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History General Knowledge #17

Can you answer these random history questions?
Quiz by Quizmaster
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Last updated: January 18, 2025
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First submittedJanuary 18, 2025
Times taken3,637
Average score70.0%
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Question
Answer
What was the capital of the Ottoman Empire?
Constantinople
Who failed to be admitted to art school in 1907 – forever changing the course of history?
Adolf Hitler
In what year did the United States declare independence from Great Britain?
1776
What was the second richest country in the Americas in 1908, ahead of Canada
and trailing only the United States?
Argentina
What former African dictator gave himself the modest military rank of "colonel"?
Muammar Gaddafi
What punishment did Vlad III of Wallachia inflict on his enemies?
Impalement
What British citizen started a famous scholarship program and once had
an African country named after him?
Cecil Rhodes
What became known as the "City of Light" in the late 1800s because
of its early adoption of gas street lamps?
Paris
What did the Brothers Grimm collect, organize, and publish?
Fairy tales
What country controlled the state of Goa before India invaded and took it in 1961?
Portugal
What city on the Baltic Sea was built in the early 1700s – costing the lives
of tens of thousands of laborers?
St. Petersburg
From what city in France did British troops evacuate the European mainland in 1940?
Dunkirk
What Frankish ruler is known in German as "Karl der Große"?
Charlemagne
What Chinese city was declared a Special Economic Zone in 1980 – resulting in
its population mushrooming from 30,000 then to over 17 million today?
Shenzhen
What became, in 1865, the last major peak in the Alps to be summitted?
The Matterhorn
Who was the conquistador that overthrew the Aztec Empire?
Hernán Cortés
What was the capital of Japan before Tokyo?
Kyoto
Who was the first female prime minister of the United Kingdom?
Margaret Thatcher
Euclid is known as the "father" of what field of study?
Geometry
What religious movement started from the teachings of Guru Nanak in
the Punjab region around 1500 AD?
Sikhism
21 Comments
+7
Level 91
Jan 18, 2025
Rhodes and Thatcher are two of the most controversial figures in all British history. Their legacies are complicated at best, evoking very strong feelings from supporters and opponents alike.

Thatcher waged ideological warfare against the working class, and took Britain to a deadly war over some rocks on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. She personally ordered the sinking of the Argentine warship General Belgrano, sending 323 sailors to Davy Jones’s Locker. The ship was in international waters, sailing away from the conflict zone, and was probably sunk as revenge for British casualties.

Meanwhile, very few people would defend Cecil Rhodes, who epitomises the British Empire and colonialism. Countless African lives were lost as a direct result of his arrogant barbarism, underpinned by a vocal Christianity. A delightful man…

+2
Level 83
Jan 18, 2025
Hitler is also in the quiz, not gonna offer your opinions about him too?
+1
Level 44
Jan 19, 2025
it's recently been discovered that the General Belgrano was secretly equipped with a device called a rudder, allowing it to change its direction - almost at will.
+5
Level 71
Jan 19, 2025
And your point is? It's a history quiz, not a "people I approve of" quiz.
+4
Level 69
Jan 20, 2025
I'm working class British who grew up in an ex-mining community. I was raised hating Thatcher
+2
Level 83
Jan 22, 2025
Yeah I don't think I've ever met anyone in the north of England who considers Thatcher to have a good side
+4
Level 69
Jan 23, 2025
I don't get why people object to this comment. It's not complaining about anything - just offering some additional information to whomever might care. I found it interesting!
+1
Level 86
Jan 18, 2025
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_first_ascents_of_mountain_summits lists 14 Alps first summited after the Matterhorn. Is none of them major?
+1
Level ∞
Jan 18, 2025
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matterhorn#Climbing_history

> The Matterhorn was one of the last of the main Alpine mountains to be ascended

+1
Level 86
Jan 18, 2025
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Shenzhen says Shenzhen's 1980 population was around 300,000, not 30,000.
+1
Level ∞
Jan 18, 2025
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhen

"In 1980, Shenzhen had a population of 30,000"

+7
Level 96
Jan 18, 2025
QM, the numbers on the Wikipedia page mentioned by cpgatbyu are straight from the Shenzhen Statistical Yearbook. If you check out page 77 of the PDF referenced in the sources, you'll see that cpgatbyu is correct. What you quoted is probably simply the result of a typo.
+1
Level 23
Feb 5, 2025
According to 《深圳统计年鉴2014》 (Shenzhen Statistical Yearbook 2014) page 4, the year-end permanent population of Shenzhen was 332,9000.

As a native Shenzhener, I would say Shenzhen has always been a pretty important settlement at least after Hong Kong was ceded to the British. After all, it would be the first town for British Goods to enter mainland China. People who have minimal economic sense would realize the importance.

+5
Level 68
Jan 18, 2025
Shouldn't just "tales" be enough for Grimms ? I don't know any other kind of tales than fairy tales.
+1
Level 71
Jan 18, 2025
'tattle'

'old wives'

are two others :)

+1
Level 69
Jan 23, 2025
Also Duck Tales
+1
Level 83
Jan 18, 2025
Kept trying different spellings for Aconcagua until I remembered the Andes and the Alps are in fact not the same thing
+4
Level 85
Jan 18, 2025
Got 19 in the first 3 minutes, then spent the last 3 minutes trying and failing to come up with some variation of "fables" that the quiz would accept. I'm not sure how a fairy tale is different from everything else I tried.
+1
Level 85
Jan 23, 2025
Yeah I feel like "fables" should work. I was trying "fables" and "tales" and "children's stories" and "stories" and "short stories" and so many things....fairy tales didn't come to mind until too late.
+1
Level 72
Jan 28, 2025
Yup tried fables first then tales then fairytale.... Then s ;)

Personally I might have accepted the ones I tried, but you should get around to the term fairytales eventually so it's not a big deal.

+3
Level 71
Jan 19, 2025
I think you need to allow a lot more leeway on the spelling of colonel Gaddaffi/ghadafi/khadafy/ghadhafi etc. His name is transliterated from arabic into English in a multitude of ways.