Facts and Trivia from British History Quiz

Answer: William III

William of Orange fell off his horse when stumbling on a molehill.
William III ruled England jointly with Mary II - from 1689 till 1702.
William IV was King from 1830 till 1837.
George I (1714-1727) and George II (1727-1760) were the two first of the Hanoverian Kings. They both had been born in Germany and had been educated as German rather than English princes.

Answer: The Bahamas

Edward VIII (1894-1972) was the eldest son of George V and Mary of Teck. He gave up the throne after a mere eleven months. As he saw no opportunity to marry the woman of his heart, Mrs Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee, without seriously rocking the British monarchy and doing harm to himself. He preferred abdication to turmoil.

Answer: Lord Nelson

Lord Nelson won the Battle of Trafalgar(1805) but did not survive it. William Pitt the Elder (1708-1778) was Earl of Chatham and became Prime Minister of England on 30 July 1766. He stayed in office till 14 October 1768.
Arthur Wellesley,the Duke of Wellington (1769-1852) first served as a general in India, became Chief Secretary for Ireland (1807-1809), fought against the French in Portugal. He represented Britain at the Congress of Vienna. He won a decisive victory over Napoleon at Waterloo (1815) and later was asked to become Prime Minister of England (1828).
Nicholas Hawksmoor,(1661-1736) first worked for Sir Christopher Wren and was involved in the re-building of St. Paul's Cathedral, and the building of Greenwich Hospital and Hampton Court Palace. With van Brugh he built Blenheim Palace.Was also involved in the building of Kensington Palace. He designed the great towers which were added to the western front of Westminster Abbey.

Answer: Great Train Robbery

The Great Train Robbery happened on August 8, 1963, in Cheddington, Buckinghampshire, UK. A 15-member gang, led by Bruce Reynolds got away with £ 2.6 million. Bad luck however : their hide-out was discovered and all of them soon were arrested. Later Bruce Reynolds and Ronald Biggs managed to escape. They finally reached Brazil. Another member of the gang, Charlie Wilson, escaped to Canada. A long time later Ronald Biggs returned to Britain and gave up himself to the authorities.
On 3d of July 1969 the founder member of the Rolling Stones, Brian Jones died at the age of 27.
The Profumo Affair was a political scandal in 1963. John Profumo was a high-ranking Conservative cabinet minister who had got involved with one Christine Keeler. Keeler herself was involved with an attaché of the Soviet Embassy.Profumo's lying about the whole affair was his downfall.On June 5th he finally decided to resign.
A month later the Prime-Minister Harold Mac Millan also resigned.
The next year, in 1964, Labour won the elections and Harold Wilson (°1916-1995),their party leader, became Prime Minister. Wilson unexpectedly resigned in 1976.

Answer: Babington Plot

Sir Anthony Babington was a young Catholic nobleman who had been manoeuvred into plotting the overthrow and murder of Queen Elizabeth I. The conspirators tried to get Mary Queen of Scots interested in their plans. She was to be liberated from her detention at Fotheringay and put on the English throne so that Catholicism could be restored.
The planned "coup" failed, the leaders were arrested and executed (1586). The next year also Mary Queen of Scots was put to death (1587).
The Gunpowder Plot was an attempt, also by would-be restorers of Catholicism,to blow up Parliament (1605). The conspirator who was first arrested was Guy Fawkes (5th of November). The real leader however was Robert Catesby.
The Plug Plot was not really a "plot", but is the name given to a massive strike in 1842 during which the cotton-workers of the Salford area had "unplugged" the steam engine boilers so that no work whatever could be performed.
The Piltdown Plot is not a plot in the usual sense of the word either.
At Piltdown in GB a fossil was found that seemed to be the remains of a single creature with a human cranium and an ape's jaw (1908-1912).
In 1953 this "proof" of Darwin's evolution theory was exposed as a hoax.

Answer: Windsor

Windsor Castle is the largest occupied castle in the world. It was William the Conqueror himself who chose the site. On 20 Nov. 1992 a spotlight came into contact with a curtain for a prolonged period, which ignited the material and caused a devastating fire.
There was a fortified town already at Warwick in 914-916. The Castle dates back to 1086. After the Norman Conquest William the Conqueror dotted the country with castles that had to keep the local population under strict control and smother all attempts at resistance. Nottingham and Warwick were such castles.
Caerphilly Castle was built in 1268-1271 by the Anglo-Norman lord Gilbert de Clare - in spite of repeated attempts by Welsh Princes to prevent it from being completed.
Stirling Castle: this historically most important castle is on a crossing of N-S and W-E routes . The present-day castle is recorded to have been built between 1370 and 1750 in various different
stages, but there seem to have been various precursors. One of them is recorded as having been built in early 12th century.

Answer: By causing the Great Fire

The Great Fire in September 1666 started in a baker's shop owned by Thomas Farriner, who was the King's Baker. The maid had failed to put out the ovens at the end of the night. After a while the heat created by the ovens began to cause sparks to ignite Farriner's wooden house. Though at first the Lord Mayor had not expected this fire to be any reason for concern, strong winds soon worsened the situation. Also the after-effects of the summer drought helped the fire to spread much faster and much further than expected. Fortunately, King Charles II was very determined in his intervention and when the wind turned again the fire could finally be conquered.

There were surprisingly few casualties but nearly the whole city-centre had to be re-built.

Answer: Osborne House

Osborne House on the Isle of Wight was bought by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1845. Here the royal couple was far from the pressure of court life at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle.
After Albert's death, she kept spending most of her time in this palace. It was here she died in 1901.
Chequers has been the British Prime Minister's Country House since 1917 when it was donated to the Crown by Sir Arthur and Lady Lee. The estate and the main building date back to the sixteenth century.
Sandringham Castle in Norfolk, was built by King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. It is now the Norfolk country retreat of HM the Queen and HRH the Duke of Edinburgh.
Balmoral Castle has been the Scottish home of the Royal Family since it was purchased for Queen Victoria by Prince Albert in 1852.

Answer: Scotland

Originally Alba was the name for the territory of the Picts in what is now Scotland. Dal Riata was another Kingdom in the South West of Scotland. Dal Riata could be called the Kingdom of the "Scoti" or "Irish Scots". In medieval names,such as Johannes Scotus Erigena, "Scotus" did refer to what now would be an Irishman. In 843 AD the Dal Riata King Kenneth Mc Alpine took over the territory of the Picts.

The whole new entity was now called Alba.Kenneth Mc Alpine died in 858 AD. As was traditional, the new King was now "democratically chosen" from among Kenneth Mc Alpine's family and closest acquaintances.

Answer: Charles II

Two years after the execution of his father, 21 years old and still uncrowned, Charles II, tried to return from France and re-establish the Monarchy in England. He had himself crowned at the town of Scone and marched down to Worcester.

There he was stopped and defeated by a Parliamentary army on 3d of September.
To escape his pursuers he disguised himself in the rough clothes of a woodman. When the Roundheads began to search the woods near Worcester, Charles even had to spend an uncomfortable day in an oak tree.
Finally the King managed to return to France where he stayed till the Restoration in 1660.
Henry VII Tudor (°1457 - d.1509) won the Battle of Bosworth Field on 22 August 1485.
Charles I was born in 1600 and died in 1649 as a victim of the Civil War.