General History Quiz 144
1. The 430 BCE plague of Athens coincided with what event?
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1. The 430 BCE plague of Athens coincided with what event?
Try the full 10 question quiz.
Reading time: 5 minutes
This june will mark the 75th anniversary of the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush at Tilbury Harbour, carrying on board some 800 passengers who gave their last country of residence as somewhere in the West Indies, and many of whom would migrate as workers and would settle in Britain and help steer its economic recovery after the Second World War. But this was only one journey in the vessel’s history and this article examines its colourful, chequered, and varied life since its maiden voyage was made in 1931 to its sinking in 1954.
History Guild General History Quiz 78See how your history knowledge stacks up! Want to know more...
Read More1. Who led the communists to victory in the Chinese civil war?
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1. Who were the Sea Peoples?
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1. Where did the Maurya Empire originate?
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Reading time: 10 minutes
In the heat of commemoration of Australians’ involvement in the first world war, it’s timely to remember their participation in the frontier wars in the 19th century. As Nicholas Clements, the author of a new book on the best known frontier war, the Black War in Tasmania in the 1820s, points out, the death rate among the colonists was half that of Australians in the first world war, much higher than the death rate in the second world war and the casualties affected almost every family in Tasmania.
Estimated reading time: 14 minutes By Peter Monteath, Flinders University. Even the sound of a...
Read MoreReading time: 6 minutes
Every year, tens of thousands of New South Wales State Library patrons walk past a stunning mosaic replica of the Tasman Map on the floor of the Mitchell library vestibule. The original Tasman map, recently restored, charts the two voyages of the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1642 and 1644.
Reading time: 5 minutes
Modern medicine seems to advance with time thanks to research breakthroughs. Hence it’s often thought that further into the past, only simpler medical practices existed. The medical expertise of foraging communities such as hunter-gatherers has been thought to be rudimentary and unchanging. It’s been argued that shifts towards settled agricultural life within the past 10,000 years were what created new health problems and advances in medical culture; this includes surgery.
Reading time: 8 minutes
In 1989, a policy wonk in the US State Department wrote a paper for the right-leaning international relations magazine The National Interest entitled “The End of History?”. His name was Francis Fukuyama, and the paper stirred such interest – and caused such controversy – that he was soon contracted to expand his 18-page article into a book. He did so in 1992: The End of History and the Last Man. The rest, they say, is (the end of) history.
1. Which empire did Mansa Musa rule from 1280 to 1337 CE?
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Reading time: 6 minutes
Not long to go now before many of us get to spread some good tidings and joy as we celebrate Christmas.
The main ways we understand and mark the occasion seem to be rather similar across the world. It’s about time with community, family, food-sharing, gift-giving and overall merry festivities.
Reading time: 7 minutes
Right now, it’s Bitcoin. But in the past we’ve had dotcom stocks, the 1929 crash, 19th-century railways and the South Sea Bubble of 1720. All these were compared by contemporaries to “tulip mania”, the Dutch financial craze for tulip bulbs in the 1630s. Bitcoin, according some sceptics, is “tulip mania 2.0”.
Reading time: 4 minutes
Ninety years ago, Yorta Yorta leader William Cooper dreamed of Aboriginal people being represented in the Commonwealth parliament. In August 1933, he set about petitioning the British king, George V. The key demand was for: a member of parliament, of our own blood or white men known to have studied our needs and to be in sympathy with our race, to represent us in the Federal Parliament.
Reading time: 4 minutes
As the Russo-Ukraine conflict continues with no resolution in sight, we are painfully reminded of not only the horror of war, but also how often major powers’ interventionism, for whatever objective, hasn’t paid off. These powers have repeatedly failed to learn from the futility of their past adventures to avoid future ones. Counterproductivity has often become the hallmark of their efforts.
Read MoreReading time: 5 minutes The bombing of Darwin, 1942. If sometimes it seems that governments rush...
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