Weekly History Quiz No.293

In a series of conquests from 1859, France eroded Vietnam's sovereignty. By 1884, the entire country was under French rule.

In 1812 Prime Minister Spencer Perceval was shot and killed by merchant who felt aggrieved by the British government. This stands in stark contrast to the four sitting U.S. presidents who have been assassinated, plus one wounded, over a significantly shorter period of time.

Bacon was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his raw, unsettling imagery. The piece was considered very influential, critic John Russell observed in 1971 that "there was painting in England before the Three Studies, and painting after them, and no one ... can confuse the two".

Read about the sources of Russian power and conduct from an historical, cultural and geopolitical perspective.

The first test match took place at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in 1877 between the Combined Australian XI and James Lillywhite's XI, a team of visiting English professionals. The Australians won.

UK – Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister, 1979

Pakistan – Benazir Bhutto, Prime Minister, 1993

New Zealand – Jenny Shipley, Prime Minister, 1997

Germany – Angela Merkel, Chancellor, 2005

At the beginning of his presidency there were a few hundred Americans in Vietnam. While officially only advisors and trainers, members of the Military Assistance Advisory Group - Vietnam served in combat alongside their South Vietnamese charges, and many were killed in action. The U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam was formed in early 1962, which provided aviation, communications, intelligence, special warfare and logistic units.

By the time he was assassinated in 1963 there were over 17,000 members of the US military in the country.

Under his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, US forces committed to the country continued to grow. In 1965, 3,500 Marines of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade arrived in Da Nang to protect the U.S. airbase there from Viet Cong attacks, the first large scale, entirely US combat unit deployed to the conflict.

A gang of 15 led by Bruce Reynolds attacked the Royal Mail train, stealing £2.6 million. The police eventually arrested most of the gang, who were sentenced to up to 30 years in prison.

In 197 CE two Roman armies, each of around 150,000 soldiers each, took the field against each other over the position of Emperor. The bloody battle continued for over a day before the current Emperor, Septimius Severus, was victorious over the contender, Clodius Albinus, Governor of Britannia.

Officially the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, the group was a Zionist paramilitary organization which aimed was to evict the British authorities from Palestine by use of violence, to allow unrestricted immigration of Jews to Palestine and the formation of a Jewish state. One of the leaders of the group was Yitzhak Shamir, Israeli prime minister 1983–1984 and 1986–1992.

In 1940 the group contacted Nazi Germany with a proposal "actively take part in the war on Germany's side" in return for recognition of a Jewish state open to unlimited immigration. The Germans did not respond.