A Mixed Bag Trivia Quiz

Answer: Harold Macmillan

Generally ranked amongst the 20th century's poorest Prime Ministers, and the shortest-serving since the 1920s, Eden's legacy will always be dominated by the fiasco of the Suez Crisis. He had become PM in 1955 on the retirement of Sir Winston Churchill, under whom he had been Foreign Secretary. Less than two years later, he was replaced by his own Foreign Secretary, Harold Macmillan.
Curiously, both Eden and Macmillan were known by their middle name -- Eden's real first name was Robert and Macmillan's was Maurice.

Answer: Babylonian

Nebuchadnezzar I reigned from 1125-1103 BC and was widely considered the greatest king of the Pache dynasty. Probably the best known, though, was Nebuchadnezzar II, who reigned some 500 years later. Referred to in the Bible (in the Book of Daniel), he constructed 'The Hanging Gardens of Babylon', one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World, and was also responsible for the Babylonian conquests of both Judah and Jerusalem.

Answer: Milan and Ravenna

Rome effectively ceased to be the capital in 285, when the Empire split into Eastern and Western sections, the Eastern half now widely know as the 'Byzantine Empire'. In 286, Mediolanum, modern-day Milan, took on the role as capital of the Western Roman Empire.

The capital again changed in 402, when the seat of government moved to Ravenna, where it stayed until the Western Empire dissolved towards the end of the 5th Century.

Answer: He married her before it was annulled

Historians have long debated whether it was Catherine's inability to produce a male heir or Anne Boleyn's charismatic nature and 20-year advantage over the Queen that led Henry to pursue the younger woman. Not that Henry was without form -- a decade earlier, Anne's sister, Mary, had been the King's mistress, and there is still speculation that her two children, ironically named Catherine and Henry, were in fact fathered by the king.

Answer: Commodus

Born just five months after his father (Marcus Aurelius) gained the top job, Commodus became the first Roman Emperor to be born to a serving emperor. He served as co-emperor with his father for the last three years of his reign before taking over as Emperor on his father's death in 180. He thus became the first Roman Emperor to succeed his father since Titus had done so a century earlier.

Not the most popular of Emperors, he survived one attempted assassination attempt by vomiting up poisoned food. He could not survive the second attempt, when Narcissus, his wrestling partner, strangled him in the bath. Following his death, the Senate named him 'public enemy' his statues were destroyed and his body was burned.

Answer: The Netherlands

Actually, it seems that the area now known as Belgium has at some point been controlled by most of the major European powers. The Romans began the trend, but by the Middle Ages the region had split into numerous small states. Many of these joined the Burgundian Netherlands in the 14th century. Southern Netherlands, which included most of modern Belgium, was ruled first by Spain and then by Austria, and was the scene of numerous battles in those nations' wars with France in the 17th and 18th centures. With the fall of the First French Empire in 1815, the 'low countries' were reunified as 'The United Kingdom of The Netherlands'.

The Belgian Revolution 15 years later produced an independent Belgium, Catholic and neutral, with King Leopold I being installed the following year.

Answer: U.S. Virgin Islands

The Danish West Indies began with settlement of the island of St Thomas in 1672 by the 'Danish West India and Guinea Company'. A decade later, they expanded operations to the neighbouring St John, although it would be a further quarter of a century before disputes over ownership were settled with Britain. In 1733, the company purchases the third main island in the group, St Croix, from the French.
King Frederick V of Denmark bought the islands from the company in 1754, establishing them as royal colonies.
The islands' position near to the entrance to the eastern end of the Panama Canal leant them potentially significant strategic value. Thus, in 1917, the United States bought them from the Danes for $25m and renamed them 'The United States Virgin Islands'.

Answer: 1309-1377

The Avignon Papacy, initiated by Pope Clement V in 1309, was also known as 'The Babylon Captivity' in honour of the enslavement of the Israelites in biblical times. In all, seven popes used Avignon as their headquarters until Pope Gregory XI returned to seat to Rome a year before his death in 1378.
Avignon was later the seat of numerous antipopes, it belonged to the Papacy until 1791, when it was re-incorporated into France amid the turmoil of the French Revolution.
Today, the towering Gothic 'Palais des Papes', with its 17-foot thick walls, is a major tourist attraction.

Answer: Saxony

The Kingdom of Saxony was founded in 1806 following the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, and in 1871 it joined the German Empire. However, it still retained its status as a kingdom until Frederick Augustus III followed Germany's Wilhelm II in abdicating at the end of WWI in November 1918. It then became the Free State of Saxony within the newly formed Weimar Republic.
Of the others, Hesse was a grand duchy, Brusnwick a duchy, and Schwarzburg-Sondershausen a principality.

Answer: Ivan IV

Born Ivan Chetvyorty Vasilyevich in Moscow in 1530, he became Ivan IV Grand Prince of Moscow at the age of just 3. Despite his youth, he oversaw dramatic change as a fairly small medieval state turned into a small empire and, eventually, to a regional power.

In 1547, he was acknowledged as the natural leader of this emerging powerful nation and he was named 'Tsar of All Russia'. Although commonly known in English as 'Ivan the Terrible', a more accurate translation of his epithet, 'Grozny', would be 'Awesome' or 'Threatening' as it is associated more with power and discipline than with cruelty or horror.