History Around the World 2 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Alexandra Mary

Technically, her full name is Elizabeth Alexandra Mary -- as a titled monarch she has no surname although 'Windsor' is often added and a royal edict issued by George V during WWI officially gave the royal family the surname Windsor to replace Saxe-Coburg.
The Queen was named after her mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, her maternal great-grandmother, Alexandra of Denmark (consort of King Edward VII) and her grandmother, Mary of Teck (consort of King George V).
She ascended to the throne on the death of her father, King George VI, on February 6, 1952. Many of the Commonwealth countries have become republics during her reign, but at the end of the 20th century she was still Queen of 16 countries, with around 130 millions subjects.

Answer: William Harrison

William Henry Harrison is the answer to a number of Presidential trivia questions. He assumed office as the 9th President on March 4, 1841, delivering the longest inauguration address in history -- 8,444 words that took almost two hours to read. Aged 68 at the time, he remained the oldest President elected until Reagan broke that record. When he died of pneumonia on April 4, he not only became the first President to die in office but also set the record for the shortest Presidency at 30 days, 12 hours and 30 minutes. He was succeeded by his Vice-President John Tyler, who thus became the first President not directly elected to the post. This was also the first time that there were three Presidents in a calendar year (Van Buren, Harrison and Tyler). This has happened once more since, in 1881 when James Garfield took over from Rutherford Hayes in March and was assassinated in September, promoting chester Arthur to President.
Of the alternatives, Abraham Lincoln was the first President to be assassinated (in 1865), Zachary Taylor was the second to die in office (in 1850), and George Washington left office in 1797 and died two years later.

Answer: Colombia

The settlement was founded by the Spanish under the command of Vasco Balboa on the Caribbean coast of what is now Colombia. The second major settlement was Panama City, founded in 1519 by Pedrarias Davila, and once this site was firmly established as a city the Spanish abandoned Santa María la Antigua del Darién in 1524.

Answer: Cyprus

Once part of the Ottoman Empire, the island of Cyprus was annexed by Great Britain following World War I, having been a British protectorate since 1878. Turkey relinquished its claims to the island in 1923 and Cyprus became a British Crown Colony in 1925. Although the island gained independence from Britain in 1960, both Turkey and Greece maintain claims to the island and it became a divided country.
Of the alternatives, the Irish Free State was founded in December 1922. Malta gained independence four years after Cyprus, on September 21, 1964. Gibraltar remains a British overseas territory.

Answer: 1868

Michael Barrett was hanged outside Newgate Prison in London on May 26, 1868. According to the Wikipedia article on Michael Barrett "a crowd of two thousand booed, jeered and sang 'Rule Britannia' and 'Champagne Charlie' as his body dropped. Prior to its transfer to the City of London Cemetery, Michael Barrett's remains lay for 35 years in a lime grave inside the walls of Newgate Prison. When the prison was demolished in 1903 it was taken to its present resting place. Today the grave is a place of Irish pilgrimage and is marked by a small plaque'."
This was the last public execution in Britain -- the gallows were subsequently moved inside the prison walls.
The last executions in Great Britain were of Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans on August 13 1964. The last woman executed was Ruth Ellis in 1955.
The Murder Act in 1965 suspended the death penalty in the UK for most civilian offenses. Capital punishment for 'arson in royal dockyards' was abolished in 1971, and for treason and piracy in May 1998. In November 1998 the death penalty was abolished even for offenses committed in 'times of war'.

Answer: 130

Spain and England had been allies in the middle of the 16th Century -- King Philip II of Spain was married to Queen Mary I of England. Mary's death in 1558 saw her sister, Elizabeth I ascend to the throne of England and Philip lost his power and influence in that part of the world. Even worse, Elizabeth pursued policies that were directly against Spanish interests -- support for Dutch rebels in the Spanish Netherlands, and frequent attacks on Spanish ships and cities in the Atlantic and the Americas. So Philip sent an Armada of 22 warships and 108 merchantmen carrying more than 25,000 soldiers and sailors to conquer England. In the subsequent skirmishes that culminated with the Battle of Gravelines, not a single English ship was sunk.

In all, only 67 of the original 130-strong Spanish fleet and fewer than half of their men made it home.

Answer: The Washington Monument

Construction on the Gothic church that dominates the Cologne skyline began in 1248 but was not completed until 1880. It set numerous records: the largest height-to-width ratio of any medieval cathedral, the tallest church spire in the world (later surpassed by Ulm Cathedral, completed 10 years later) and, at 515-feet tall, the world's tallest free-standing structure.
Cologne lost this last record to the Washington Monument in 1884. Standing almost 555'6" tall, construction of this stone obelisk in the Mall in Washington D.C. began in 1848 and took 40 years to complete. Besides taking Cologne's record, it also became the world's tallest stone structure and the tallest obelisk (a record it lost to the San Jacinto Monument in Harris County, Texas in 1960).
The Washington Monument's status as the world's tallest structure was also short-lived -- the Eiffel Tower was completed five years later, in 1889, and at 986 feet high was almost twice the height of the D.C. obelisk. The famous Parisian landmark duly lost the record to the Chrysler Building (1,046 feet) in 1930, which it turn was overtaken by the Empire State Building (1,250 feet) a year later.

Answer: Mohandas Gandhi

Born in the Pune District of British India in 1910, Nathuram Vinayak Godse was a member of a political group that opposed Gandhi's separatist policies. On January 30, 1948, he approached a praying Gandhi, bowed respectfully, then fired three shots at point-blank range. Godse surrendered to police and refused to offer any defense when charged with the murder. He is quoted as having said, "No one should think that Gandhi was killed by a madman".
Despite opposition from Gandhi's sons and his associates, who argued that Gandhi was vehemently opposed to the death penalty, Godse was hanged in November 1949.
Of the alternatives, Sadat was killed by a group fronted by Khalid Islambouli. James Earl Ray was convicted of King's assassination, and three men were convicted of the assassination of Malcolm X: Talmadge Hayer, Norman Butler and Thomas Johnson.

Answer: Germany-Poland

The original dukedom of Pomerania stretched along the coast of the Baltic Sea from the city of Strasland in Mecklenburg, Germany in the west to the Polish port of Gdansk in the east. The Polish voivodeships, or provinces, that used to be part of the old Dukedom still carry the name -- Pomerania covers the area surrounding the Vistula river estuary, and West Pomerania is the region in the northwest corner of Poland on the border with Germany. The German province of 'Mecklenburg-Vorpommern' is also sometimes translated as 'Mecklenberg-Western Pomerania'.

Answer: Robben Island

Mandela spent most of his prison term on Robben Island, a low-lying, egg-shaped island about half a wide that is about five miles from Cape Town in Table Bay. A high-security facility, Robben Island was the long-term home to about 3,000 political prisoners at the height of the apartheid era in South Africa, between 1961 and 1991. It closed as a prison in 1996 and re-opened as a museum the following year.
The Victor Verster Prison, now called the Drakenstein Correctional Centre, is a low-security facility in the wine-producing region of Paarl, about 50 miles east of Cape Town. Mandela was transferred here in 1988 and spent the last two of his 26 years here, and it is outside the gates of Victor Verster that he was famously photographed following his release on February 11, 1990.
Of the other alternatives, Alcatraz is in San Francisco Bay in California, USA and Kilmainham is a famous prison in Dublin, Ireland.