History and People in History: 2 Quiz

Answer: Milk.

Lincoln grew up in poverty on a farm. Due to the hardships the farm was enduring, the cows had to eat white snakeroot.
Snakeroot is poisonous but the cows were forced to eat it due to the lack of grass. Normally cows will avoid snakeroot.
Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, drank milk from an infected cow and died of an illness only known at the time as, 'milk sickness'.

Lincoln's aunt and uncle also died of the same illness.

Answer: Kenner, Louisiana

Flight 759 crashed at Kenner, Louisiana after about 29 seconds into the flight. In total 153 people died (all the occupants of the plane and eight people on the ground).

Pan Am flight #1736 and KLM Flight #4805 crashed into each other on the runway at Tenerife in 1977. Heavy fog and human error contributed to 583 lives lost when the KLM flight attempted to take off and collided with the Pan Am flight.


270 people died when Flight 103 crashed over Lockerbie, Scotland on 21 December 1988. The cause of the crash was a bomb smuggled on board by terrorists.

Flight 806 crashed in Pango Pango causing 97 fatalities in 1974. Human error and wind-shear were the listed causes.

Answer: The Palace of Versailles, King Louis XIV

The Palace of Versailles had more than 30,000 people working on it. King Louis was obsessed with its creation and did not care at all about the cost. In fact, it bankrupted France. Many lives were lost during the construction.

Work on building the the Taj Mahal commenced in 1632. It was built in honour of the wife of emperor, Shah Jahan. Before her death, Empress Mumtaz Mahal requested a mausoleum that would be "more beautiful than any the world had seen before".

Buckingham Palace was completed in 1850.

Answer: Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

Henri Mouhot came across the Angkor Wat in the jungles of Cambodia. The Angkor Wat was the capital of the Khmer Empire. It is surrounded by moats that used to be infested with crocodiles.

The Easter Island Statues were carved and erected by Polynesians sometime between AD 1250 and 1500 approximately.

Answer: It was the first ship to make a complete trip through the Panama Canal.

The Panama Canal was originally started by the French in 1879, but bankruptcy and diseases (yellow fever) forced work to stop. The Americans took over the building of the canal after they realised its importance. Yellow fever was still hindering construction and in 1904 Colonel William Gorgas led the fight to improve sanitary conditions. The canal was completed in 1914 and SS Ancon travelled the entire length. The canal joins the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. An estimated 27,000 died during the construction.

Adolf Eichmann was smuggled out of Argentina, but not on a boat, it was in a commercial aircraft. He was heavily sedated, disguised and taken for trial in Israel. He was executed on May 31, 1962

'Cleopatra's Needle' is a giant obelisk that was erected in London in 1878. There are three 'Cleopatra's Needles', the other two are located in Paris, France and New York City, USA. They were gifts from Egypt to each respective country. The London 'needle' was transported by sea in a specially designed, cigar-shaped ship. The name of the ship was the Cleopatra.

Answer: Eagle Day.

The common link is the D-Day landings at Normandy during World War 2 and the fact that all three were inventions to assist with the landings.

Pluto was the acronym for "Pipe-line Under The Ocean". It was purpose built to supply oil and petrol from England to France after the initial landings had taken place. The pipes were unwound onto the sea floor from ships. Eleven lines were laid.

Mulberry was the code word for special prefabricated temporary harbours that were towed across the sea. They were laid off the coast of Normandy and allowed supplies to be unloaded from ships.

Hobart's Funnies were modified tanks that assisted in the landings. They included the Crocodile (a flamethrower tank), the Crab (a tank with flails that rotated to explode mines as the tank drove through minefields) and the DD or "Duplex Drive" Sherman (an amphibious tank designed to swim to the beaches). A lot of the designs were the handiwork of Major-General Sir Percy Cleghorn Stanley Hobart.

Eagle Day was the code word for the German attacks on RAF bases during the Battle of Britain. It commenced on 13 August, 1940. Over 3,000 people died as a result of the Battle of Britain and over 3,000 planes were destroyed.

Answer: Denmark

Joern Utzon (also spelt Jørn Utzon) was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1918.

He designed the world famous Sydney Opera House and work commenced in 1959. The building consists of 10 "shells" for the roof, giving it the unusual look that it is famous for. The highest shell is 67 metres above Sydney Harbour.

Utzon passed away on November 29, 2008 at the ripe old age of 90.

Answer: The Mangonel catapult.

Hero built the first known vending machine. This nifty little device dispensed holy-water. When a coin was dropped into the slot it fell onto a lever that tilted and allowed a small flow of the water to come out.

Hero also made an automatic temple door that opened and closed, by remote (but not like the type of remote control that we are accustomed to in this day and age!).
A fire was lit on an altar by a priest causing heat to build up in a special chamber filled with water. The heated air would force the water out into a bucket and as the bucket filled up a series of pulleys would open the door. When the fire was extinguished, the reverse would happen and the doors would close.
To see a animated design of how it works go to this webpage:

http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/HeronAlexandria.htm

This website also shows the other inventions that Hero designed.

The Mangonel catapult was used in Roman times (400 BC) and was used to launch projectiles from a bowl shaped bucket.

Hero died c. AD 70 of unknown causes.

Answer: Used solar energy as a weapon against a Roman fleet.

It was claimed that Archimedes set fire to the enemy boats by reflecting the sun's rays between 215 and 212 BC. Many historians have stated that the accounts written by Plutarch and Anthemius, are not accurate and the event couldn't have happened.
Sakkas used 50 mirrors and trained the sun rays onto a boat in the harbour. After two minutes the boat was ablaze and Sakkas was satisfied that he had proved that Archimedes could very well have set fire to the Roman fleet as described in the ancient writings.

Archimedes died around c. 212 BC after being stabbed by a Roman soldier.

Answer: France defeated at Dien Bien Phu.

France was defeated by the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.
Albert Einstein died on April 18, 1955.
The Suez crisis lasted from October 1956 till March 1957.
Fidel Castro took over Cuba in 1959.

Answer: 2nd.

Cook only made three voyages.

During the first voyage (1768-71) he arrived in Tahiti. He also mapped the New Zealand Coastline.

The second voyage (1772-75) he commanded the ship the HMS Resolution.

His third voyage (1776-79) was his last. He was killed by the natives in Hawaii.

Answer: Mata Hari.

Margaretha Geertruida Zelle (later Margaretha MacLeod) was Mata Hari. She was born in 7 August 1876 and was executed in France on 15 October 1917 (aged 41).
She became famous for her exotic dancing in which she would be flirty, promiscuous and flaunt her body.
She was suspected of being a double agent (spy) during WW1. Her head was embalmed and kept at the Paris Museum of Anatomy. In 2000 it was discovered that the head was missing.

Marie Tussaud was born with the name Anna Maria Grosholtz in 1761. She died in 1850.

Axis Sally was the radio name of Mildred Gillars. She was a Nazi radio announcer that made propaganda broadcasts. She was an American who collaborated with the Germans. She would call herself "Midge". But she was also known by the Allied troops as: 'The Bitch of Berlin' and 'Berlin Bessie'.

Answer: Tokyo Rose

Iva was a Japanese-American that was visiting Japan when war broke out between America and Japan. She was stuck in Japan and forced to work there. She ended up on Tokyo radio and used the name "Orphan Anne". She apparently never used the name "Toyko Rose" herself.

After the war Iva was tried for treason and convicted as "Tokyo Rose". It is said that the name "Tokyo Rose" was just an urban legend created by US servicemen. She copped 10 years in prison and got a full pardon in 1977.

She died at the ripe old age of 90 in Chicago, Illinois (September 26, 2006)

Answer: Experiments were conducted in the concept of parachutes by dropping a cat attached to one made from silk.

After takeoff on 7 January, 1785 the balloon began to lose altitude. In a desperate attempt to avoid crashing into the water Jean-Pierre Blanchard and John Jeffries began ditching whatever they could over the side to get as much weight out of the basket as possible. As neither of the passengers could swim their desperation to gain height was of the utmost importance. Desperate to lose weight in a hurry they even urinated over the side to empty their bladders, and then removed their clothing and threw the items over the side. They were left wearing only their underwear when they landed in a French forest.

Blanchard did conduct experiments with parachutes by dropping a cat from a balloon, but that was not until June 1785.

He was born in July 4 1753 and died on March 7 1809 from a ballooning accident.

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Dictionary/blanchard/DI10.htm

Answer: Navigation using wave patterns.

The early Polynesians sailors used a device made up of interlocking bamboo sticks called a 'Mattang' to assist with navigation. It was used to instruct others in the art of navigation using the waves and swells of the ocean.

Rather than trying to explain how they worked, here are two sites that show how the mattangs operate:

http://www.janesoceania.com/micronesian_stick_chart/
http://www.edunetconnect.com/cat/timemachine/mattang.html