A Time To ... Trivia Quiz

Answer: 19th Century

While railroad tracks had been built for several centuries before the development of steam-powered engines, the carts or carriages were pulled by horses or other animals. It was not until the start of the 19th century that the technology required to build a steam locomotive was developed.

The first steam locomotive railway was opened in Wales in 1804, carrying iron from Merthyr Tydfil to Abercynon. The early trains focused on carrying industrial materials; it was not until 1830 that the first steam-powered passenger trains, with timetables and platforms where passengers could wait for the train, opened, running between Liverpool and Manchester.

Answer: 20th Century

In 1903 the Wright brothers made their famous flight in North Carolina (which may or may not have actually been the first example of powered flight), covering 120 feet in a 12-second flight.

The early days of flight were for individuals (possibly with one or two passengers); it was not until the 1920s that flights specifically designed to carry passengers were developed. The popular appeal of air travel was greatly enhanced by Charles Lindberg's successful solo trans-Atlantic flight in 1927, and after World War II commercial aviation, transporting both cargo and passengers, really took off, taking advantage of the experience gained in the development of military aircraft during the war.

Answer: 21st Century

Electric cars have actually been around for a long time - Robert Anderson is often credited with inventing the first electric car in the 1830s, well before the development of the first car propelled by an internal combustion engine. In the late part of the 19th century, and at the start of the 20th century, they were more popular than cars that used gas/petrol as a fuel, but technological improvements to the engines, and the development of mass production (as in the Model T Ford) led to internal combustion engines becoming the preferred means of propelling cars.

However, by the end of the 20th century better batteries had been developed, and issues associated with the use of fossil fuels led to a new interest in electric vehicles (EVs). In 2003 Tesla Motors was incorporated, with a focus on EVs; their first model, the Tesla Roadster, was released in 2008.

Answer: 19th Century

The Kentucky Derby is a horse race, for three-year-old Thoroughbreds, run at Churchill Downs (a racetrack in Louisville KY) on the first weekend in May. It is one of the most prestigious races in American racing, the first leg of the races known as the Triple Crown.

It was run for the first time in 1875, and has been held every year since that time, although twice they had to be rescheduled to be at a different time. In 1945, all horse racing had been suspended due to the war effort; following VE Day (Tuesday 8 May) this suspension was lifted, and the race took place on June 9. In 2020, restrictions were in place in May due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the race was rescheduled to September 5.

Answer: 21st Century

Sports of all types come and go at the Olympic games. While cycling of some type has been a part of all of the modern Olympic games, which were first held in 1896, it was not until 2008 that the discipline of BMX (bicycle motocross) was introduced. This involves the cyclists racing around a track with hills, bumps and curves, trying to be the fastest around without falling off as they fly through the air.

The sport first developed in California during the 1960s, and in 2008 the first Olympic gold medals in the sport went to Latvia's Maris Strombergs (men's competition) and France's Anne-Caroline Chausson (women's event).

Answer: 20th Century

The World Series (named for the newspaper whose stories building up the competition were a major part in its success) is a competition between the winners of two baseball leagues, the American League and the National League. (There have been other leagues around, but they never managed to organise inter-league title competitions.) It is generally considered to have been held for the first time in 1903, when the Boston Americans (later to become the Boston Red Sox) of the American League beat the Pittsburgh Pirates in the best-of-nine games series, 5-3.

Answer: 19th Century

The Suez Canal, an artificial connection between the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea (which is an extension of the Indian Ocean) through the Isthmus of Suez, was opened on 17 November 1869. It provides an important shortcut for commercial trade between Europe and eastern and southern Asia, since ships no longer had to travel all the way south through the southern Atlantic Ocean (not always easy travel) and around the southern tip of Africa.

Although the canal lies entirely in Egyptian territory, the canal opened under the control of a French company established by the architect who managed the construction project, Ferdinand de Lesseps. In 1888 it was placed under British control (as Egypt was a British colony at the time), and remained under British management until 1956, when Gamal Abdul Nasser nationalised the canal, declaring it would be run by the Egyptian government, not a British company.

Answer: 20th Century

After the successful opening of the Suez Canal, attention turned to shortening the voyage from Europe (and the east coast of the Americas) to Asia in the other direction, sailing west across the Atlantic. A canal across the Isthmus of Panama to connect the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean was the obvious site, but construction of the canal proved quite difficult.

The project began in 1881, but the opening did not occur until 15 August 1914.

Answer: 21st Century

The pace of communication increased dramatically in the 19th and 20th centuries, progressing from sailing ships and horseback travel through railroad and airplane transport. Along the way, the telephone and telegraph allowed virtually instant communication of ideas.

But the advent of the internet stepped things up again, with the development of social media platforms allowing the electronic sharing of images and ideas in a manner that was widely accessible. Facebook was created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and some friends, and quickly dominated the market for a long time. Twenty years later, it claimed a membership of over 3 billion people who visited the site at least once a month.

Answer: 19th Century

While the moon has been observed since the dawn of humanity, its appearance was only recorded in drawings and paintings until the development of photography. The earliest known attempts to record images using light-sensitive equipment happened in the 18th century, but it was not until the late 19th century that equipment and techniques had developed sufficiently to allow the production of a photographic image of the moon.

The first such image is believed to have been made in 1839 by Louis Daguerre, using a process he had developed called the daguerreotype. The earliest daguerreotype to survive into the 21st century was made in 1851 by John Adams Whipple.

Answer: 20th Century

Jules Verne (among others) wrote science fiction stories about travelling to the moon in the 19th century, but it was not until the development of rockets during World War II that the technology to actually do it started to seem possible.

Following the war, the USSR and the USA engaged in a 'space race', trying to extend military dominance beyond the limits of our own planet. While the USSR were the first to reach a number of milestones, it was the United States who sent a team of three astronauts to land on the moon for the first time.

Neil Armstrong was the first to do so, on 20 July 1969, at 2:56:15 UTC. His mission mate Buzz Aldrin also walked on the lunar surface, but Michael Collins remained in the command module that was to bring the team safely home again.

Answer: 21st Century

After several missions to the moon, the military heat driving space exploration subsided, and little more manned space exploration happened in the rest of the 20th century. However, scientists still managed to get funds to send unmanned exploratory missions, flying past and/or landing on other planets to gain information about their nature.

Attempts to gain information about Mars proved to be difficult, with over half of the attempts never even reaching their target. But in 1997 a small wheeled robotic vehicle named Sojourner operated long enough to show the concept was viable. In 2003 the Mars Exploration Rover program sent two vehicles, named Opportunity and Spirit, to explore the surface of Mars. Spirit operated until 2010, and Opportunity until 2018.

Answer: 19th Century

In the 19th century, the eastern states of the United States had developed to have two quite different economies and cultures. The northern states were much more industrial, while the southern states were far more reliant on agriculture, which also meant they depended on the cheap labour provided by slaves, a practice which was increasingly coming to be seen as abhorrent in Europe and the northern USA.

The disparate interests led to a breakdown of the often-fraught union of the states, and between 12 April 1861 and 26 May 1865 a group of southern states fought, unsuccessfully, to gain their independence from the other states. (As is the case for almost any war, it was a lot more complicated than this sounds!)

Answer: 20th Century

While many Americans refer to the American Civil War as The Civil War, they are not the only country to have experienced a civil war, not by a long shot. The English Civil War (1642-1651) was too early to include in this quiz, but the Spanish Civil War, which took place between 1936 and 1939, fits in as an example of one of the civil wars fought in the 20th century.

The Second Spanish Republic was a left-leaning government, faced with an uprising instigated by a military junta led by Francisco Franco. Like all wars, it involved a lot of complex issues, but the confrontation between the Republicans and the Nationalists was popularly portrayed as the working class against the aristocracy, or the atheists against the Christians, or the communists against the fascists, or democracy against dictatorship, or some other characterisation of social conflict. Franco's Nationalists won, and controlled Spain until his death in 1975.

Answer: 21st Century

Syria has been torn apart by war a number of times in its long history, but the conflict that started in 2011 is what is now meant when the Syrian Civil War is discussed. It is a complex conflict between a number of different groups, each with their own agenda, which makes alliances shift as priorities change (and all complicated by foreign intervention to protect international interests in this volatile part of the world). What started as a protest about a dictatorial government became a confrontation between the Syrian government, a pro-democracy coalition, a religiously-motivated group of Sunni Muslim militias, a Kurdish alliance, and a number of jihadist groups.

While the most intense fighting seemed to have settled by 2017, the country remained in a state of warfare, with an outbreak of violence never seeming far away. At the time of writing this quiz, there is no end in sight.