The Year that Was - 1883 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Richard Wagner

He'd probably have preferred that his best known music was something soaring like the "Ride of the Valkyries", but in fact its probably the "Bridal Chorus" from "Lohengrin", commonly known as "Here Comes the Bride"!

Answer: Ladies' Home Journal

The "Ladies' Home Journal" started out as a single page in the American magazine, "Tribune and Farmer" written by the publisher's wife, Louisa Knapp Curtis, and entitled "Women at Home". After a year, it became an independent magazine, called "The Ladies' Home Journal and Practical Housekeeper", dropping the last three words in 1886. The original "Life" magazine also began publication that year. "National Geographic" had its first publication in 1888. The "Library Journal" was founded in 1876.

Answer: Oxygen

Their names were Zygmunt Wróblewski and Karol Olszewski, and they worked at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Carbon Dioxide doesn't liquefy at normal pressures, instead condensing into dry ice. Hydrogen was first liquefied by James Dewar in 1898, and helium wasn't liquefied until 10 July 1908 by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes.

Answer: Human stampede

The children were offered free sweets at the conclusion of the show, and when the children in the gallery saw sweets being given out in the stalls they rushed for the exit. Unfortunately the exit was blocked, the door bolted so that only one child could pass at a time, presumably so tickets could be checked. The resulting crush caused the deaths of 183 children from compressive asphyxiation, the worst disaster of its kind in British history. The resulting public outrage led to the invention of the 'push bar' emergency doors familiar in halls and theatres everywhere today.

Answer: The Black Arrow

The final part of the serial appeared in the issue dated October 20, 1883, but the novel wasn't published as a whole until 1888. The story is set during the Wars of the Roses, and tells the story of a young man, Dick Shelton, as he becomes a knight, rescues his lady, and obtains justice for his father's murder.

Answer: Rodeo

There appears to be a lot of argument about this one - the other main contender is Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1872. The difficulty appears to be that rodeo was evolved rather than invented. The word "rodeo" is Spanish, and means simply "round up". The contests that are part of modern rodeo grew out of the practices of cowboys and cattle ranchers in the western United States much as competitive sheep shearing grew out of sheep-farming practices in New Zealand.

Informal competition gradually developed into formal contests with prizes and rewards, and it's hard to determine just when and where rodeo was born.

Answer: Quagga

The Quagga was the first extinct species to have its DNA studied, and scientists have concluded it was in fact a kind of Plains Zebra. It was hunted to extinction, as was the Tarpan, a wild horse native to the steppes of Eurasia; the Aurochs, a wild bovine related to domestic cattle; and the Bluebuck, a species of antelope found in the savannah of southern Africa.

Answer: Krakatoa, West of Java

The eruption began as early as 20 May 1883 with seismic activity and steam venting from Perbuatan, one of the island's three cones. It worked its way up to loud explosions on the 16 June, and a thick black ash cloud settled over the island. The eruptions intensified until 26-27 August, when the island literally blew itself apart.

The final explosion, at 10:41 on the 27th August, was heard as far away as Perth, Australia, and burst the eardrums of sailors on the Sunda Strait. It was arguably the loudest sound in historic times.

The resulting tsunami reached the shores of South Africa. Sunsets were seen around the world. By comparison, the other eruptions of that period were much smaller and killed far fewer people: Mount Tarawera erupted on 10 June 1886, Mount Bandai on July 15, 1888, and Cotopaxi in June 1877.

Answer: Railroads

Sunday, November 18, 1883 was called "The Day of Two Noons" because the railroads changed the clocks at each station as soon as standard-time noon was reached in its time zone. The new time zones were named Pacific, Mountain, Central, Eastern, and Inter-colonial.

Answer: Adolf Hitler, future dictator of Germany, 20 April

Adolf Hitler was not born until 1889. Numerous other notables were also born in 1883, including Ichirô Hatoyama, Prime Minister of Japan; Khalil Gibran, Lebanese poet; Celal Bayar, President of Turkey; King Faisal I of Iraq; Walter Haworth, British chemist, Nobel Prize laureate; Douglas Fairbanks, American actor; John Maynard Keynes, English economist; Pierre Laval, Prime Minister of France; Franz Kafka, Austrian writer; Rube Goldberg, American cartoonist; Coco Chanel, French stylist; and Otto Heinrich Warburg, German physician and physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate. It was a busy year!