Overcoming Adversity Trivia Quiz

Answer: Nubia

Nubia was an area of Africa that bordered Ancient Egypt and also utilised the Nile. It included the southern part of 21st century Egypt and northern Sudan. The area was named after a group of nomads called the Noba, who settled there in the 4th century. In history, the area has also been referred to as Kush. The people of Egypt and Numbia had a mixed relationship over the centuries: there is evidence of marriages between the ruling families and similarities in their beliefs and practices, but also records of wars and conquests.

Xi'an was one of the early centres of Chinese civilisation and Mercia was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom in England. Scythia was an ancient area that includes parts of modern Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Answer: Hannibal

Hannibal was born in Carthage (in 21st century Tunisia), but seems to have spent most of his life in Europe. From a young age, he was taken to Spain by his father, who was a Carthaginian general. His father, Hamilcar Barca, fought against the expanding Roman Republic in the First Punic War, which Hannibal followed up with the Second Punic War. Over the years, the Carthaginian Empire fought against Greek city-states and the Roman Republic for control over the Mediterranean.

Answer: Spain

Slavery was fairly common within Africa (and within Europe) well before the transatlantic slave trade began. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to enslave people from western Africa and transport them to Europe. In 1518 the Spanish were the first to take slaves from Africa straight across the Atlantic to their colonies in the Americas.

In the 1600s, the growth of sugar and tobacco plantations in the Caribbean and North America led to a demand for slave labour. Sadly, the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, British, and French all played a significant role in the transportation of people for slavery.

Answer: 1807

The big players in the transatlantic slave trade began to abolish slavery from the end of the 1700s, though many of the laws were not all-encompassing. Some laws banned the trading of new African slaves, but those who were already slaves were not freed. Some laws applied to the homeland, but not to all colonies.

In 1807, the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act applied to Britain and all of its colonies in law, but in practice it took much longer to come in to effect. As the Empire was so big, it was difficult to enforce the law at first and illegal trafficking continued for decades. It took over half a century for the transatlantic slave trade to finally come to a stop across all nations.

The 1807 law only made the slave trade illegal, it didn't abolish slavery itself. In later years, the laws were tightened up to include stronger punishments and a complete ban on slavery.

Answer: Southern

The Anglo-Zulu War lasted for seven months in 1879. Lord Carnarvon, Secretary of State for the Colonies, wanted to create a federation in southern Africa like the one that had been created in Canada. Sir Henry Bartle Frere was sent to do the job, but disliked the fact that there were Independent kingdoms within the British territories. Without being ordered to, Frere issued an ultimatum to the Zulu king, King Cetshwayo.

He was unwilling to give up his land to be part of a British colony, so Frere's troops invaded.

The Zulus had a large army and had purchased weapons in advance. At first, the they seemed to be successful - they ambushed an unprepared camp and killed around 800 British soldiers in the first day. Eventually, however, they were defeated and Zululand became part of what is now South Africa.

Answer: Nursing

Mary Seacole was born in Jamaica in 1805. She learned nursing techniques and herbal remedies from her mother, who kept a boarding house for injured soldiers. Seacole travelled a lot and learned new European ideas about medicine. The Crimean War began in 1853 and it became known that sick and injured soldiers weren't being looked after particularly well. Mary Seacole approached the British War Office, asking to go to the Crimea as an army nurse. She was refused because she was mixed race (her father was Scottish and her mother was Jamaican).

That didn't stop her, however. She paid for her own trip to the Crimea and set up a medical establishment similar to the one her mother ran in Jamaica. Occasionally, Seacole would go out onto the battlefield to attend to wounded soldiers. When she returned to Britain after the war, she was praised for her work by the press.

Answer: It was the name of the first ship to bring migrants from the Caribbean.

After World War II, the UK was struggling to find workers to fill all of the jobs that needed to be done. The government promised jobs to people living in British colonies if they came to the UK. The first ship to arrive was the MV Empire Windrush, which brought migrants from Caribbean islands. Many of the workers filled manual labour roles.

The movement of migrants ended when the law changed in 1971, but around 500,000 people living in the UK after 1971 were part of the Windrush generation. Some of them have faced problems since then. The Home Office didn't issue any paperwork to those who were granted leave to remain in the UK, and in 2010, migrants' landing cards were destroyed. Many people who arrived in the UK as children (believing that they were British citizens because they had come from a British colony) suddenly found it difficult to prove that they were in the country legally.

Answer: Rosa Parks

Buses were segregated in Montgomery, Alabama: white people sat at the front of the bus and black people sat at the back of a bus. It became common practice in the city that if all the seats were full, black people would have to stand to allow white people to sit down. After work on December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was told to move for a white passenger, but she refused. The driver threatened to call the police and Parks was arrested.

Her arrest sparked a bus boycott in the city. Over half of bus users in the city were black, so the boycott made a significant impact. She was not the first to refuse to give up a seat on a bus, and there were other boycotts within the city before the one in December 1955. Nevertheless, Parks' arrest allowed Martin Luther King Jr to come to the forefront of the civil rights movement. Parks continued to fight for civil rights in America throughout her life and earned many awards for her work.

Answer: Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk

Nelson Mandela was born in South Africa in 1918. Throughout much of the 20th century, racial segregation (known as apartheid) was written into law in South Africa. At first, Mandela used nonviolent methods to try to end apartheid. In 1960, however, 69 unarmed protesters were killed by South African police, causing Mandela to change his tactics. He was arrested for sabotage and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

In 1990, President de Klerk's government released Nelson Mandela - and others in a similar situation - from prison. Mandela and his black-liberation party, the ANC, negotiated a peaceful end to apartheid with President de Klerk. The two men were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, and a year later, Mandela was elected president of South Africa.

Answer: Barack Obama

Barack Obama became the first black President of the United States in 2009. He was born in Hawaii, but his father's family were originally from a rural area of Kenya. In his inaugural speech, Obama highlighted how far civil rights in America had come by describing himself as "man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant."

Even though Obama had a successful political career, he was not the first democratically elected black leader of a nation. A number of African nations had previously black presidents or prime ministers, such as Nelson Mandela in South Africa in 1993, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia in 2006 (and was also Africa's first female head of state).

Sorry if the picture gives you nightmares! I tried to make it reminiscent of the famous Obama poster, while at the same time looking nothing like the man in order to avoid copyright issues.