Weekly History Quiz No.222

Considered one of the best impressionist paintings of all time, it shows a richness of form, a fluidity of brush stroke, and a flickering light. Renoir was born in 1841 in Limoges, France. He became prominent when he joined forces with Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, and several other artists to mount the First Impressionist Exhibition in 1874.

The Duchy of Normandy was established in 911 by the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte between King Charles III (Charles the Simple) and the famed Viking ruler Rollo. The Normans invaded England in 1066, 155 years later.

The first English monarch to claim the title was Edward III in 1340. Henry VI of England was the only English monarch to actually rule as a French monarch, as Henry II of France. George III chose the 1800 Act of Union which joined the Kingdom of Great Britain with the Kingdom of Ireland to drop his claim to the now defunct French throne.

Following the fall of Kwangtung in October 1938, a group of patriotic Chinese individuals formed an independent guerrilla unit known as the ‘Kwangtung Mass Anti-Japanese Guerrillas’ under the leadership of Tsang Sang [Zeng Sheng]. This guerrilla unit, also referred to as the East River Column, expanded after the fall of Hong Kong from platoon size to battalion – around 3,000 strong – raised from the locals who knew every inch of the rugged country behind Kowloon.

France had controlled the Louisiana territory from 1682 until they ceded it to Spain in 1762. France regained ownership of Louisiana in 1800 in exchange for territories in Tuscany, however, France's failure to suppress a revolt in Saint-Domingue, coupled with the prospect of renewed war with the UK, prompted Napoleon to consider selling Louisiana to the United States.

Hippocrates of Kos, lived in Greece in the fifth century BCE and penned the Hippocratic Oath around 400 BCE.

Tsar Alexander I had changed Russia’s position relative to France four times between 1804 and 1812 among neutrality, opposition, and alliance. The tsar’s greatest triumph came in 1812 as Napoleon’s invasion of Russia proved a total disaster for the French.

King Leopold II of the Belgians controlled the Congo Free State, the vast territory that is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He owned this not as a colony but as private property. This period saw horrific treatment of the population, with international pressure leading to the Belgian Federal Parliament reluctantly annexing the state as the Belgian Congo in 1908.

King Zheng of Qin unified China as the First Emperor of the Qin dynasty and ordered the destruction of the walls that divided his empire. To defend the empire against the Xiongnu people from the north, however, he ordered the building of new walls to connect the remaining fortifications along the empire’s northern frontier, beginning in 212 BCE. Construction continued in stages until the end of the Ming Dynasty in 1644 CE.

Between 1963 and 1966 Australian troops supported British and Malaysian forces who were opposing the Indonesian ‘Confrontation’ (Konfrontasi) of the new federation of Malaysia. The conflict stemmed from Indonesia’s opposition to the creation of state of Malaysia from the Federation of Malaya. It ended after Indonesian president Sukarno was deposed in 1966.