What Year Was That? Trivia Quiz

Answer: 490 BC

The Army of Athens and its allies met the Persians on the Plains of Marathon about 22 miles from Athens. The Greeks charged the Persian lines. Both sides fought hard, but it was the Greeks who were able to break the Persian lines. The Persians were forced to withdraw to their boats. The complete Greek victory at Marathon ended the immediate Persian threat

Answer: 43 BC

Cicero, the greatest Roman orator, denounced Antony. In return Antony ordered the assassination of Cicero, who was subsequently murdered.

Answer: 732

At the Battle of Tours, the Franks under Charles Martel, defeated a Muslim expedition led by Adb-el-Rahman across the Pyrenees. This marked the furthest incursion of Muslim forces into Europe.

Answer: 1455

The war was a civil war between the Houses of Lancaster and York. The war was largely limited to the English nobility and on the whole did not involve the ordinary population. The first battle of the war was the Battle of St Albans which took place near London. At that battle the Yorkist defeated the Lancastrian forces.

Answer: 528 BC

Siddharta Gautama (563-483 BC) was enlightened under the Bodhi Tree and became the Buddha "Awakened One." He would spend the rest of his life teaching meditation and mindfulness as a way to enlightenment.

Answer: 1498

In 1498 Leonardo da Vinci painted this most famous mural. The mural depicts the Last Supper of Christ before being crucified.

Answer: 1803

In 1803 U.S. negotiated the Louisiana Purchase from France for $15 million. U.S. doubled its area, increasing its territory by 827,000 sq mi (2,144,500 sq km), from the Mississippi River to the Rockies and from Gulf of Mexico to British North America.

Answer: 325 AD

Emperor Constantine (280-337 AD) embraced Christianity and initiated the Council of Nicaea where the differences between Eastern and Western factions of the Christian Church were resolved. The Council drafted the Nicene Creed, the basic Christian beliefs that became the dominant religion in Europe.

Answer: 1990

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web while working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. He wrote the first WWW client (a browser-editor running under NeXTStep) and the first WWW server along with most of the communications software, defining URLs, HTTP and HTML.

Answer: 1804

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) crowned himself Emperor at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. He defeated the Russian and Austrian armies at Austerlitz in December 1805, the Prussians at Jena in 1806, and the Austrians at Friedland in 1807.