FunTrivia History Mix: Vol 15 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Carnation

The Carnation Revolution ended the longest lasting dictatorship in Europe, the Estado Novo. Young captains of the Portuguese army, disillusioned by the brutal and hopeless war they were fighting in the Portuguese colonies of Mozambique and Angola, organised a bloodless coup on 25 April 1974. Tanks rolled into Lisbon just after midnight and seized important bridges, the radio and television stations and the national airport. Troops stormed the barracks where Prime Minister Dr Marcello Caetano, successor of António de Oliveira Salazar, had taken refuge. Without a single bullet fired, they accepted his surrender. After 50 years of dictatorship, Portugal took its first steps towards democracy.

The botanic name for the carnation is Dianthus Caryophyllus. The first word is derived from the Greek words for divine ("dios") and flower ("anthos").

Question by player Debarrio

Answer: Julius Caesar

Caesar was assassinated, as you may have guessed-- March 15 is the Ides of March. However, it was William Shakespeare who introduced the soothsayer warning Caesar to "Beware the Ides of March"!

Question by player pu2-ke-qi-ri

Answer: none

Hitler married at the very end of his life as the Red Army was closing in on his bunker in Berlin. He married Eva Braun and they committed suicide one day later.

Some glossy magazines occasionally claim to have found an illegitimate child of his, but none of the major scholarly biographies takes such claims seriously.

Question by player 19351977

Answer: Katrina

Hurricane Katrina crossed the southern Florida peninsula as a weak category 1 hurricane and then slowly developed into a category 5 hurricane while surging in the Gulf of Mexico. It then slammed into the Louisiana-Mississippi coast with 150-mile-an-hour winds, killing over 1800 people and creating more than 80 billion dollars in damage.

Question by player rwillia1

Answer: Egyptian hieroglyphs

The Book of the Dead is an Ancient Egyptian text scrawled on papyrus in the BC era used to note funerary proceedings and customs for those to be buried in accordance with priests' rites in those days. The 'Book' was mostly a series of stories, alleged magic spells, and images used to help guide the dead on to a peaceful afterlife, and there's no full surviving copy (only pieces) or sole writer (there were hundreds). Today you could find copies of the Book of the Dead in the British Museum in London and the Brooklyn Museum in New York City.

It also provides some of the clearest outlines as to how to properly mummify a body.

Question by player kyleisalive

Answer: Condoms

In the prevailing Catholic ethos of Ireland, legislation enacted in 1935 prevented the import and sale of contraceptives including condoms and (later) the pill. This was underpinned by the papal encyclicals 'Casti connubii' (1930) and 'Humanae vitae' (1968) that said any form of artificial birth control was immoral.

In May 1971, a group of Irish feminists made the 100-mile train journey to Belfast (in the British jurisdiction of Northern Ireland), and bought a large volume of condoms before returning on what became dubbed 'The Condom Train'.

At the railway station in Dublin they defiantly declared their purchases to customs officials, who declined however to confiscate them. Nonetheless, it wasn't until 1980 that contraception (including condoms) became available on prescription in Ireland, and not until 1993 that restrictions on where condoms could be sold without prescription were removed.

Question by player dsimpy

Answer: Stalingrad (Volgograd)

The Battle of Stalingrad lasted from August 1942 to February 1943, and along with the Siege of Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) and the Battle of Berlin, all during WWII, were among the bloodiest battles in history. Though Stalingrad had nowhere near the population of Leningrad or Berlin, it held a key strategic position on the banks of the Volga, and was a gateway to the Caucasus and its oil. Hitler also thought it would be demoralizing to Stalin to take control of Stalin's namesake town.

The Red Army ultimately won, once they were able to isolate and completely surround the German Sixth Army.

Question by player mcdubb

Answer: Portuguese

Magellan is also credited for being the first person to circumnavigate the globe, although in reality only his men completed the trip as Magellan was killed in a battle in the Philippines. He was born in 1480 in Northern Portugal, but during his expedition he was under the service of the King of Spain, Charles I.

Question by player aircorwin

Answer: Tacoma Narrows Bridge

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge was prone to swaying, even during its construction, but in November 1940, only four months after the opening of the bridge, the swaying became very pronounced, resulting in the collapse of the center span of the bridge. Although the winds in Puget Sound were only 40 miles per hour, they produced a regular, rhythmic twisting in the bridge deck, causing it to collapse.

This twisting has been called "mechanical resonance" or "aerostatic flutter" and was recorded on film by local camera shop owner Barney Elliot.

This film is one of the most famous and commonly seen from the era and is still used in Engineering Studies today.

Question by player rb6359

Answer: 33,204

The system of voluntary enlistment was spearheaded by Lord Kitchener, who was a national war hero from previous campaigns and who was Secretary of State for War. The campaign saw nearly half a million men join up between 4th August and 12th September 1914 and 3rd September was the biggest single day.

Question by player Luckycharm60