Weekly History Quiz No.304

A pyrrhic victory for British troops over Colonists during the American Revolutionary War, fought on the 17th June 1775.

The capital of the disastrous Darien scheme, a Scottish colony in the Caribbean that lasted less than a year and saw the deaths of almost three quarters of the colonists.

Founded by British lawyer Peter Benenson, the group now has more than ten million members and supporters around the world. Originally created to campaign for political prisoners, it was inspired by the jailing of two Portuguese students by the authoritarian regime in that country.

On February 23, 1862, Union troops occupied Nashville, the first Confederate state capital to fall. Nashville remained under Union control for the rest of the war. Ironically, Tennessee was the last state to secede from the Union, in June, 1861.

George Weah is particularly notable for his soccer career prior to politics. He played in Paris and Milan before winning the Ballon d'Or, the most prestigious individual award of which he is the only African recipient to date. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was the first female president of Liberia, serving from 2006 to 2018. She was a vocal critic of the government after a 1980 coup d'etat, for which she received a 10-year prison sentence. After her release, she ran in 1997 and won in 2006.

Student-led demonstrations called for political reform before being violently suppressed. The Democracy Wall was earlier and smaller. XinHai was in 1911.

After the defeat of Napoleon, European powers met in Vienna to redraw borders and re-establish conservative monarchies, aiming to prevent future revolutions.

Powers’ capture embarrassed the U.S. and heightened Cold War tensions. Yeager and Glenn were famous aviators but unrelated to the incident.

Duccio is considered one of the greatest Italian painters of the Middle Ages, and is credited with creating the painting styles of Trecento Gothic style and the Sienese school.

Captured by Anglo-Dutch forces during the War of the Spanish Succession, the 1715 Peace of Utrecht ceded the territory to Britain in perpetuity.