Weekly History Quiz No.268

The youngest daughter of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine was a driven and ambitious woman. Her diplomatic and political manoeuvring saw her become Queen of Sicily and Countess of Toulouse.

Built in just one year and 45 days, the Empire State Building is 443m high and has 102 floors.

Snowden was an NSA intelligence contractor who leaked classified documents revealing the existence of global surveillance programs run by the NSA and other Western intelligence agencies.

The US Constitution formally established New York as America’s capital in 1789, but it had served as the de facto capital since 1785. Philadelphia became capital the following year, and Washington D.C. became the capital in 1800.

Pope Adrian IV was in power from 1154 to 1159. Born Nicholas Breakspear in Hertfordshire, as Pope he is thought to have issued the Laudabiliter, a Papal Bull granting King Henry II of England the right to invade and govern Ireland.

Macau was settled by Portuguese merchants in 1557, during the Ming dynasty. It was occupied until official recognition as a colony under the 1887 Sino-Portuguese Treaty of Peking. This gave Portugal perpetual colonial rights to Macau on the condition that Portugal would cooperate in efforts to end the smuggling of opium. Portugal and China negotiated the return of Macau in the 1970s and 1980s, with eventual handover in 1999.

The world's oldest known peace treaty, it was agreed between Hattusilli III, King of the Hittites, and Ramses, Pharaoh of the Egyptians, in 1269 BCE.

The Great Molasses Flood in Boston, Massachusetts, was a devastating industrial accident where a large storage tank of molasses, owned by United States Industrial Alcohol burst, sending waves of the liquid sugar through the streets of Boston in 1919 at an estimated 55 km per hour. The flood caused 21 deaths and 150 more injuries.

Partition of India - 20 million

Russian invasion of Ukraine - 9.2 million

Yugoslav Wars - 2.4 million

Irish Great Famine - 1 million

The Hanseatic League was a network of merchant guilds and market towns in Central and Northern Europe that dominated maritime trade in the North Sea and Baltic. It began to gain power in the 1200s, was dominant in the 1400s, and declined in the 1600s.