History Guild General History Quiz 82
See how your history knowledge stacks up!
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The stories behind the questions
1. Where was the first University established?
Bologna – Founded in 1088 by an organised guild of students, it is the oldest university in the world, and the the word universitas was coined at its foundation.
2. Who lead the Franks to victory against a Umayyad Caliphate Army under Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi at the Battle of Tours-Poitiers in 732CE?
Charles Martel (Charles the Hammer) – The battle of Tours-Poitiers halted the expansion of the Umayyad Caliphate from the Iberian Peninsula into Western Europe.
3. What animal did the Spanish conquistadors nickname “nimble Peter” when they first arrived in South America?
Sloth – An ironic nickname for an animal of ‘extreme sluggishness’. Ulloa, a Spanish Lieutenant, described it as a ‘middling monkey… of a wretched appearance’ whose occasional movements were accompanied by ‘such a plaintive, and at the same time so disagreeable a cry, as at once produces pity and disgust.’
4. Which Russian emperor modernised Russia and changed the official title from “tsar” to “emperor”?
Peter I – Also known as Peter the Great he ruled from 1682 until 1725. He expanded the Tsardom into a much larger empire that became a major European power. He led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political systems with ones that were modern, scientific, Westernised and based on the Enlightenment. Peter’s reforms had a lasting impact on Russia, and many institutions of the Russian government trace their origins to his reign. He is also known for founding and developing the city of Saint Petersburg, which remained the capital of Russia until 1917.
5. Which of these people is a famous Australian Photographer who documented wars and remote expeditions?
Frank Hurley – Hurley was the photographer for both Mawson and Shackleton’s Antarctic expeditions, as well as an official Australian photographer during both the First and Second World Wars.
6. Who produced the first maps that utilised latitude and longitude in 150 CE?
Claudius Ptolemy – In his work Geographia, written in the second century CE, Ptolemy revolutionized geography and cartography. He outlined a coordinate system of latitude and longitude for accurate navigation, mapped thousands of areas with their corresponding coordinates, and was the first to use perspective projection to display the globe effectively on a two-dimensional surface. Read more about this here.
7. Which aircraft is this?
Aichi D3A Val – The primary dive bomber of the Imperial Japanese Navy, it bombed Pearl Harbor and U.S. bases in the Philippines on the first day Japan attacked the Allies. They sank more Allied warships than any other Axis aircraft.
8. Which of these battles occurred first?
Battle of the Teutoburg Forest – 9 CE
Battle of Agincourt – 1415
Battle of Crécy 1346
Battle of Hastings 1066
9. Which colonial power controlled Suriname from 1667 until 1975?
The Netherlands – During the Dutch colonial period Suriname was a lucrative source of sugar, its plantation economy driven by African slave labour. In 1954, Suriname became one of the constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, gaining full independence in 1975.
10. What year did the Great Fire of London occur?
1666 – Lasting for 4 days the fire gutted the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall. It destroyed 13,200 houses, 87 parish churches, St Paul’s Cathedral. It is estimated to have destroyed the homes of 87% of the City’s inhabitants.
