Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. Born out of wedlock in the British West Indies, this son of a married French Huguenot woman and her Scottish lover became an orphan while still a young child. Nevertheless, he eventually helped establish the United States' Federalist Party and, as a pamphleteer, was responsible for writing the majority of the "Federalist Papers". He helped create the US Coast Guard as well as the "New York Post". Most importantly, he established a national bank as well as the United States' financial system.
Who was this first US Secretary of the Treasury, a man who championed a strong federal government?
2. He established the territorial boundaries of modern China. He conquered Mongolia and Taiwan. He made Tibet essentially a vassal state. He halted Russia's influence on his country's border territories. He was a great patron of native artists and supporter of higher education. The list goes onward.
Who was this individual from the Qing dynasty who ruled during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and is considered one of the greatest emperors China ever had?
3. William Faulkner and Eugene O'Neill referred to this late nineteenth-century writer as the "father of American literature", and Ernest Hemingway declared that "all modern American literature comes from one book" by this author. Celebrated for his satire and wit, this master story teller wrote several books, from travelogues like "Roughin' It" to fiction like "Pudd'nhead Wilson". Through his combination of realist observations of society with romantic motifs and ideals, he used American themes, settings, and vernacular to help create an American literature distinct from that of Europe.
Who was this individual who began as a printer, journalist, and steamboat pilot?
4. After experiencing a vision of Vishnu, this eleventh-century individual from the Indian subcontinent transformed Hinduism from merely a set of rituals designed to free people from the cycle of reincarnation to, instead, a devotional faith based on a personal relationship with a god who bestowed salvation.
Who was this Hindu theologian and visionary who, as tradition claims, lived for one hundred and twenty years?
5. This German printmaker, painter, and theorist traveled to Italy and, after his return to Nuremberg, brought the Renaissance to Northern Europe. By 1512, he had achieved enough fame that Maximilian I, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, became his patron. His remarkable use of geometrical perspective and porportion as well as his highly realistic detail influenced Rubens, El Greco, and Rembrandt; and his work, inspired by his devotion to Martin Luther, contributed to the spread of Protestant ideals.
Who is this creator of such pieces as "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse", "Saint Jerome in His Study", and "Melencolia I"?
6. The poet J. H. Beattie wrote that this radical empiricist and skeptic "ate a swinging great dinner / And grew fatter and fatter; / And yet the huge bulk of a sinner / Said there was neither spirit or matter". The subject of Beattie's wit believed that truth was unattainable, for there was no such thing as a discernible cause for anything at all. Thus, he brought new fervor to scientific inquiry, calling into doubt even Newtonian physics, and angered countless theologians by demonstrating that one cannot presume the existence of God because of the existence of the universe.
Who was this pivotal Scottish eighteenth-century philosopher, historian, and essayist who had a tremendous impact on other philosophers, like Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, William James, and Ludwig Wittgenstein?
7. She used a pen name to protect her fiction from those who might unfairly disregard it as stereotypical lighthearted romance. She also worried about those who might never read it because they condemned her personal life; she had not only rejected Christianity but was openly living with a married man. Her essays and translations of German texts exposed English readers to a more open-minded understanding of religion and morality, but more importantly her novels established her as a major nineteenth-century literary voice through her psychologically developed characters and her exposition of provincial life.
Who is this author of such works as "Silas Marner", "The Mill on the Floss", and "Middlemarch"?
8. While Claude Debussy may have gained the world's attention for his challenging the rules of harmony, this composer startled everyone with his challenging all the rules. He abandoned pleasing melodies and conventional orchestrations in favor of jarring, discordant, tuneless sounds that many described as noise. In fact, one critic expressed that this composer's "Le Sacre du Printemps" would be better named the "Massacre of Spring".
Who was this Russian-born individual many would claim is the most important musical composer of the twentieth century?
9. This English man of letters was an early champion of wit and humor as is evident in the aphorism "Second marriages are the triumph of hope over experience" or the putdown of John Milton's "Paradise Lost"--"No one ever wished it longer". He wrote poems, such as "The Vanity of Human Wishes", and lifted biography to an artform with his multivolumed "Lives of the Poets". He even compiled the first dictionary of the English language. And, while American colonials hated him because he was a loyal Tory, this citizen of London represented the American dream--a self-made man who rose from rags to riches.
Who is this individual whose interesting life and conversations were captured in a famous biography written by James Boswell?
10. Having achieved fame for repelling the Allied attack at Gallipoli, this individual was able to take advantage of the Ottoman Empire's crumbling situation following World War I to establish the Republic of Turkey and serve as its first President. Under his iron-willed leadership, he established a secularized nation-state free of the dismantled Caliphate, replaced the Arabic alphabet with the Latin one, created legal and economic systems based on Western ones, made education free and compulsory while establishing a great number of new schools, gave women civil and equal rights, and pushed his people to imitate Western dress and culture.
Who was this man who finished off the Ottoman Empire and thrust "the sick man of Europe" into the modernized world?
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