What Happened in ...? (1910s edition) Quiz

Answer: Halley's Comet

Halley's Comet (or, more technically, Comet Halley, 1P/Halley) has a cycle of about 75 years, and has appeared on numerous momentous dates, including the first Jewish revolt against the Romans (in 66 A.D.), the Battle of Hastings (in 1066) and Genghis Khan's assault on Europe (in 1222). Its next appearance will be in 2061.

Answer: The Mona Lisa

An Italian nationalist named Vincenzo Peruggia stole the painting by sticking it under his coat and walking out with it. He brought it to what he considered its rightful place--Italy--and basically sat on it for two years while the art world went mad trying to find it (Pablo Picasso was brought in for questioning by the French police).

But Peruggia tried to sell the thing to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and he was arrested (though he only served a few months) and La Gioconda was returned to the Louvre.

The painting is the legitimate property of the French government--King François I bought the Mona Lisa from the heirs of Da Vinci's assistant Salai.

Answer: China

The Kuomintang, or the Chinese National Party, was founded by Sun Yat-sen and Song Jiaoren and it controlled much of China from 1928 until 1949, when the Communist Party forced it to relocate to Taiwan.

Answer: The assembly line

After the assembly line theory was put into practice (much of the credit for the discovery must go to William Klann, who picked up the idea by observing Chicago slaughterhouses and their methods of disassembling cattle carcasses), the time it took to produce an automobile went from twelve and a half man-hours to one and a half--a decrease of eight.

Answer: Passenger pigeon

It is estimated that there were three to five billion passenger pigeons in North America when the first Europeans showed up, and flocks of them would measure a mile wide by three hundred miles long. Martha, when she died, was frozen into a block of ice and sent to the Smithsonian, where they skinned her and mounted her.

Answer: The Birth of a Nation

The film, when released, caused riots across America and at least one murder. For all its faults, the movie was of supreme historical importance--it was the first successful feature-length film (it made over ten million dollars) and paved the way for movies over an hour long.

Answer: Norman Rockwell

The May 20, 1916 issue featured Rockwell's "Boy With Baby Carriage". Over the next 47 years, Rockwell would paint 321 original covers for the "Saturday Evening Post". He was best-known for his portrayals of normal, everyday life, and he did a lot of work for the Boy Scouts and for the government (notably his painting of "Rosie the Riveter").

Answer: Fatima

Lúcia Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto, all of them children of shepherds, saw the Virgin repeatedly over a period of six months, and she supposedly gave them secrets and prophecies about the coming World War II and visions of Hell. Pope John Paul II, in 1981, claimed that the Lady of Fatima had saved him from an assassin's bullet.

Answer: Spanish Flu went pandemic

By 1920 the flu had claimed over 50 million lives, or three percent of the world's population. In contrast, WWI only killed 15 million people. The 1918 pandemic was the biggest pandemic since the Black Death in the 1300's, which killed 75 million people.

Answer: Outlawed the production and sale of alcohol

Prohibition began a year later, in January of 1920, and almost immediately organized crime stepped in to fill the void left by legal sellers of booze. The only two states to reject the ratification of the amendment were Connecticut and Rhode Island, but by 1933 America had decided that being a dry country wasn't working out, and the 21st Amendment repealed the 18th.