Vietnam War 14) Rajiv Ghandi, her son 15) Caligula 16) Vasco da Gama
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No.9
German History:
1) In 1914 Germany had four colonial possessions in Africa. Name two of them. 2) In what town in Austria was Adolf Hitler born? 3) Who became the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of West Germany in 1949? 4) What was the name of the battle, fought in 1806, in which the Prussians were decisively defeated by Napoleon? 5) The Germanic Ottonian Empire was a name given to the early years of what later entity? 6) The present-day city of Kaliningrad in Russia used to be an East Prussian city called what? 7) Which German Jewish poet (1797-1856), whose works were banned and destroyed in Nazi Germany, said, “Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned too”? 8) Which team did West Germany beat in the 1954 World Cup final in Switzerland after losing 8-3 to the same nation in an earlier round?
General History:
9) In 1919 what was designated “sovereign national property” internationally for the first time? 10) With what were the Texas Rangers equipped in 1840? 11) Who wrote Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798? 12) Who, on February 20th 1962, saw four sunsets in one day? 13) The Battle of Jarama occurred during which conflict? 14) Who is the only British Prime Minister ever to have been assassinated? 15) What was founded in 1662 and has the motto “Take nobody’s word for it”? 16) What did William Booth (1829-1912) found in 1878?
ANSWERS (No.9)
German History:
1) Togoland (modern-day Togo and eastern Ghana); Cameroon; German South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia); German East Africa (modern-day Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi) 2) Braunau am Inn 3) Konrad Adenauer 4) Jena-Auerstedt (often just called Jena) 5) The Holy Roman Empire 6) Königsberg 7) Heinrich Heine 8) Hungary
General History:
9) Airspace 10) Colt revolvers 11) Thomas Malthus 12) John Glenn, America’s first man in space 13) Spanish Civil War (1937) 14) Spencer Perceval (1812) 15) The Royal Society 16) The Salvation Army
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No.8
To within five years, how old were the following individuals when they died?
1) Queen Victoria 2) Josef Stalin 3) Eva Peron 4) Pitt the Younger 5) Rosa Luxemburg 6) Napoleon Bonaparte 7) Alexander the Great 8) John Lennon 9) Marilyn Monroe 10) Indira Gandhi 11) Margaret Thatcher 12) Abraham Lincoln 13) Emmeline Pankhurst 14) Erwin Rommel 15) Maximilien Robespierre 16) Charlotte Bronte
ANSWERS (No.8)
1) 81 2) 74 3) 33 4) 46 5) 47 6) 51 7) 32 8) 40 9) 36 10) 66 11) 87 12) 56 13) 69 14) 52 15) 36 16) 38
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No.7
WWI:
1) Who was in overall command of the British Army at the Battle of the Somme? 2) In what year did the United States join the Allies? 3) In what year did Italy join the Allies? 4) To the nearest 100, how many Victoria Crosses were awarded during the First World War?
GENERAL:
5) Between 1918 and 1924, St Petersburg was known by what name before it was changed to Leningrad? 6) Diana Mitford married which British politician in 1936, the ceremony taking place at Joseph Goebbels’ house? 7) The Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars (1209-29) took place in which country? 8) Which two great-grandchildren of Henry VII of England married each other in 1565 and produced a future monarch of three nations? 9) Who invented the first practical pneumatic tyre in 1888? 10) Who was the longest-reigning Pope in Catholic history, holding that office for 31 years and 7 months between 1846 and 1878? 11) What Chinese political movement was founded by Sun Yat-sen in 1912 and later headed by Chiang Kai-shek? 12) The Penny Black stamp was issued on 1 May 1840. One week later a twopenny stamp was introduced. What colour was it? 13) Which US Civil War Confederate general was accidentally shot and killed by his own side at the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863? 14) In which city was Mozart born? 15) Juventus football club was bought up in 1923 by the Agnelli family, owners of which very large Italian company? 16) Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organised the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 in order to campaign for what?
ANSWERS (No.7)
WWI:
1) Douglas Haig 2) 1917 3) 1915 4) 628
General:
5) Petrograd 6) Oswald Mosley 7) Southern France 8) Mary, Queen of Scots and Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley 9) John Boyd Dunlop 10) Pope Pius IX 11) Kuomintang 12) Blue 13) Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson 14) Salzburg 15) Fiat 16) Women’s rights and female suffrage
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No.6
USA:
1) Who surrendered at Yorktown in 1781, the last major battle of the American War of Independence? 2) Eight US presidents have died in office: Name five of them. 3) Where did the Wright Brothers’ first powered flight take place in 1903? 4) Who was Richard Nixon’s first Vice-President?
WARFARE:
5) Which nation was the first to create a General Staff in its army in the 1860s? 6) In which war did the Battle of Königgrätz take place? 7) Where did the Battle of Kohima take place in 1944? 8) Who had overall command of the British forces during the Falklands War of 1982?
GENERAL:
9) Name either Odysseus’s wife, son or faithful dog. 10) Name the two principal architects who designed the present-day Houses of Parliament, also known as the Palace of Westminster. 11) Pierre de Brazza was famous for his 19th-century exploration of which country, whose capital is named after him? 12) Who wrote the 1910 novel, Prester John? 13) In 1919 the Durand Line, first established in 1893 by the British, was reconfirmed as the dividing line between which two countries? 14) Who led a military coup in Spain in 1923 and became Prime Minister/dictator from 1923 until 1930? 15) How old was Adolf Hitler when he died ? 16) Two nations’ presidents were murdered in November 1963: Name them.
ANSWERS (No.6)
USA:
1) Lord Charles Cornwallis 2) William Henry Harrison (1841); Zachary Taylor (1850); Abraham Lincoln (1865); James A. Garfield (1881); William McKinley (1901); Warren G. Harding (1923); Franklin D. Roosevelt (1945); John F. Kennedy (1963) 3) Kitty Hawk, North Carolina 4) Spiro Agnew
WARFARE:
5) Prussia 6) Austro-Prussian War of 1866 7) India 8) Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse
GENERAL:
9) Penelope, Telemachus and Argos 10) Charles Barry & Augustus Pugin 11) Republic of the Congo (capital, Brazzaville) 12) John Buchan 13) Afghanistan and British India (now Pakistan) 14) Don Miguel Primo de Rivera 15) 56 16) Ngo Dinh Diem (South Vietnam) & John F. Kennedy (USA)
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No.5
Animals in History:
1) What is the name of the British award given to honour the work of animals in war? 2) 2) What birds did Charles Darwin principally study on the Galapagos Islands in 1835? 3) Both Mary I of England and Mary Queen of Scots are shown in portraits with what kind of dogs? 4) Which animals were kept in the temple of Juno in ancient Rome and reputedly warned of a night-time attack by the Gauls in 390 BC?
History Writing:
5) Who wrote the influential work on the outbreak of World War I, War by Timetable? 6) Who wrote the influential work on the developments leading to the postwar consensus, The Road to 1945? 7) What is the name of the historical school of thought which stressed long-term social history and included Lucien Febvre, Marc Bloch and Fernand Braudel? 8) Who wrote The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon and The Poverty of Philosophy?
General:
9) What name is given to the slaughter of at least 2,000 Protestants in Paris which began on the night of 23rd August 1572? 10) What did the Pitcairn Islands enact in 1838, many decades ahead of Australia, New Zealand and Britain? 11) The Battle of Spion Kop was fought in which war? 12) In what year was the National Trust founded? 13) Who painted The Metamorphosis of Narcissus in 1937? 14) Where and when were the first German military texts which had been enciphered on an Enigma machine broken? 15) Who, after serving two terms as UN Secretary-General, was discovered to have been suspected of Nazi war crimes? 16) What name was given to the unanticipated attack on 100 towns across South Vietnam by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese in January 1968?
ANSWERS (No.5)
Animals in History:
1) The Dickin Medal, created in 1943 by Maria Dickin, founder of the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals. 2) Finches 3) Toy Spaniels 4) Geese
History Writing:
5) A.J.P. Taylor 6) Paul Addison 7) Annales School 8) Karl Marx
General:
9) St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre 10) Voting rights for women. 11) Boer War (1899-1902) 12) 1895 13) Salvador Dali 14) In Poland in 1932 by Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski. 15) Kurt Waldheim of Austria (1972-81) 16) Tet Offensive
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No.4
United States History:
1) What is the oldest university in the United States of America, founded in 1636? 2) Which two former US Presidents died on the same day, 4th July 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence? 3) What did Mexico abolish in 1829 which contributed to the Anglo-American Texan independence uprising in 1835? 4) Who commanded the Union Army at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863? 5) Which was the first US state to give women the vote? 6) In the last two decades of the 19th century, Butte, Montana had the largest mining operation in the world producing what? 7) Where was the USS Maine sunk in 1898 triggering the Spanish-American War? 8) What was the name of the enabling law which laid down the rules for enforcing the ban on alcohol during the Prohibition Era?
General History:
9) In which century was the pontificate of the last non-European Pope before Benedict XVI in 2013? 10) In which modern-day country was the 1704 Battle of Blenheim fought? 11) The Fighting Temeraire, an 1838 painting by J.M. Turner, depicted the journey to the breakers’ yard of a ship which had fought at which battle? 12) Winston Churchill represented which Scottish city in the House of Commons between 1908 and 1922 before being defeated by the Scottish Prohibition Party? 13) In which modern-day country was the 1914 Battle of Tannenberg fought? 14) In which city was Leon Trotsky assassinated in 1940? 15) In 1944, whom did British General Bernard Freyberg ask for permission to bomb the abbey at Monte Cassino? 16) What was the name of the Hungarian Fascist party which took power in October 1944 and colluded in deporting 80,000 Jews to the death camps?
ANSWERS (No.4)
United States History:
1) Harvard 2) Thomas Jefferson and John Adams 3) Slavery 4) General George Meade 5) Wyoming 1869 (although propertied widows were allowed to vote in New Jersey from 1776 to 1807) 6) Copper 7) Havana 8) The Volstead Act, named after Andrew John Volstead, a Republican Congressman from Minnesota.
General History:
9) 8th century (Pope Gregory III, born in modern-day Syria, r.731-741 AD) 10) Germany 11) Trafalgar 12) Dundee 13) Poland 14) Mexico City 15) Pope Pius XII 16) Arrow Cross Party
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No.3 (Xmas Quiz 2014)
1) Who was crowned first Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day 800 AD? 2) What was William the Conqueror doing in Westminster Abbey on December 25th 1066? 3) On Christmas Day 1145 Louis VII of France took a vow to do what? 4) Captain William Mynors of the East India Company discovered which island on December 25th 1643? 5) George Washington led his army across which river on Christmas Day 1776, turning a string of defeats into a succession of American victories? 6) What is the name of the generally recognised first ever Christmas carol, sung for the first time on Christmas Eve in Oberndorf, Austria in 1818? 7) Which member of royalty introduced the Christmas tree to Britain? 8) What was first produced in 1843 by Henry Cole who helped to create the Penny Post in 1840? 9) On Christmas Eve, 1865 in Tennessee, which organisation was formed which might give the concept of a White Christmas a sinister ring? 10) What happened in Hong Kong on December 25th 1941? 11) On 26th December 1944 what city’s siege was ended by the arrival of General Patton’s armoured forces during the Battle of the Bulge? 12) What is the title of Frank Capra’s 1946 Christmas-set film starring James Stewart? 13) What is the title of the 1947 film which culminates in a court case where the judge rules that because the US Post Office has delivered mail to a man claiming to be Santa Claus, by extension the Federal Government has therefore recognised that Santa does exist? 14) What was removed from Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1950? 15) What did the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceuasescu get for Christmas in 1989? 16) Name two of the three Wise Men.
ANSWERS (No.3 Xmas Quiz 2014)
1) Charlemagne 2) Having himself crowned King of England 3) A vow to go on crusade 4) Christmas Island 5) Delaware River 6) Silent Night (Stille Nacht) 7) Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, in 1800 8) Christmas cards 9) Ku Klux Klan 10) British and Canadian forces surrendered to the Japanese – known as Black Christmas Day 11) Bastogne 12) It’s a Wonderful Life 13) Miracle on 34th Street 14) The Stone of Scone 15) A firing squad 16) Balthazar, Caspar & Melchior
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No.2
Doctors:
1) What was the name of Adolf Hitler’s personal physician from 1936 to 1945? 2) What was the name of Winston Churchill’s personal physician from 1940 to 1965? 3) Who was the first person to be arrested with the aid of wireless telegraphy in 1910, while fleeing across the Atlantic on the SS Montrose after murdering his wife? Why was he unable to practice medicine in Britain? 4) What was the name of the doctor who set the ankle of John Wilkes Booth after he broke it leaping on to the stage of Ford’s Theatre following the shooting of Abraham Lincoln?
British Empire:
5) Captain Cudjoe and Queen Nanny were the leaders of what group of rebel runaway slaves in 18th-century Jamaica? 6) What did Britain abolish in 1807? 7) Before the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand was part of which other colony? 8) Where did the massacre of 120 British women and children take place during the Indian Rebellion of 1857?
Sport:
9) When was the first All Blacks’ tour of Britain? 10) On 12 September 1885, two football teams from the same town conceded a total of 71 goals in the 1st round of the Scottish Cup. Which town? 11) Name one of the two American sprinters who gave a Black Power salute at the 1968 Mexico Olympic Games. 12) In what year did the Soviet Union first compete at the Olympic Games?
ANSWERS (No.2)
Doctors:
1) Theodor Morell 2) Charles McMoran Wilson, 1st Baron Moran 3) Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen. His degree was in Homeopathic Medicine. 4) Dr Samuel Mudd.
British Empire:
5) Maroons 6) The slave trade 7) New South Wales 8) Cawnpore (Kanpur)
Sport:
9) 1905 10) Aberdeen. Bon Accord lost 36-0 to Arbroath; Aberdeen Rovers lost 35-0 to Dundee Harp. 11) Tommie Smith & John Carlos 12) 1952 in Helsinki
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ANSWERS (No.1)
Since Quiz No.1 was published, Bernadette Devlin has been superseded by Mhairi Black of the Scottish National Party as the youngest female MP, being 20 years and 237 days old when elected in 2015.
