E Is For Epirus Trivia Quiz

Answer: Epirus

Pyrrhus became king of Epirus, on the west coast of Greece, in 306 BC. At that time several former generals of Alexander the Great fought for influence in the Middle East, and Rome was slowly conquering the Italian mainland on the Greek colonies and local tribes. In 280 BC the Greek colony Tarentum invoked the help of Pyrrhus, and he came with a large army. But after two heavy battles, Pyrrhus had lost most of his veterans and generals, while the Romans started calling up other legions. Pyrrhus would then have made the comment "Another victory against the Romans and we're lost". Pyrrhus then tried his luck against the Carthaginian settlements on Sicily, but to no avail.
In 275 BC Pyrrhus retreated to Greece, briefly became king of Macedon, and tried to subdue the Peloponnesus. He was killed in Argos, and soon after Pyrrhus' death the Romans subdued Tarentum.

Eleusis was a town in Boeotia, near Athens. Epidaurus was an independent city in the Peloponnesus, near Argos and Mycenae. Euboea was (and still is) a large island to the north of Attica and Athens.

Answer: El Alamein

The Second World War opposed the Axis powers (Germany, Italy and Japan) to an alliance of many countries worldwide. Germany and Japan (and to a lesser extent Italy) conquered many territories up till 1942, when the tides turned. One of the turning points was the German defeat at El Alamein, only 360 km from the vital Suez Canal. In July 1942 the allied forces halted the German - Italian advance near El Alamein, and between 23 October and 11 November the allied armies broke through the German and Italian defences. Since that moment the Axis forces had constantly to retreat. Also in 1942 the German army was stopped at Stalingrad on the eastern front, and in June 1942 the American navy defeated the Japanese navy in the Battle of Midway.

Elephantine is an island in the Nile. In ancient Egypt, it was a stronghold at the Egyptian - Nubian border.
Ephesus (currently known as Efes, Turkey) was a settlement colonized by the Greeks around 1000 BC. It is best remembered for the Artemis temple (erected about 550 BC - ruined around 400 AD), one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
Enewetak (the official name of Eniwetok since 1974) is a large and almost deserted atoll in the Pacific Ocean, part of the Marshall Islands. During the cold war, the USA tested several atomic weapons there.

Answer: Ebert

Friedrich Ebert (1871-1925) joined the SPD (German socialists) in 1889. He did not go to university, but became a saddle maker. In 1913 Ebert rose to leader of the SPD. During the war, his position was questioned. After the war Ebert insisted that Emperor Wilhelm II would abdicate and Germany would become a democratic republic. When the newly elected parliament convened in January 1919, the German Empire was dissolved and Germany became a republic, with as president Friedrich Ebert. Ebert would stay on as President until his death in 1925.

Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969) was an American army officer, supreme commander of the allied forces during World War II and American president afterwards.
Lamoral d'Egmont (1522-1568) was a member of nobility in the low countries. Almost immediately after the Eighty Years' War started, Egmont was executed for heresy (and treason to the Spanish king Philip II).
Anthony Eden (1897-1977) was a British conservative politician. He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom between 1955 and 1957.

Answer: Empedocles

Empedocles lived during the Fifth Century BC, but there is little agreement on his personal life. One of the sources states that Empedocles was born in Sicily about 494 BC and died, probably in his sixties, somewhere on the Greek main land - perhaps in the Peloponnese.
The best known theory by Empedocles is that everything is made out of the mix of elements. But contrary to the later science of chemistry, Empedocles identified only four elements: water (wet and cold), earth (dry and cold), air (wet and hot) and fire (dry and hot). These four elements were mixed by two main powers: philotes (translated as love), in which the elements mix up to complete harmony, as opposed to neikos (translated as strife), that aims to separate the elements and destroy life.

Einhard (ca 775 AD - 840 AD) was a monk and the principal scribe to Charlemagne. He also wrote a biography of Charlemagne.
Esterhazy is the name of a Hungarian family. The best known member of this family, Nikolaus I (1714-1790) was the principal employer of the composer Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) and sponsored many of Haydn's symphonies.
Euripides (ca. 480 BC - ca. 406 BC) was one of the main tragedy authors in classical Greece.

Answer: Elisabeth of Bavaria

Elisabeth of Bavaria (1837-1898) was born into the noble family of Wittelsbach. Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary (1830-1916) was arranged to marry Elisabeth's elder sister Hélène, but he preferred Elisabeth. So in 1854 Elisabeth married into the position of Empress of Austria-Hungary, one of the senior positions for women in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Elisabeth and Franz Joseph had four children together: Sophie, Gisela, Rudolph and Marie Valerie.
In 1898 the Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni went to Switzerland to kill someone from a royal house. Having missed the opportunity to strike at the French heir, he decided then to stab the Austrian Empress.

Elizabeth de Burgh (1284-1327) was the wife of the Scottish king Robert the Bruce (1274-1329).
Elisabeth Farnese (1692-1766) was the wife of the Spanish king Philip V (1683-1746).
Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel-Bevern (1715-1797) married King Frederick II the Great of Prussia (1712-1786).

Answer: Epaminondas

Epaminondas was presumably born in 418 BC, but details about his life are rather scarce. After the Peloponnesian War ended in 404 BC, Sparta ruled all of the Peloponnesus and had also subdued Athens and Corinth. Thebes was an ally of Sparta, until the Spartans made a tactical error in 378 BC: they chose to occupy Thebes and to exile almost all anti-Spartan Thebans. This greatly upset the Thebans, and Epaminondas convinced them to take up arms against the Spartans. A few years later Corinth and Athens joined an alliance with Thebes, and the Spartan forces (although famous as the best fighters in Greece) were defeated multiple times. Epaminondas died at the battle at Mantinea in 362 BC. And only one generation later the Macedonian king Philip II and his son Alexander III subdued all Greece.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) was a German scientist. Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) was a German philosopher, who wrote many texts together with Karl Marx (1818-1883). Epicurus (341 BC -270 BC) was a Greek philosopher. He is frequently cited as a lover of pleasure, but his philosophy was more directed towards avoiding pain and fear.

Answer: Etruscans

The Etruscans inhabited the western part of Central Italy (roughly the region from just a few miles south of Florence to just few miles north of Rome). They used an alphabet very similar to the Greek alphabet, and yet their language is still swaddled in mystery: the only extant Etruscan inscriptions are found on their cemeteries and tombs. According to the Greeks and the Romans, the Etruscans had a loose alliance (perhaps a confederation) of twelve cities in the period between roughly 580 BC and 480 BC. It is a common assumption that Etruscan religion and society were rather similar to the Greek and Roman counterparts, but that the Etruscan religion was specifically oriented towards the afterlife. The Etruscan culture spans a period from about 900 BC until 27 BC, when Etruria was completely absorbed into the Roman Empire.

The Edetani were an Iberian tribe living on the Spanish east coast, around present-day Valencia, around 300 BC. The few references on the internet I found, don't point towards the existence of a dozen cities in the Sixth Century BC.
The Elamites lived north of the Persian Gulf. During the period indicate in the question, they were overwhelmed by the Assyrians.
During the indicated period, Egypt was ruled by the 25th Dynasty. The pharaohs from this dynasty, originating in Kush (nowadays the northern provinces of Sudan), ruled over Kush and all of Egypt.

Answer: Edward VI

Here is the full lineage for the houses of Plantagenet, Lancaster, York and Tudor: Henry III - Edward I - Edward II - Edward III - Richard II - Henry IV - Henry V - Henry VI - Edward IV - Henry VI (again) - Edward IV (again) - Edward V - Richard III - Henry VII - Henry VIII - Edward VI - Jane (disputed) - Mary I - Elizabeth I.
Edward VI was the son of Henry VIII of the House of Tudor, that had started with Henry VII. He was the preferred heir to his half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth, but they would ascend to the throne after Edward's untimely death. Edward VI was the third legitimate child of Henry VIII, after Mary I (daughter of Catharine of Aragon) and Elizabeth I (daughter of Anne Boleyn). Edward was born to Jane Seymour in 1537 and rose to the throne in 1547. He died in 1553, and appointed Lady Jane Grey as his successor - thus altering the official line of succession.
When Henry VII died in 1509, his sons Arthur and Edmund were already deceased, as were his daughters Elizabeth and Katherine. The surviving heirs were Henry VIII (who ascended to the throne), Margaret (queen-consort of Scotland via her marriage to James IV) and Mary (queen-consort of France, as she married Louis XII). Lady Jane Grey was the oldest granddaughter to Mary and thus third in line for the succession, but Edward VI changed this. Alas, Lady Jane was deposed and beheaded after nine days.

Edward II (born 1284) reigned from 1307 to 1327, when he was murdered. Edward III (born 1312) succeeded his father and ruled until his death in 1377. Henry VI (born 1421) and Edward IV (born 1442) seemed to do leapfrog: Henry VI was king from 1422 to 1461 and again from 1470 till his death in 1471, and Edward IV ruled from 1461 till 1470 and again from 1471 until his death in 1483.

Answer: Erasmus

Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) was a humanist philosopher. Born in the Netherlands, he traveled to many places and wrote several classic works. He translated the New Testament into Latin and Greek and bundled both translations in one single volume, so that scholars could compare the two versions. In doing so, he also included passages that were until then missing in the most important translation (the Vulgata) but preserved in other reliable sources.
"In Praise of Folly" was a satirical book (written in Latin and Greek) in which folly is represented as a minor Roman goddess, boasting vainly of her qualities. Not only the medieval superstitions but also the detestable parts of the Roman Catholic doctrine are heckled in this work. It had a quite favourable reception, and even Pope Leo X was fond of this book.

Lodewijk Elzevir (1540-1617) was born in Leuven (nowadays Belgium) and settled in Leiden (the Netherlands). He established a printing company that lasted until 1791 - not to be confused with the present printing company Elsevier (founded in 1880 by five people not related to the Elzevir family).
Johann von Eck (1486-1543) was a Catholic clergyman, best known as defender of the Roman Catholic church against the theses proposed by Martin Luther.
Eurybiades was a Spartan commander, who joined forces with the Athenian Themistocles to defeat the large Persian fleet in the narrows near Salamis.

Answer: Escorial

The Escorial is a royal residence in Spain, about 30 miles or 50 km from Madrid. It is not a luxurious palace such as Versailles near Paris, but rather an austere building, more similar to an abbey than to a palace. King Philip II (1527-1598) ordered the erection of this building in 1563, and it was completed in 1584. The building was intended as a monastery with an extended library, but also a residence for the royal family (especially in times of contemplation) and a burial site for the Spanish monarchs.

The Edict of Nantes (1598) was a document signed by the French king Henri IV that granted the Huguenots (French protestants) a certain religious freedom.
The Ems Dispatch was a summary of a meeting between the Prussian King Wilhelm I and the French ambassador, count Vincent Benedetti, in 1870. Benedetti suggested to Wilhelm to withdraw any support for the Habsburg family in the succession to the Spanish throne, but chancellor Otto von Bismarck edited the summary thus to arouse indignation in France. As a result France declared war on Prussia and was severely defeated, and Bismarck succeeded to reunite almost all German speaking territories outside of Austria.
The Entente Cordiale was a series of treaties between France and the UK signed in 1904. The main part was a compromise over the colonies of both countries.