Just a Day In January Trivia Quiz

Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor, was crowned by Pope Leo III on December 25, 800. He was the grandson of Charles Martel and the son of Pepin the Short, and through them, King of the Franks. It's unclear what the motivations were for crowning him Holy Roman Emperor (it may have been to consolidate Papal power), but his reign was a time of relative stability.

He died on January 28, 814, after a few months of illness.

Edward VI (1537-1553) became king at age 9 upon the death of his father, Henry VIII. Due to his age, his short reign was overseen by a recency council and saw the rise of Protestantism. After falling ill in 1553, Edward wrote a succession plan which removed both of his sisters, giving the crown to the descendants of Henry VIII's youngest sister, Mary. Edward died on July 6, 1553, and, although briefly succeeded by his cousin Lady Jane Grey, his sister Mary reclaimed the crown and reigned for five years, returning England to Catholic rule.

The Russian Academy of Sciences was founded by Peter the Great, who modeled it on similar institutions in Berlin and Paris. It initially included humanities as well as science and a university alongside the research facilities. Catherine the Great turned the lead of the Academy from bureaucrats to academics, and saw the closure of the university in 1767. During the 18th Century, the Academy invited foreign scholars and explored the more remote regions of Russia.

The Academy survived the Russian Revolution and during WWII conducted research into weapons including tanks and airplanes, and, after the war, into the atomic bomb.

The Academy was restructured in 2013.

Jame Austen's second published novel (after "Sense and Sensibility") follows the hate-to-love romance path on the surface as we see Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy progress from the mutual contempt of a bad first impression to a love based marriage.

The change of heart is a bit deeper, though, based on emotional growth by both parties. To that, Austen added a satirical look at the Regency era marriage market where daughters, unable to inherit, searched for rich men and rogues and second sons hunted heiresses.

José Marti was a journalist, poet, and proponent of Cuban independence. Born in Havana in 1853, he opposed Spanish rule of Cuba, and was imprisoned for treason at 16 and exiled to Spain two years later. From there, he moved to Mexico, the United States, Venezuela, and eventually back to Cuba, always writing in support of Cuban independence.

He died on May 19, 1895, fighting Spanish troops in the Battle of Dos Rios.

Founded by industrialist Andrew Carnegie, the Carnegie Institute has six departments conducting research into astronomy, planetary science, ecology, genetics and developmental biology, extreme states of matter, and plant science. During WWII, the Institute engaged in defense work and scaling up penicillin production.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish writer and politician who won the 1923 Nobel Prize for Literature and served two terms as Senator of the Irish Free State. In 1899 he co-founded the Irish Literary Theater which closed after two years, but led to the opening of the Abbey Theater in 1904, the first state subsidized theater in the English speaking world. An Irish Nationalist, he wrote "Easter, 1916" in response to the Easter Uprising and his conflicted feelings between a movement he supported and the violent tactics of those involved.

He was appointed Senator in 1922, and used his Nobel Prize acceptance speech to promote Irish nationalism.

Best known for her novel, "Their Eyes Were Watching God", and her role in the Harlem Renaissance, Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was also an anthropologist and filmmaker. A graduate of Barnard College (she also studied at Howard University and Columbia University), she incorporated Afro-Caribbean folklore and issues facing African Americans into her work.

For nearly a century after the July 1, 1867, Confederation which created the country, Canada had no national flag, although they used a number of flags including the Union Jack and the Red Ensign (a red flag with the Union Jack in the upper left quadrant).

In 1964, Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson formed a committee to choose a new flag. The flag, with a maple leaf (Canada's national symbol) in red on a white background with red vertical bars, was designed by George F. G. Stanley and first publicly displayed on February 15, 1965.

Challenger, NASA's second space shuttle (after Columbia), made its first trip to space on April 9, 1983, and in its first nine missions spent a total of 62 days in space. On what would have been its tenth mission, Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch due to the inability of an O-ring to seal in the abnormally cold temperatures. All six members of the crew - Commander Dick Scobie, Pilot Michael Smith, engineers Ellison Onizuka, Dr. Ronald McNair, and Dr. Judith Resnik, and teacher Christa McAuliffe - died.