Weekly History Quiz No.315

The Egyptians sent 70,000 troops to intervene in the North Yemen civil war, fighting against the Yemeni monarchy. The conflict drained Egyptian resources, significantly weakening its performance in the 1967 Six-Day War against Israel.

Roosevelt rose to prominence as a Colonel in the 'Rough Riders' during the Spanish-American War. He was elected Vice-President, and assumed office at age 42 following the assassination of President William McKinley, becoming the youngest person to hold the presidency. He completed McKinley's second term and was elected in his own right in 1904, serving almost two full terms.

Darwin did much of his fieldwork for this text during his expeditions to the Galápagos Islands on board HMS Beagle 1831-1836.

The allied victory at Quatre Bras prevented the French from controlling these strategic crossroads. This in turn slowed down the French advance, thereby allowing Wellington to take a position on the Waterloo battlegrounds. This significantly contributed to the allied victory at Waterloo.

In January 1120, and King Baldwin II of Jerusalem granted the Templars a headquarters in a wing of the royal palace on the Temple Mount in the captured Al-Aqsa Mosque. The new order, founded by Hugues de Payens,  took the name Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, or “Templar” knights. Their emblem was of two knights riding on a single horse, emphasizing the order’s poverty.

The Templars became a favoured charity throughout Christendom, receiving money, land, businesses, and noble-born sons from families who were eager to help with the fight in the Holy Land. After accumulating wealth in this manner throughout Europe and Outremer, in 1150 the Templars began issuing letters of credit for pilgrims journeying to the Holy Land. Pilgrims deposited their valuables with a Templar location in Europe, received a document indicating the value of their deposit, and received equal value upon arrival in Outremer.

After almost 200 years the order became one of the richest and most powerful groups in Europe. This, along with their secrecy created distrust, which was exploited by King Philip IV of France, who was deeply in debt to the order. On Friday the 13th of October 1307, he had many of the order’s members in France arrested, tortured into giving false confessions, and burned them at the stake. Pope Clement V disbanded the order in 1312 under pressure from King Philip.

Horthy began his career as a sub-lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian Navy in 1896 and attained the rank of rear admiral by 1918. He was regent of the Kingdom of Hungary from 1920 to October 1944.

Dating to around 300 B.C., Petra was the capital of the Nabatean Kingdom. Accessed via a narrow canyon called Al Siq, it contains tombs and temples carved into pink sandstone cliffs, earning its nickname, the “Rose City.” The picture shows the 45m-high Al Khazneh, a temple with an ornate, Greek-style facade, also known as The Treasury.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a 13-day standoff triggered by Soviet nuclear missiles placed in Cuba. The Berlin and Suez crises were major Cold War flashpoints but did not escalate to the same level of nuclear danger.

Diocletian divided imperial administration among four rulers to manage the empire more effectively. Constantine later reunited the empire, while Theodosius’s division occurred later and was not a reform but a succession arrangement.

The Bantu Expansion – the migration of Bantu-speaking people across the African continent – is one of Ancient history’s largest migrations. Beginning around 1500BCE, members of the proto-Bantu language group migrated eastward and southward from West Africa, crossing vast swathes of the continent over hundreds of years. These migrants changed population demographics, spread farming across sub-equatorial Africa, introduced iron technology, and built powerful states that continue to influence the African continent today.