History Guild General History Quiz 160
See how your history knowledge stacks up!
Want to know more about any of the questions? Scroll down to learn more!
Have an idea for a question? Suggest it here and we’ll include it in a future quiz!
The stories behind the questions
1. What was the code name for the WW2 ‘Dambuster raid’?
Operation Chastise – On the night of 16/17th May 1943 Lancasters from RAF 617 SQN used experimental bouncing bombs to attack dams that supplied the industrial Ruhr valley. Two dams were breached, resulting in a reduction in German industrial production that lasted 5 months.
2. In what year was the landmark Roe vs Wade decision handed down?
1973 – This decision held that the US constitution protected a woman’s right to have an abortion. This was based on the 14th amendment’s right to privacy, which protected a woman and her physician in their decision as to whether to carry a pregnancy to term. In 2022 it was overturned, allowing individual US states to make laws restricting access to abortions
3. What epoch defining event occurred during Geoffrey Chaucer’s childhood?
The Black Death – Chaucer was about 5 years old at the beginning of the Black Death in 1346. The world he grew up in was vastly changed to that his parents would have known. The Black Death caused labour shortages that allowed the peasantry more power in negotiating wages and gave some the chance to move in order to improve their position.
4. What was Vladimir Putin’s career prior to entering politics?
Intelligence Agent – Putin served in the KGB from 1975 to 1990, based in St Petersburg and Dresden.
5. Who were killed during the 1572 St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre?
French Protestants – Somewhere between 5,000 to 30,000 Huguenots, who were French Calvinist Protestants, were killed in a series of assasinations and mob violence by French Catholics and supporters of King Charles IX.
6. Mary Anning (1799-1847) was a pioneer in which field?
Paleontology – Anning discovered and collected many Jurassic marine fossils on the Dorset coast of England.
7. The Anti-Slavery Haitian Revolution occured at the same time as what other major event?
French Revolution – The Haitian Revolution was a successful anti-slavery and anti-colonial insurrection that took place in the former French colony of Saint Domingue from 1791 until 1804. Saint-Domingue’s free people of color, most notably Julien Raimond, had been actively appealing to France for full civil equality with whites since the 1780s. Raimond used the French Revolution to make this the major colonial issue before the National Assembly of France. The French Revolution provided the Hatian’s the opportunity to seize their freedom and independence.
8. Which of the following was a king of Babylon?
Hammurabi – Babylon rose to prominence under the authority of it’s 6th King, Hammurabi. He was an efficient ruler, establishing a centralized bureaucracy with taxation and a detailed law code that has survived to this day.
9. What was the Younger Dryas?
A period of abrupt global cooling during the Mesolithic era – A peiod of coolder and drier climate, particularly in Northern Europe, which saw temperatures cool by an average of 5 to 10 degrees Celcius over a very short period of only decades. This led to around 1,200 years of colder temperatures, the advance of glaciers and massive impacts on human populations.
The most likely cause was that the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, which transports warm water from the Equator towards the North Pole, was interrupted by an influx of fresh, cold water from North America into the Atlantic.
10. Where have all British monarchs been crowned?
Westminster Abbey – The last Anglo-Saxon monarch, Harold II, was crowned at Westminster Abbey in 1066, all subsequent English and British monarchs have been crowned there.
