Weekly History Quiz No.255

Delacroix was very influential in the Romantic school of French painting. The painting shows fighters from many social classes, ranging from the bourgeoisie represented by the young man in a top hat, a student from the prestigious École Polytechnique wearing the traditional bicorne, to the revolutionary urban worker.

John F. Kennedy defeated Nixon and his Republican Party in the hard fought 1960 election campaign. Nixon had previously served as a representative and senator from California and as the 36th vice president from 1953 to 1961 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He eventually won the presidency in 1968.

In 1807 The Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was passed by the UK Parliament, prohibiting the buying and selling of enslaved people, but not ending slave labour for those people already enslaved. In the wake of this Act the Royal Navy began hunting down and seizing slave ships. In 1833 the Slavery Abolition Act was passed by Parliament, freeing all enslaved people in British colonies.

Due in large part to his time spent in the USA advocating for an independent Korea prior to and during WW2, Syngman Rhee became South Korea’s first president following a political campaign focused on Korean unification – alongside convenient assassinations of most of the prominent moderate political leaders. Read more about the history of democracy in The Republic of Korea here.

A scam medical device, testing of Perkins’ tractors led to the first genuine scientific documentation of what’s come to be known as the placebo effect.

In the wake of Prussian victory in the Franco-Prussian war the process of creating a Federal Germany was completed, including 25 member states and led by the Kingdom of Prussia.

Learn more about the Babylonian Empire here.

Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed by Saudi agents at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. After being killed he was probably cremated in a recently constructed extra large oven at the Saudi consulate general's residence, which Al Jazeera suggested was likely purpose-built for the disposal of Khashoggi's remains.

Havel was President until 31st December 1992, when Czechoslovakia peacefully split into the two sovereign states of the Czech Republic, now Czechia, and Slovakia.

The Elementary Education Act of 1870 introduced universal education for children aged between 5 and 12 in England and Wales, although parents still had to pay fees in most cases. A further act in 1891 mandated government money being given directly to schools, and banned primary schools from charging fees.