When Was That? (3) Trivia Quiz

Answer: September 9, 1513

Fought on the outskirts of the village of Branxton in northern Northumberland, the Battle of Flodden Field saw King James IV's Scottish invaders routed by King Henry VIII's forces led by the Earl of Surrey.

The Scots, who were allied with the French at the time, brought some 30-40,000 men across the border in order to divert English forces away from the ongoing campaign against King Louis XII of France. They were met by a force of around 26,000 English troops just a few miles south of the border. The English lost 1,500 men in the conflict, but Scottish losses were significantly higher, with estimates ranging from 5,000 to 17,000. Amongst those killed was King James IV himself, who thus became the last reigning British monarch to die in battle.

Answer: May 30, 1431

Joan of Arc was born in January 1412 in the village of Domrémy (now called Domrémy-la-Pucelle, literally "Domrémy of the maiden" in her honour) in the Vosges department in northeastern France. After receiving visions of the Archangel Michael instructing her to support the uncrowned King Charles VII in his quest to recover France from English domination, she travelled to the besieged city of Orleans in early Marc h 1429. The siege was lifted nine days after her arrival and several French victories followed quickly thereafter, leading to the coronation of Charles VII at Reims in July of that same year.

On May 23, 1430, Joan led an attack on British forces near the Oise commune of Compiegne in northern France, but she was ambushed and captured. Imprisoned at Beaurevoir Castle, she made numerous escape attempts before being moved first to Arras and then to Rouen. Charged with heresy, her trial began three days after her 19th birthday, on January 9, 1431. Found guilty, she was executed by burning on May 30, 1431 and her ashes thrown into the Seine to prevent the collection of relics.

Joan's trial was later deemed so unfair that in the 20th century the transcripts were used as evidence for her canonization. Beatified by Pope Pius X in 1909, she became Saint Joan on May 20, 1920, during the papacy of Benedict XV.

Answer: November 19, 1863

Lincoln tells attentive listeners when he delivered this famous speech, since it opens "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." The event he was referring to, of course, was the Declaration of Independence, signed in 1776, "four score and seven" (87) years earlier.

Remarkably, Lincoln's speech lasted barely five minutes, and yet is remembered as one of the greatest in history. It was made at the height of the American Civil War, on the site of the Battle of Gettysburg in southern Pennsylvania, which had produced a resounding Union victory some four and a half months earlier.

Answer: October 14, 1066

Those quirky English love a good underdog, and whereas most countries celebrate their Independence Day or the occasion of some national success, the one (and in many cases only) date that just about every English person leaves school knowing is 1066, the year of the last successful invasion of the British mainland by a foreign army. In 1966, the Royal Mail issued one of the first sets of commemorative postage stamps to mark the 900th anniversary of this pivotal moment in English history.

The death of the childless Edward the Confessor in January 1066 set up a struggle between numerous would-be kings. Harold Godwinson was crowned king but soon faced an invasion led by King Harald III of Norway and his own brother, Tostig Godwinson. The Norwegians won the first round, at the Battle of Fulford on September 20, but were then routed five days later at the Battle of Stamford Bridge.

Having already fought two battles at a cost of more than 5,000 men, Harold's army then had to travel the length of the country to face an invasion force led by William of Normandy. The Battle of Hastings was actually fought at the small town now named Battle, some 55 miles south of London. The result was the death of one English monarch and the subsequent coronation of King William I on Christmas Day that same year.

Answer: August 24, 1572

Many leading Hugenots (French Calvinist Protestants) had gathered in Paris for the wedding of the Protestant Henry III of Navarre (later Henry IV of France) to Margaret, the sister of King Charles IX of France. Five days later, on the night of August 23-24, 1572, Catholic mobs began systematically assassinating Hugenot leaders. It is thought that the instigator of the troubles was Catherine de' Medici (King Charles IX's mother), a noted Italian Catholic noblewoman.

After the initial massacre on the Feast Day of Saint Bartholomew, violence spread to other cities in France, lasting for a period of several weeks. Estimates of the number killed range from 5,000 to 30,000.

Answer: October 25, 1415

Fought on Saint Crispin's Day in 1415, the Battle of Agincourt was one of the most important encounters during the Hundred Years War between England and France. The site is a field near the commune of Azincourt in the department of Pas-de-Calais in northern France. The battle provides the centrepiece for Shakespeare's historical play "Henry V" (complete with the famous St Crispin's Day Speech), since the King himself led some 6,000-9,000 English fighters into the fray. Estimates of French numbers vary from 12,000 to 36,000, led by Constable Charles d'Albret.

The supremacy of the English longbow was to prove the most important difference between the sides, and when the dust cleared the English had suffered a mere 112 dead whilst French casualties were between 7,000-10,000 with a further 1,500 noblemen taken prisoner.

Answer: August 27, 1883

Evidence of volcanic activity beneath the surface of Krakatoa first apperared in May of 1883. The volcano began to erupt in earnest on the afternoon of August 26, but it was the following day that the final explosive eruption, one of the deadliest and most destructive volcanic events in recorded history, caused the destruction of more than 70% of the island and the surrounding archipelago. (The explosion itself is estimated as having 13,000 times the nuclear yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of WWII.) The effects of the eruption, and the tsunamis and ash clouds that it created, were felt around the world in the ensuing weeks, causing a death toll estimated at around 40,000.

The island that now stands on the site of Krakatoa, called 'Anak Krakatau' ("Child of Krakatoa") emerged in 1927. Major volcanic activity was recorded here as recently as March 2014.

Answer: June 15, 1215

The 32-year old John (aka John Lackland) became King of England following the death of his popular elder brother, Richard I (Richard the Lionheart), in 1199. The youngest of the five sons of King Henry II and his father's favorite, John was never expected to become king, but his three oldest brothers all died young. John's reign was fraught with conflict between his view, that he ruled by right of "divine majesty", and that of the majority of the strongest barons, that he should rule according to custom and law.

'Magna Carta', drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, was an agreement that effectively meant the king would accept limitations on his power in return for the support (primarily financial and military) of the strongest barons. John signed the document in a public ceremony at Runnymede, a Surrey water-meadow alongside the River Thames near to Windsor on June 12, 1215.

Unfortunately, John's failure to abide by the conditions to which he had agreed quickly led the First Barons' War, which broke out later in the same year. Things only began to improve following John's death and the accession of his oldest son, the 9-year old Henry III, 17 months after 'Magna Carta' was signed, in October, 1216.

Answer: October 25, 1854

"Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred..." begins "The Charge of the Light Brigade", written in 1854 by England's Poet Laureate at the time, Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Part of the Crimean War, the "Battle of Balaclava" took place just a few weeks into the Siege of Sevastopol. The two sides were fairly evenly matched, with 25,000 men of the Russian Empire led by Pavel Liprandi on one side, opposed by 20,000 British, 7,000 French and 1,000 Turkish forces led by FitzRoy Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan.

Although Tennyson's poem paints the day's activities as an example of incredibly inept leadership producing one of the most ill-fated days in British military history, the battle itself proved indecisive, with both sides suffering losses of between 600 and 700 men. The siege, which the battle was supposed to end, would last until September the following year.

Answer: July 17, 1918

Nicholas II had officially abdicated after more than 22 years as Emperor of Russia on March 15, 1917. Although he wished to be exiled to the UK, the former emperor and his family were imprisoned in the Urals, first in the town of Tobolsk, a historic capital of Siberia. In April 1918, they were moved north to the town of Yekaterinburg, situated on the border between European and Asian Russia.

The family of six, Nicholas, his wife Alexandra and their five children, Alexei, Anastasia, Tatiana, Olga and Maria, along with the Tsar's personal physician, his wife's maid, and the family chef and footman, were woken at 2am on the morning of July 17, 1918 and taken to a basement room at the back of the house, where all ten were executed.

In 1981, the family were canonized in New York City by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. Their bodies were finally discovered and identified in 1991, and seven years later they were re-interred in St. Petersburg.