Great Events in History Trivia Quiz

The "Great Schism" refers to the split between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox church which happened in 1054, and which still has not been reconciled. The leading players were Michael I Cerularius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, and Pope Leo IX. The chief arguments were over the authority of the pope and the power of bishops within the church.

Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I did nullify the anathemas in 1965 (only took 900 years), but the split still remains between the two churches.

The Great Fire of London began on September 2, 1666, on Pudding Lane, near the Tower of London. An ineffective response from the Lord Mayor prevented serious fire fighting efforts, causing the fire to spread. Over the course of three days, it would consume 80 percent of London within the old Roman walls and a significant portion of the city west of the walls.

The fire destroyed over 13 thousand homes, and caused 9-10 million pounds in damages (roughly $1.8 billion pounds in modern terms), including the destruction of Saint Paul's Cathedral. One silver lining is that the fire helped end the plague pandemic which had started in 1665.

The "Great Awakening" was a period of Protestant revival that occurred in both Britain and the United States in the 1730s and 1740s. It was based largely in New England, and was a backlash to a growing religious freedom in other parts of the United States. The most prominent revivalist preacher of the era was Jonathan Edwards of Massachusetts, who wrote the sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" (1741).

The revivalist movement began in the late 1720s, and reached its peak around 1735, It had started to wane by 1745.

"The Great Disappointment" refers to the failed predictions of preacher William Miller, who made several claims that the world would end in 1844. He moved the date several times, with the final date being October 22. When the end of the world failed to happen, the Millerite movement fell apart.

Interestingly, a small group of Millerites created the Seventh Day Adventist movement, a church which claimed over 20 million members world-wide by the early 21st century.

On October 8, 1871, a fire that began on DeKoven Street ultimately destroyed three square miles of the city, burning down 17,000 structures and leaving 100,000 homeless. Over 300 people died in the fire.

An extremely dry summer/fall with little rainfall had created drought conditions. Combining that with the fact that most of the city was constructed of wood, it is not surprising that the fire was one of the largest in American history.

On April 18, 1906, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck the city of San Francisco. Burst gas lines throughout the city led to massive fires. Over 80 percent of the city was destroyed, and at least 3000 people died. Over a century later, it remained the worst natural disaster in the history of California.

The "Great Debate" was between astronomers over the size of the universe. Harlow Shapley argued that the universe consisted of a single galaxy, while Heber Curtis claimed the universe consisted of multiple galaxies. Curtis was correct about there being multiple galaxies, Shapley did correctly state that the universe was much larger than previously thought.

The "Great Debate" took place on April 26, 1920, at the US National Museum, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC.

The Great Depression was a world-wide economic collapse which began in the late 1920s. In the United States, it began with the collapse of the stock market in October 1929. At its peak, unemployment in the United States was over 25 percent. The economic crisis lasted for over a decade, until the demands of the Second World War led to almost full employment.

The Great Leap Forward was an economic program organized by the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Tse-Tung, which began in 1959. The program was an effort to speed up China's industrialization, by rapidly altering the nature of China's economy through the use of communal agriculture.

It was one of the biggest economic disasters of all time, because ideological purity was stressed over efficiency. As a result, a famine that killed at least 15 million (and possibly as many as 55 million) took place between 1959 and 1962. It may be the greatest man-made disaster in human history.

The Great March on Washington was organized by labor leader A. Philip Randolph and a coalition of civil rights organizations, including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Its purpose was to bring attention to both political and economic challenges facing African-Americans in the early 1960s. The event is most notable for Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech. The march brought over 200,000 people to the National Mall, and did play a factor in the passage of key civil rights legislation the next year.

While King is often seen as the key speech, numerous other prominent figures participated, including Marian Anderson, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, labor leader Walter Reuther, civil rights leaders Bayard Rustin and Roy Wilkins and actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee.