Weekly History Quiz No.301

Sputnik’s 1957 launch shocked the West and began the Space Race. Explorer 1 followed months later. Voyager 1 launched much later in 1977.

Chinese philosopher Han Feizi (280–233 BCE), departed from Confucianist thought during the Qin period, creating the philosophical system of Legalism. This philosophy states that strict legal protocols and punishments are necessary to establish societal order and prevent moral chaos. The core tenet is that that human beings are essentially bad because they are inherently selfish.

In the wake of conquest in the New World conquered peoples were considered vassals of the Spanish monarch. The Crown awarded an encomienda as a grant to a particular individual of a monopoly on the labour of a particular group of indigenous peoples, in perpetuity.

Inspired by the success of the German Greens in the early 1980s, green parties were founded throughout the Australian states to contest local and state level elections. The WA Greens were the first to achieve electoral success at the federal level, winning a Senate seat in 1990. The state parties retained significant independence, and it wasn’t until 2003 that the WA Greens joined the national party, the last state to do so.

The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime, was proclaimed in 1865, with 27 of the then 36 states ratifying the amendment. New Jersey, Delaware, Kentucky and Mississippi rejected the amendment, with Mississippi being the last to subsequently ratify it, in 1995.

For the majority of this time it was part of French Equatorial Africa. Under the governorship of Félix Éboué, the first Black Governor of a French colony, Chad distinguished itself by being the first French colony to rally to the side of Free France, in 1940.

The failed CIA-backed invasion intended to overthrow Fidel Castro. Read more about the operation here.

For centuries, lords had claimed exclusive rights to hunt game, fish rivers and fell timber. The peasants demanded those rights, formalising their grievances in the Twelve Articles, a manifesto inspired by principles from Luther and the Reformation. It called for fair rents, freedom to fish and hunt, the right to choose pastors, and an end to serfdom.
Luther rejected the peasants claims, publishing the pamphlet Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants, urging princes to kill the rebels without mercy.

Originally a textile manufacturer, the company transitioned into a conglomerate starting in 1965 under the management of chairman and CEO Warren Buffett and vice chairman Charlie Munger. In 1962, Warren Buffett began buying Berkshire Hathaway stock for his investment fund, Buffett Partnership Ltd. After a dispute with Seabury Stanton, then manager of Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett bought a controlling interest in the company, in order to fire Stanton. He described this emotional decision as his worst mistake, costing him an estimated $200 billion dollars of lost compounding returns over the following 45 years.

Disguised as a sailor and carrying borrowed identity papers, Douglass travelled via train from Maryland to New York. Although he reached the Northern States, he lived in fear of recapture and a return to slavery for the following decade.