World History at its Darkest Trivia Quiz

Answer: Three years

A provision of the treaty that ended the Second Punic War in 201 BCE was that Carthage could not go to war without permission from Rome. The Numidians began raiding Carthaginian lands, and Carthage mounted an unsuccessful campaign against them. Rome used this as a pretext to land an army of 50,000 men and lay siege to the city.

After almost three years, the Romans breached the walls and went on a five day rampage, in which it is claimed that up to 750,000 men, women, and children were killed.

Answer: June 1099

Taking Muslim strongholds in Anatolia and the Levant from 1097-1099 BCE, the Crusaders put Jerusalem under siege on June 7, 1099. The city held out until July 15, when the attackers breached the walls and entered the city. An appalling massacre of almost all of the city's Jewish and Muslim residents began, with some 40,000 people killed within a few days by men who were ostensibly fighting in the name of God.

Answer: Approximately 12 million

While it is estimated that some 12 million Africans were brought to the Americas as slaves, the toll on African cultures was actually much higher. As many as 2.5 million, or some twenty percent, are thought to have died in transit, while estimates of those killed in slave raids, wars, and those who died while awaiting transportation run as high as 60 million. Several areas in West Africa were virtually depopulated as people moved farther inland to avoid capture.

Answer: Nanjing

During the Battle for Nanjing, numbers of defeated Chinese soldiers took off their uniforms in order to hide among the civilian population. Using this as a pretext, Japanese troops went on a six-week rampage of killing, rape, looting, and arson. It is estimated that up to 300,000 people died in one of the worst wartime atrocities ever recorded.

Answer: Hernan Cortes

The Aztec Empire was less than a hundred years old when conquered by the Spanish in 1521. While there were disturbing facets to Aztec life, such as human sacrifice, their cities were larger than any in Europe at the time, and the common people's lives were no worse than that of contemporary European peasants. Under Spanish rule, however, some ninety percent of the Aztec population of up to 5 million died within 100 years as a result of disease and mistreatment.

Answer: Muslim Arabs

The Great Library, at one time the center of learning in the Hellenic World, went through several crises in its existence. A fire began by Julius Caesar's troops in 48 BCE damaged the library, and it went into decline during the Roman Era. Almost destroyed by fighting during a war in 272 CE, the last scrolls in the collection were burned by the Arab conquerors of Alexandria in 642 CE.

While not an incident that cost many lives, a great deal of the knowledge and literature of the ancient world was lost, a tragedy to all of humankind.

Answer: Disease

While the European colonizers of what is now the United States and Canada had no inhibitions about conquering the native peoples and taking their land by force, far deadlier to the indigenous peoples were the European diseases that the natives had no immunity against. Estimates range from 75% to 90% of Native American people died from smallpox, measles, and other epidemic diseases in the years after contact with Europeans.

Answer: Rwanda

A possible vestige of European colonialism, tensions between the two main ethnic groups in Rwanda, the Tutsi and the Hutu, erupted after the Hutu president was assassinated on April 6, 1994, after he tried to end the civil war. On the following day, Hutus began to systematically murder Tutsis, often using machetes and clubs, which resulted in the deaths of up to 800,000 people over a three month span.

The bloodshed ended with a Tutsi rebel group taking control of the country.

Answer: The Amritsar Massacre

During the campaign to free India from British colonial rule, a large group of people, including women and children, gathered in a garden called the Jallianwala Bagh to protest government policies. Blocking the only exit, British general Reginald Dyer ordered his troops to fire into the crowd, which was a peaceful demonstration, with no apparent rioting or property destruction.

It is estimated that as many as 1,500 people were killed and at least 1,200 were injured. While not the first or last incident where soldiers fired on their own people, the callous nature of the event helped turn world opinion against the British government.

Answer: Up to 22 million

As part of their political philosophy, the Nazis preached hatred of Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, and other groups that they blamed for Germany's defeat in World War I and the problems the country experienced in the war's aftermath. Beginning with a euthanasia program aimed at the handicapped and mentally challenged, by the end of World War II the Nazis had set up a network of camps where "enemies of the state" were worked to death or murdered outright as a matter of state policy.

The Nazis killed an estimated 12 to 22 million people in their twelve-year hold on power, six million of them Jews. Exact figures for the number of deaths will probably never be known.