Weekly History Quiz No.235

Construction began with the Metropolitan line, only 48 years after the first commercially successful steam locomotive was built in 1812. This map of London shows the city just prior to construction of the London underground.

Singh was one of several Indian women who pioneered the cause of women's rights in Britain. In 1909 she joined the Women's Social and Political Union, she also refused to pay taxes, frustrating the government. King George V asked in exasperation, "Have we no hold on her?"

The Principality of Catalonia was on the losing side of a series of wars that led steadily to more centralisation of power in Spain during the 1500s. Catalans were finally defeated and reincorporated into the Crown of Spain in 1652. In 1659 the Treaty of the Pyrenees ceded Catalonia to France, who retained control until the War of the Spanish Succession in 1714.

Becoming King of Scotland in 1567 as James VI and King of England and Ireland as James I in 1603, he ruled both kingdoms until his death in 1625. He unsuccessfully tried to get both countries to adopt a closer political union and the kingdoms of Scotland and England remained independent sovereign states under a common monarch.

The Guatemalan Civil War took place from 1960 to 1996 between the government of Guatemala and various leftist rebel groups supported chiefly by ethnic Maya indigenous people and Ladino peasants, who together made up the rural poor.

The Egyptian Ptolemaic Kingdom was ruled by the Ptolemaic dynasty, starting with Ptolemy I Soter’s accession to the throne following the death of Alexander the Great. The dynasty survived until the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BCE, at which point Egypt was conquered by the Romans.

George Washington was commander in chief of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War.

Ulysses S. Grant was commanding general of the Union Army in the American Civil War.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II.

Ponzi’s racket snowballed at an incredible speed. In January of 1920, 18 people invested a total of $1800. By July of that year, new investors—from paperboys to finance executives to a whopping two-thirds of the Boston police force—made Ponzi nearly a million dollars every day.

Credited with inspiring the name of the Impressionist movement, Impression, Sunrise depicts the port of Le Havre, Monet's hometown.

ARA General Belgrano was sunk during the Falklands War by the Royal Navy submarine HMS Conqueror with the loss of 323 lives.