Weekly History Quiz No.298

The Australian crew of this gun have just knocked out a Japanese tank near Bakri, Malaya in December 1941. The 2-pounder anti tank gun shown was the main anti tank gun of British and Commonwealth forces in the first years of WW2. Read more about this campaign here.

New France was the territory colonised by France in North America, beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534, reaching its peak in 1712, and extinguished after conflict with Britain and Spain in 1763. Montreal became the economic hub for the French fur trade due to its location along the St. Lawrence River, which allowed trade with many indigenous populations and the export of furs.

Vietnam was temporarily divided between North and South following the French withdrawal. Korea was divided at the 38th parallel, and Germany after WWII, but neither at the 17th parallel.

One of the earliest landscape painters of the 17th-century Dutch Golden Age. Avercamp made extensive use of the aerial perspective painting technique. This adds the impression of depth through a change of color in the distance.

The Soviet invasion shocked the world and escalated tensions dramatically. Vietnam and Iran’s actions were significant, but unrelated to the Olympic boycott.

A major Indigenous uprising in the Great Lakes region, led by Odawa Chief Pontiac, against British rule, it lasted from 1763-6. The war ended in a stalemate, and the subsequent treaty was favorable to the indigenous groups.

Ruling Egypt, the Levant and the Hejaz from 1250 until it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1517, with Cairo as its capital. It was ruled by a military caste of mamluks (freed slave soldiers). One of its most successful sultans was Baybars, who inflicted a defeat on the Seventh Crusade of King Louis IX of France, as well as defeating the Mongol army at the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260.

A Soviet invasion of Finland beginning on 30th November 1939, met exceptionally stubborn resistance from the heavily outnumbered Finnish defenders. The War ended three months later with the Moscow Peace Treaty. The treaty saw Finland cede around 10% of their territory to the USSR, however it was an embarrassing indication of the weakness of the Soviet armed forces, which had suffered horrific casualties attempting to take Finland.

Elected for the precursor to the Conservative party in 1919, Astor was an advocate for temperance, welfare, education reform and women's rights. She was also an ardent anti-Catholic and anti-communist, and received criticism for her antisemitism and sympathetic view of Nazism.

Astor was the second Woman to be elected to British Parliament, the first being Sinn Fein member Constance Markievicz, who never took her seat in the Commons due to her party's abstention policy.

World population in 1600 was around 500 million, in 1700 it was around 600 million, increasing to 1 billion in 1800. In 1900 it was around 1.6 billion, reaching 2 billion around 1925. The human race took around 300,000 years to reach a population of 1 billion, but only 125 years to add the next billion.