Happy Quadricenternary: the 1610s Quiz

Answer: Amalthea

Jupiter is now known to have at least 67 moons. Remarkably, though, 50 of these have been discovered since 2000. Galileo's discovery of Ganymede, Io, Europa and Callisto is made all the more remarkable by the fact that for almost three centuries (until the discovery of Amalthea by American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard in 1892), the Galilean moons were believed to be the only satellites of our largest neighbour.

Ganymede is the largest of all the moons in the solar system, and the only one known to have its own magnetic field. It is 8% larger than the planet Mercury (but only 2% larger than Titan, Saturn's largest moon). The largest object in the solar system without a significant atmosphere, Ganymede orbits Jupiter approximately every seven Earth days. Although Galileo is credited with the discovery of Ganymede, there are records showing that Chinese astronomer/astrologer Gan De detected what seemed to be a moon of Jupiter with the naked eye in 356 BC.

Amalthea (also sometimes called 'Jupiter V') was discovered in 1892 and named after a a nymph in Greek mythology. Considering how many other moons have since been found orbiting Jupiter, Barbard's discovery was also quite remarkable since Amalthea is only the third of the 67 moons (in terms of distance from the planet), and orbits within the outer limits of the dust cloud ejected from the planet's surface.

Later in the decade: Dec 28,1612, Galileo becomes the first to see Neptune as its orbit intersected with Jupiter, but he identified it as a star because of its slow movement and it would be a further 234 before it is officially discovered. dec 15,1612, Simon Marius, is the first person to observe the Andromeda Galaxy.

Answer: Sir Henry Hudson

Born in England between 1565 and 1570, Henry Hudson began life as a cabin boy and worked his way up to ship's captain. He made two major voyages with the objective of discovering the Northwest Passage, a route to China between Canada and the Arctic. Hudson departed England aboard "Discovery" for the second of these voyages in early 1610 and passed south of Greenland on June 4. After exploring what is now called Hudson Strait (at the northern tip of Labrador), they entered Hudson Bay. So vast was this huge inland sea that they thought they had found the mythical Northwest Passage and spent months mapping the coastline before becoming trapped in ice in November. When the ice cleared in the spring of 1611, Hudson wanted to continue exploring westwards. Most of the crew, though, did not. The mutineers provided Hudson, his son and those crew members loyal to Hudson with provisions and left them in a small shallop. Hudson and the crew rowed after the Discovery but, when the mutineers unfurled their sails, those in the small row boat were left behind. They were never seen again and their fate is unknown.

William Bligh was famously abandoned by the mutinous crew of his ship, HMS Bounty, but that event occurred significantly later, in 1789.

Answer: Heresy

Born sometime before 1580, probably in Leicestershire, Edward Wightman became a minister of the local Anabaptists Church in the 1590s. This movement, which dates back to the Radical Reformation of the mid-16th century, primarily believed in delaying baptism until adulthood and modern-day groups such as the Amish, Hutterites and Mennonites are direct descendants.

In 1596, Wightman was involved in the investigation of demonic possession of 13-year-old boy. As a result of this experience, he began to preach the Martin Luther theory that the soul sleeps with the body until Judgement Day, rather than advancing to either Heaven or Hell when the body dies. Added to this was Wightman's stated beliefs that "the baptizing of infants is an abomination", and that "Jesus Christ was a mere man".

After being arrested on charges of heresy, Wightman outlined all of his beliefs into a compendium with which he planned to plead his case at trial. He even delivered a copy of his proposed defence to King James I. Since ascending to the English throne in 1603, and the subsequent Gunpowder Plot of the following year, James I had initiated a series of harsh measures to control all forms of non-conformism. Needless to say, he was less than sympathetic to Wightman's point of view, and quickly ordered him burned at the stake.

Although Wightman was the last person ever to be executed in England for heresy, witchcraft trials were still in full swing. In the same year, four women and one man were hanged on July 22, 1612 following the Northamptonshire witch trials in Northampton, and on August 20 the ten so-called "Pendle witches" were hanged for practising witchcraft in Lancashire. Indeed, it would be more than another century before Janet Horne, the last British person to be executed for sorcery, was burned to death in Scotland in 1727.

Answer: Romanov

Born in Moscow in 1596, at the age of just 16 Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov became Tsar Micahel I, the first monarch of the Romanov dynasty. A nephew of the last Rurik Tsar, Feodor I, through both his aunt (his paternal grandfather's sister, Anastasia Romanovna) and by marriage with Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible), Michael was elected by the 1613 'zemskiy sobor' (the first Russian feudal parliament).

Exiled as a child by the de facto regent Boris Godunov, the story of Michael's election and ascension to the throne were dramatized in Mikhail Glinka's 1836 opera "A Life for the Tsar". The Romanov dynasty (only the second to rule a unified Russia) remained in power for slightly over three centuries, until the abdication (and subsequent assassination) of Nicholas II in 1917.

Answer: El Greco

He was born Doménikos Theotokópoulos in 1541 in the city of Heraklion, capital of the Greek island of Crete. After moving first to Venice then Rome, he arrived in Toledo in central Spain in 1577. Although he signed most of his paintings with his birth name, he was and is widely known simply as The Greek, 'El Greco'.

Amongst El Greco's most famous works are 'El Entierro del Conde de Orgaz' ("The Burial of the Count of Orgaz"), which remains today in 'Iglesia de Santo Tomé', a church in Toledo, the "Laocoön", which is part of the collection at the National Gallery in Washington DC, USA, and 'El caballero de la mano en el pecho' ("The Nobleman with his Hand on his Chest", a portrait that hangs in The Prado Museum in Madrid.

Of the alternatives, Luis de Morales was another great artist of the Spanish Renaissance, but he died much earlier, in 1586; Diego Velázquez lived and worked in the 17th century, but later -- he was born in 1599 and died in 1660; and Francisco Goya (1746-1828) was much later. \

Answer: Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes)

Part One of Miguel de Cervantes' epic story about the adventures of a Hidalgo named Alonso Quixano, "Don Quixote" (fully titled "The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha") was published in Spanish in 1605 (and in English in 1612). The second and final part of the most influential literary work of the "Spanish Golden Age" was published a decade later (translated into English in 1620).

Early in the text, Cervantes claims that the story has been "translated from Arabic by the Moorish author Cide Hamete Benengeli", thus giving the impression that Quixote was a real person and that the story was relating real historical events.

Of the alternatives: Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" was written in the 1380s and became one of the first books published in English (by William Caxton) some 75 years after the author's death in 1400; Laurence sterne's humorous novel "Tristram Shandy" (or, to give it its full title, "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" was published in nine parts between 1759 and 1767; von Goethe's classic second novel, "Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship", was published in 1795-96.

Answer: Christopher Marlowe

Born in Canterbury in Kent, England in 1564 (two months before Shakespeare), Christopher Marlowe was widely considered the greatest Elizabethan tragedian of his day. At the age of just 29, in May 1593, Marlowe was stabbed in the eye, killing him immediately. Some have claimed he was involved in a drunken brawl, others that he was stabbed by a rival (Marlowe was a known homosexual), and others that his death occurred during a fight over the payment of a bill. What is certain is that Marlowe's influence on the still-young William Shakespeare was significant and that it was only after Marlowe's death that Shakespeare began to gain recognition as the most important dramatist of the era. (Believe it or not, conspiracy theories existed even 400 years ago -- it has been claimed in some quarters that Marlowe faked his death and continued to write under the name William Shakespeare, and that Shakespeare himself never existed. A comedy of errors indeed!)

Born Gómez Suárez de Figueroa in 1539 in the city of Cusco, then in the Dpanish Viceroy and now in southern Peru, he is known 'El Inca' or Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. The son of a Spanish conquistador, he travelled to Spain when he was 19 and spent the rest of his life there. His works explored Incan history, culture and society, including the effects of the Spanish arrival on that society. Well-respected, he is acknowledged as the first American-born writer to have a significant influence on Western literature.

Of course, the lives and works of both Miguel Cervantes and William Shakespeare are well documented. Goliaths of their own time, their works still resonate today, and both are widely recognized as amongst the most important of all Western writers to have lived. it is perhaps fitting that both died on the same day, Cervantes aged 68 and Shakespeare on his 52nd birthday.

Answer: Scottish

Born in Merchiston Tower in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1550, John Napier was to become the 8th Laird of Merchiston. The tower where he was born (built sometime around 1454 by Alexander Napier, the 2nd Laird of Merchiston) is now part of the facilities at the higher education establishment named for him, Edinburgh Napier University. A statue of Napier stands in the grounds of the university's Craighouse Campus. The Neper crater on the Moon is named for him.

Napier's greats mathematical work, "Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio" published in 1614, contains 90 pages of tables of numbers and 57 pages of explanatory notes.

Answer: Thirty Years' War

One of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history, the Thirty Years' War began as a dispute between the Protestant and Catholic states with in the Holy Roman Empire. What developed, though, was a continuation of the struggle for European dominance between France and the Hapsburg dynasty, with both sides employing large mercenary armies from across the continent. Sweden, Denmark, England, Scotland, the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Tsardom sided with France and the United Provinces, whilst Croatia, Hungary, the Spanish Empire, Austria and Poland fought with the armies representing the Holy Roman Empire.

The war finally ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia. A weakened Spain saw both Portugal and the Dutch Republic declaring independence. Many German states, where the majority of the war was actually fought, were decimated. England and Sweden both significantly increased their power and influence in Europe. Many of the national boundaries we would recognize today were established and the power of many sovereign nation states was established.

Of the alternatives: the German Peasants' War lasted only from 1524-25; the Second War of Kappel was a 1531 conflict between the Protestant and Catholic cantons in Switzerland; and the Eighty Years' War lasted from 1568 until 1748 and is also known as the Dutch War of Independence .

Answer: King Charles I

Anne was born in Skanderborg Castle on the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark. Her father was King Frederick II, her mother Queen Sophie of Mecklenburg-Güstrow, and she would grow up as the older sister of the future King Christian IV of Denmark. In 1589, at the age of 15, she married the 23-year old King James VI of Scotland, who had succeeded Mary, Queen of Scots, on the throne two years earlier. When her husband became King James I of England and Ireland following the death of Elizabeth I and the union between the countries, she became the Queen consort of Great Britain.

The couple had three children who survived beyond infancy. Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, was expected to inherit his father's thrones, but he died of typhoid fever at the age of 18 in 1612. Elizabeth Stuart, born in 1596, married Frederick V, Elector Palatine, and was briefly (for one winter) also Queen of Bohemia. Anne's second son, born in 1600, eventually succeeded his father in 1625, becoming King Charles I of England, Ireland and Scotland.