Totally Useless History Knowledge Quiz

Answer: Doctor Josef Mengele

Dr. Mengele was the doctor who conducted inhuman medical experiments at Auschwitz. He escaped from Germany in 1945 and emigrated to Paraguay where he lived until his death in 1992. He owned a lucrative lumber operation and was a security advisor to the Paraguayan dictatorship.

Answer: Boll weevil

Up until the late 1940's and 50's, cotton was considered the cash crop in the south. When the crop was nearly wiped out by the boll weevil and cotton prices dropped drastically, the southern farmer was forced to find new crops to plant. By nearly wiping out southern cotton, the farmer was forced to plant new crops and rotate the fields and not depend on one crop for their livelihood. So the town fathers of Enterprise erected a statue to the saviour of southern farming, the boll weevil.

Answer: 800

He was simply crowned 'August Emperor', not Holy Roman Emperor (as so many printed sources in English inaccurately claim).

Answer: False

A surface wind of 231 miles per hour was recorded at Mount Washington, New Hampshire in 1934. I suppose it is conceivable that Mount Everest has terrible winds, too, but we are talking the official world record. Don't ask me how they recorded this. Seems to me that any recording breaking wind might break the machinery, too. What do you think?

Answer: Invited the Swiss to send their navy

Ole' Bryan was busily inviting all nations to send their navies to the gala opening. Guess no-one told him that the Swiss were landlocked and had no use for a navy.

Answer: Children's Crusade

A French shepherd boy named Stephen of Cloyes had a vision that God told him to field an army of children to take back the Holy Land. A 12 year old named Nicholas believed in his vision and recruited an army to go forth. They went singing and chanting.

However, the only thing they accomplished was to die and some be sold into slavery. When people heard what had happened to their children, they seized Nicholas' father and hanged him. This inspired the folk tale of a town whose children are spirited away forever.

Answer: Slave trader

John started in the slave trade when he was 20 years old, eventually becoming captain of his own ship. On May 10, 1748, as his ship was foundering in a storm, he was terrified, dropped to his knees and began to pray. After the storm he decided to devote his life to God, becoming a minister and coining these words: "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound."

Answer: 0

George Washington was the first President of our country under the Constitution, however, our country had been bought together as a nation years before this. George was actually our eight President outside of the Constitution. He was inaugurated in 1789.

The first President was John Hanson of Maryland who took office in 1781 when the United States was under the Articles of Confederation.

Answer: True

Braille was invented in the early 1800's by Captain Charles Barbier for use on the frontlines to be used at night. He called it "night writing". A 13-year-old boy at the Royal Institute for the Blind was excited by the writing using raised dots on a piece of paper. For two years he labored over it, making it simpler by cutting the number of dots in half.

He was Louis Braille and he was just 15 when it began to be used as writing for the blind.

Answer: Phineas Gage

Old Phineas became more famous after his death than before because his skull and brain were examined by experts. This led to a greater and more intricate understanding of the brain. He died 13 years after the accident, broke and suffering from epilepsy.

Answer: Saved Robert Todd Lincoln's life

Edwin was standing on a train platform in Jersey City. As he and a crowd of people were pressing to board, the train jolted forward. A young man lost his balance and began to fall down in front of the train. Edwin grabbed him by his collar and pulled him to safety. Robert said he recognized his saviour and called him by name and thanked him. Thanks to one Booth brother, Robert became the only one of Abraham's children to survive to adulthood, becoming both Secretary of State and President of the Pullman Company.

Answer: False

That honor (if one may call it such) belongs to a horrible forest fire that killed more than a thousand people in Peshtigo, Wisconsin. This occurred 250 miles north of Chicago, on October 8, 1871, the same night as the Great Chicago Fire which killed 250 people.

Answer: No

The claim that incompetent doctors killed President Garfield is just a 'Charlie Cleverclogs' argument. The fact that Garfield received incompetent medical treatment doesn't make the doctors guilty of murder.

Answer: Wyatt Earp

Wyatt taught William Hart how to quick draw his gun. John Wayne was one of his friends and always said that he based his portrayals of Western lawmen on Earp.

Answer: Nurse to George Washington

Ms. Heth was exhibited in 1835. She was the first woman who P.T. exhibited and great crowds came to see her and listen to stories about raising George, who had been dead for 35 years. When attention began to wane, word spread that she was really an automation. P.T. didn't do anything to dispel those rumors.

However when she died, he attempted to garner even more publicity by allowing an autopsy. Unfortunately, the autopsy showed her to be no older than 80.

Answer: Cassie Chadwick

Ms. Chadwick said that Andrew was paying her huge sums of money to keep quiet about their relationship. When her debts grew too large, the banks called in their loans. Ms. Chadwick was sentenced to 10 years in prison for swindling. Mr. Carnegie's only comment was that he had never heard of her.

Answer: True

This horrible document was used to justify vicious pogroms against the Jews, especially in Tsarist Russia in the early years of the 20th century and later in Nazi Germany and elsewhere. However, the text actually comes from a work published in 1864 called "Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu" which was written by Maurice Joly.

This was not an attack on the Jews at all, but an attack upon Emperor Napoleon III. It tells how Napoleonic conspirators were plotting to undermine democracy. Anti-Semitic conspirators simply substituted Zionist conspirators for Napoleonic ones. Most of the pages included in the "Protocols" were simply paraphrased to show the Jews were responsible. About 20 of the 110 pages of the first Russian edition under this title (1905, preceded in 1901 by an almost identical work under another title) were almost verbatim translations and much of the rest was a paraphrase with minor changes, such as dates and places.

Answer: False

H.L. Mencken was responsible for this highly believed piece of fiction. On December 28, 1917, he published an article about this subject in the "New York Evening News". He didn't expect people to believe this but to his chagrin, the story began to take on a life of its own. Scholarly hygiene sources repeated the story.

A man named Fairfax Downey included the story in a serious history of the bathtub published in 1926. Mencken tried to tell people that the story was a hoax but observed "that the American people will swallow anything".

Answer: Hippo and dead men's teeth

Contrary to popular belief, George's teeth were made from hippo ivory and utilized eight dead men's teeth set with gold rivets into curved ivory. A hole was bored to allow his one remaining tooth to fit into the denture, (he eventually lost that tooth, too).

His dentist was a man named John Greenwood and there is a letter still existing to Dr. Greenwood dated December 12, 1798 asking him to adjust his new dentures. For this work the good doctor. charged him the sum of $15, which was about 2 months wages for the average Corporal in the Continental Army.

Answer: No

No, believe it or not, one of the "real" reasons (not officially stated of course) was financial. A convicted heretic had his or her property confiscated. This was a big money maker for the church.