History Quiz: It Happened in November: 10 Questions | Famous Dates

Answer: William Shakespeare

"The Tempest" is considered to be Shakespeare's last play. It was performed at Whitehall for James I on All Hallows' Day and again for the marriage festivities of Elizabeth, the King's daughter, to Frederick, the Elector Palatine. Scholars attribute the idea of the play to the shipwreck of an English ship near Bermuda in 1609.

Answer: Mary Stuart

Mary Stuart was the eldest daughter of Charles I. She was married to William of Orange at the age of nine but the marriage was not consummated for some years because of the youth of the couple. After her father's execution in 1649 she gave refuge to her brothers, the future Charles II and James II.

She was not popular in her adopted state as she always thought of herself as a Stuart. In 1650 she gave birth to the future King William III of England, who succeeded James II. After the restoration of the monarchy she went to live in England. Two months later she died of smallpox and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Answer: Jefferson Davis

Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) was, like Abraham Lincoln, born in Kentucky. He completed his education at West Point where Robert E Lee was a fellow cadet. He married into a Southern family and became a plantation owner. He spent some time in Congress then in the Senate as well as acquitting himself well in the Mexican War.

In the Senate he spoke out for Southern rights and defended slavery. When the decision was made to secede he hoped for a military post but when he was selected as president he accepted, reluctantly.

Answer: Henry Morton Stanley

Henry Stanley was a remarkable man. He was orphaned at an early age and spent his childhood in a workhouse in Wales. At the age of 15 he crossed the Atlantic as a crewman of a merchant ship and jumped ship in New Orleans. He fought in the Civil War before working his way into a career in journalism.

When David Livingstone, who had travelled to Africa to explore the continent and to end the slave trade, went missing somewhere in the interior, George Bennett, publisher of the New York Herald, commissioned Stanley to find him. With a party of 200 men Stanley set off from the eastern shore of Africa on March 21 1871 and after eight months found him, greeting him with the well known words, "'Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

Answer: Intel Corporation

In 1971 a company called Intel publicly introduced the world's first single chip microprocessor in an advertisement in the November 15 1971 edition of Electronic News. The Intel 4004, the world's first single chip microprocessor, was invented by Intel engineers Federico Faggin, Ted Hoff, and Stanley Mazor. This invention revolutionised computing technology.

Answer: The Netherlands

During the night of 18th/19th November 1421, a heavy storm along the North Sea coast of the Netherlands caused the dykes to break in a number of places and the lower lying polder land of parts of Zeeland and nearby areas were flooded. Thirty villages were engulfed and at least 2000 lives were lost. This disaster was known as St Elizabeth's Flood.

Answer: HMAS Sydney

The most grievous loss suffered by the Royal Australian Navy occurred on 19 November 1941 when the cruiser HMAS Sydney was lost in a battle with the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran off the Western Australian coast. None of the Sydney's complement of 645 men survived.

The Kormoran was also sunk in the action. As no Australians survived the only accounts of the action are from the Kormoran's survivors. This has led to the circulation of many rumours and conspiracy theories. The wreckage of both both ships was found, approximately 112 nautical miles off Steep Point, Western Australia in 2008.

Answer: Jumped from a Boeing 727

On November 24 1971 a man calling himself Dan Cooper hijacked a Northwest Orient Airlines plane bound for Seattle from Portland. He ordered the plane to land and demanded a $200,000 ransom and a parachute. After his demands were met he ordered the plane to take off for Mexico.

Incredibly, during the flight Cooper lowered the back stairs and jumped out of the speeding 727 thousands of feet over the Pacific Northwest during a raging storm. In spite of a massive manhunt he has never been found.

Answer: Lithuania

Kaunas, in Lithuania, was surrounded by forts built in Czarist times to protect the city from German attacks. During the German occupation they were used as prisons and places of execution. In 1941, Hitler decided that 300,000 Jews should be deported from Germany to ghettos in occupied lands. Of those sent to Kovno, very few went to the ghetto.

The German Jews were kept in underground cellars, in freezing conditions, and without food or water for three days. Once they were in a weakened condition they were taken out and shot on the edge of huge pits, which became their graves.

This was the first systematic mass extermination of German Jews.

Answer: The Flying Scotsman

The Flying Scotsman is a familiar name to all train enthusiasts. Designed by the famous engineer, Sir Herbert Nigel Gresley, she had her first public appearance on 22nd February 1923. On 1st May 1928 she completed her first historical landmark. She was fitted with a specially designed corridor tender, allowing the crew to change in mid journey, and completed the first non-stop long distance journey from London Kings Cross to Edinburgh Waverley in just over eight hours. On 30th November 1934 she again made history when she achieved the first authenticated 100mph for steam traction, whilst travelling between Leeds and London.

The Flying Scotsman is now available for the public to view in the National Railway Museum in York and Shildon.