Weekly History Quiz No.297

Caillebotte was a French painter who was a member and patron of the Impressionists, although he painted in a more realistic manner than many others in the group. Paris Street; Rainy Day is his best known work.

Discovered by the Spanish in the early 1500s, Bermuda had no Indigenous population when they arrived. In 1612, the English began settlement of the archipelago, which remains a British Overseas Territory to this day.

Gibraltar became a British colony in 1713, Falkland Islands in 1833 and Pitcairn Islands in 1838.

Established in 1955, the Warsaw Pact unified Eastern Bloc militaries under Soviet leadership. COMECON was economic, not military, and CSTO was formed after the Cold War.

Seen as one of the most important architectural works completed since 1980, the museum has attracted near universal praise for its innovative design.

Sandline was founded and managed by retired British Army Lieutenant Colonel Tim Spicer. It was involved in conflicts in Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Jersey Standard operated a near monopoly in the American oil industry from 1899 until 1911 and was the largest corporation in the United States. In the aftermath of the ruling the company was broken up into 34 separate competing companies, including what would become the companies Exxon, Mobil, and Chevron.

On 5th August 1914 Fort Nepean, manned by members of the Royal Australian Garrison Artillery, opened fire on the German cargo steamer SS Pfalz. When the Pfalz left Melbourne harbour hours earlier news of
Britain's declaration of war against Germany had not yet reached Australia. However, by the time the Pfalz had made it to the mouth of Port Phillip Bay the news had reached Fort Nepean, which was ordered to
open fire. The SS Pfalz returned to port where her crew were arrested and interned. This incident is generally thought of as the first shots of the British Empire in the First World War.

Fort Nepean fired Australia's first shots of the Second World War on 4th September 1939, shortly after the declaration of war. One of the fort's guns fired on an unidentified ship leaving Port Phillip Bay, this time however, the vessel was not a German vessel, but the Australian freighter SS Woniora.

A Soviet and Russian author and dissident who's best known work, The Gulag Archipelago, helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union. He was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature".

The Korean War marked the first direct military confrontation between forces backed by the U.S. and the Soviet bloc. Vietnam escalated later in the Cold War.

The Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, established around 250 BCE, was one of the largest and most significant libraries of the ancient world. Much of it was destroyed during Caesar's Civil War in 48 BCE.

The Lighthouse of Alexandria was also built around 250 BCE and was at least 100m high. It was damaged by a series of earthquakes, finally collapsing in 1303.

Alexandria was the capital of the Ptolemaic Kingdom and the foremost commercial, intellectual, and cultural centre for much of the Hellenistic age.