Anniversaries This Year -- 2017 Quiz

Answer: Richard II

Also known as Richard of Bordeaux, he became King Richard II of England on the death of his grandfather, Edward III, when he was just ten years old. Although highly influenced by his uncle, John of Gaunt, the early years of Richard's reign were overseen by councils, although the young king himself played an important role in the suppression of the Peasants' Revolt just four years into his kingship.

During his teenage years, Richard's reign was dogged by a small group of aristocrats (the Lords Appellant), but the king had regained control by 1389 and enjoyed eight years of relative peace. When Richard began exiling and executing his former enemies in 1397, it provoked his cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke (John of Gaunt's son), to bring an invasion force from exile in France. Richard was captured and Bolingbroke was crowned as King Henry IV in September 1399.

Richard II died, probably from starvation, in captivity at Pontefract Castle in Yorkshire on Saint Valentine's Day, 1400 at the age of 33. Shakespeare's history of the period portrays Richard's misrule as responsible for the Wars of the Roses that followed during the 15th century. Whilst that play contains considerable poetic license, there are plenty of elements of truth in the conclusion.

Answer: "Buffalo Bill" Cody

William Frederick Cody was born in 1846 in Iowa Territory and grew up in Toronto, Canada and Kansas Territory. One of the most recognizable figures of the "Wild West" era, he began riding the Pony Express when he was just 14. He was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1872 and a decade later founded "Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show", an extravaganza that showcased cowboy and Indian themes from frontier days. Many performers in Cody's shows are famous in their own right, James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok, Calamity Jane and Annie Oakley amongst them.

Cody's show was not only a major attraction in the U.S., but also came to Europe. Queen Victoria attended an 1887 performance in London, and the show stayed in Manchester for a 5-month run later than same year.

In 1895, Cody co-founded the Wyoming city that bears his name. Cody, Wyoming, population 9,200 (2010 Census), lies in the northeast corner of the state and is today a popular overnight stop for tourists visiting Yellowstone National Park: it offers the nearest hotels and restaurants to the park's East Gate.

Answer: Kansas City Chiefs

Played at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the season finale was originally called "The AFL-NFL World Championship Game" -- the title "Superbowl I" was a retrospective addition.

All four of the alternatives represented the AFC in the early Superbowls, but it was the Kansas City Chiefs who lost 35-10 to the Packers in that very first championship game on January 15, 1967. (The Raiders lost to the Packers in Superbowl II.) The first AFC team to win the title were the New York Jets, who defeated the Baltimore Colts in Superbowl III.

Answer: Rugby

Founded in 1567 as a free school for local boys, Rugby School in Warwickshire is now one of the oldest and most famous public (fee-paying) schools in England. In the 2015-16 academic year, Rugby had 800 students, each paying £10,995 per term for the privilege.

The legend of William Webb Ellis, a student here from 1816-25, led to the sport of Rugby football taking the school's name, leading to worldwide recognition. Equally important in the school's history is Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby School from 1828-41: his methods and 'life at the school' were immortalized in Thomas Hughes' semi-autobiographical 1857 novel "Tom Brown's School Days".

Answer: Montana

Jeannette Rankin was born in 1880 in the city (then a town) of Missoula in western Montana Territory, nine years before Montana became the country's 41st state. Rankin became involved with the women's suffrage movement whilst a student at the University of Washington, and she was a lobbyist to the state
legislature when Washington became the fifth state to permanently enfranchise women in November 1910. Three months later, she became the first woman to present the case for universal enfranchisement to the Montana legislature, leading to a change in that state's constitution in late 1914.

Rankin was elected as one of Montana's two 'at-large' representatives in the congressional election of November 1916. Rankin took her place as the first U.S. Congresswoman in March 1917, although she would lose her seat two years later (when the state abolished 'at-large' members). She returned to Congress for a further two-year term as the representative of Montana's first district in January 1941.

It is remarkable that Rankin was elected to the House of Representatives more than three years before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment (in August 1920) which established universal suffrage throughout the Union. Looking back only 100 years, it is perhaps even more remarkable that the original amendment was first submitted in 1878, but took a further 41 years for Congress to approve it and pass it to the states for ratification.

Answer: Andrew Johnson

The U.S. acquired the territory that would eventually become the 49th state, Alaska, from the Russian Empire on March 30, 1867. Alaska is a truly vast territory, including territorial waters it is larger than the smallest 22 states combined, and covers more ground that the next three largest states (Texas, California and Montana) put together. Indeed, it is also larger than all but 18 of the world's independent countries. In retrospect, perhaps the price of two cents per acre is not so outrageous after all.

Born in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1808, Andrew Johnson became the 17th President on April 15, 1865, following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He had succeeded Hannibal Hamlin as Vice-President less than six weeks earlier. He had formerly been both a U.S. Senator and the Governor of Tennessee.

Answer: Prince Edward Island

The addition of Newfoundland and Labrador in 1949 and the creation of the territory of Nunavut in 1999 meant that Canada as we know it today comprises ten provinces and three territories. It was not always thus, though, and the fledgling nation born on July 1, 1867 was made up of just four provinces and covering less than a quarter of the land area that now makes up the world's second-largest country. (With an area of about 930,000 square miles, the original country was only slightly larger than modern-day Algeria.)

Confederation joined the three British provinces of Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The Province of Canada (which had been formed in 1840 by joining Upper Canada and Lower Canada) simultaneously sub-divided into Ontario and Quebec to give the new nation four provinces. Ottawa was named as the national capital and John A. Macdonald was installed as the first Prime Minister.

Not that the new arrangement was universally popular -- in the election held in September 1867, all but one of the seats in Nova Scotia were won by the Anti-Confederation Party!

Answer: "Paradise Lost" (Milton)

Born in London in 1608, by the time he completed "Paradise Lost" (an epic poem written in blank verse and telling the story of Adam and Eve and "The Fall of Man"), the 58-year old John Milton was blind and virtually destitute. In April 1667 he nevertheless managed to seal a publication contract with the London printer Samuel Simmons, for which he was paid £5. The first edition, published in October of that same year, sold out within 18 months, and a second version, expanded to twelve volumes, was published seven years later.

The alternatives were all earlier: "The Faerie Queene" was first published in 1590, "Beowulf" between 875 and 1025, and "Romeo and Juliet" between 1591 and 1595.

Answer: Alabama

The Treaty of Madrid, signed in 1795, saw Spain giving up claims to a large tract of land to the east of the Mississippi River. This land, which is now much of the southern portion of the states of Mississippi and Alabama became the Mississippi Territory. In 1902, the state of Georgia gave up claims to land lying between its modern-day western border and the Mississippi River, and two years later Mississippi Territory tripled its size by swallowing that previously disputed area, thus extending its territory northwards to the southern border of Tennessee. In 1812 the region of Mobile District of West Florida was annexed, giving the Mississippi Territory a southern coastline on the Gulf of Mexico.

On March 3, 1817, the U.S. Congress passed an act dividing the Mississippi Territory into two parts on a north-south axis. This division came into force on August 15, with the slightly-larger eastern portion becoming The Alabama Territory. Four months later, the western portion became the 20th U.S. state, Mississippi, whilst Alabama joined the Union two years later as the 22nd state on December 14, 1819.

Mississippi has not, of course, remained a state throughout its 200-year history. On January 9, 1861 it became the second state (after South Carolina) to secede from the Union. It rejoined under the terms of Reconstruction on February 23, 1870.

Answer: Ovid

Born Publius Ovidius Naso in March 43 BC in the commune of Sulmona in the Roman Republic (now central Italy), he is known today simply as Ovid. Extremely popular during his lifetime, Ovid's reputation was long-lasting and his style was frequently imitated in the literature of the Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

It remains a mystery why Ovid was exiled late in his life by Augustus, but he spent his latter years in the city of Tomis in the remote province of Scythia Minor, on the west coast of the Black Sea (what is now Romania's oldest continuously inhabited city, Constanta). It was there that he died, aged 58-60 sometime in 17 or 18 AD.