Researchable PM-based history quiz

[Roi de Cinq]

I think I forgot to give a deadline. Lets set it on wednesday, though if it gives problems we could change it. I'll give a 24-hour warning to prevent miscommunication.

We also have one entry at this point

Bucket, with 8 points.

Good luck!

 

[Roi de Cinq]

Well.. there's still only 1 submission. Bucket, with 8 points. This could be bested, if there are still people interested. I promised a warning, here it is: in 24 hours, about noon here in Europe, I'll post the answers....

 

[Roi de Cinq]

I had some problems with my internet yesterday, so I could not post the answers. But seeing the tremendous amount of submissions it's not a big problem. I have the honour to congratulate Bucket with his victory, with a stunning 8 points.

here are the answers...

1: What have the following people in common?

They are all left-handed. (Napoleon Bonaparte, Michelangelo and Lewis Carrol)

2: What does (Jeremiah 52:28-30) have to do with Pope Benedict XII.

Pope Benedict XII was a pope in Avignon. The Avignon Papacy, from 1305 to 1378, is also called the Babylonian Captivity. This, of course, is described in Jeremiah.

3: We all know Helen as the wife of Menelaus. You could call her the reason Troy was destroyed. The story was(and is) an inspiration for many writers.
In the early 20th century a man wrote a poem about her, though he had his own Helen. Who was his 'Helen'?

In the bundle The Green Helmet (1910) from William Butler Yeats is a poem called 'No second Troy'. He wrote the poem to deal with the fact that the
'love of his life' married another man. Her name: Maud Gonne.

4: Who wanted a seventeen sided 'rectangle' inscribed on his grave?

Carl Friedrich Gauss. While in college, he independently rediscovered several important theorems; his breakthrough occurred in 1796 when he was able to show that any regular polygon,
each of whose odd factors are distinct Fermat primes, can be constructed by ruler and compass alone, thereby adding to work started by classical Greek mathematicians.
Gauss was so pleased by this result that he requested that a regular 17-gon be inscribed on his tombstone.
The stonemason declined, though, stating that the difficult construction would essentially look like a circle.

5: Who wrote a book stating that the right thing to do is to follow the standard that would make the most people happy. (not the exact words, but otherwise it would be too easy)

John Stuart Mill, an English philosopher, wrote the book called Utilitarianism. He was an advocate of utilitarianism,
the ethical theory first proposed by his godfather Jeremy Bentham. Mill is often considered the father of rule utilitarianism. Rule utilitarianism instead states that the best act is to follow the general rule which would yield the most happiness.

6: Who painted this? What part of the painting is special and why?
It is the painting "The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb" by Hubert and Jan van Eyck. Situated in the St. Bavo Cathedral in Ghent,
It is notorious not only because the painting is one of the most important pieces of medieval painting in western Europ, but primarily because one piece is a fake.
It was stolen in 1934 and many conspiracy theories exist but it is still not uncovered.

7: What is the piece of paper on the picture? This is a hard one, so I'll give another hint. The second picture is the logo that was used to seal it.

It is a bond of the VOC(Dutch East Indies Company) for the amount of 2.400 florins.

8: What have Freddy Mercury(of QUeen), Homi J. Bhabha(physicist) and Dadabhai Naoroji(politician UK and India) in common?

They are all Zoroastrianists

9: Which culture has produced this artifact?

The Incan Empire.

10: Which George was king of an island smaller than Madagascar?

Tonga was united into a Polynesian kingdom in 1845 by the ambitious young warrior, strategist, and orator Taufa'ahau.
He held the chiefly title of Tu'i Kanokupolu, but was baptised with the name King George.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonga


Goodbye!

 

[Ciceronian]

10: Which George was king of an island smaller than Madagascar?

Tonga was united into a Polynesian kingdom in 1845 by the ambitious young warrior, strategist, and orator Taufa'ahau.
He held the chiefly title of Tu'i Kanokupolu, but was baptised with the name King George.

What about all the Georges of England? Britain is a smaller island than Madagascar too.

 

[bucket]

Well, thank you, Roi, I beat out some rather fierce competetion, eh?

I do apologize, but some important matters have come up and I will not be able to visit the forum for a few days. I hope someone else will be able to make a quiz in my stead.

Bucket.

 

[Adler17]

Okay, since bucket has no time, I give a new quiz.

1. Who was the Pope with the longest ruling time? (Hint: Not JP II.)

2. The Popes should be elected by the Holy Ghost. There was once an incident that someone was elected only because of this incident. He was no papabili before by far. Who was he and what was this incident? (2 pts.)

3. A critic to Michelangelo was a bit too hard in the opinion of the genius. So he decided to make him immortal as a person in the hell in one of his pictures. Who was the critic? (2 pts.)

4. Who was the inventor of the telephone, I mean the one who had for the first time PROVEN communicated through a phone.

5. What was the first German colony? Bonuses: Who was the owner? What mysterious "treasure" did they seek?

6. Why did the Mongols retreated after winning the battle of Liegnitz, Silesia?

7. What were the 3 reasons for Chrushtshov for retaking the nuclear missiles out of Cuba? (1 pt. each)

8. Which battle of ww1 was important for the developement of "Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien?

9. For what two reasons the battle on the Lechfeld near Augsburg was important? (1 pt. each)

10. Who was the first man flying in a manned rocket? Bonus: What record did he break, although someone else has still this record?

11. Who was Cheng Ho or also Zheng He?

12. To Roman law a free man captured could only become a slave if he was captured by troops of a recognized enemy state. Only 2 of these states existed in the height of the Roman power. Name both. (2 pts.)

21 pts. Time until Wednesday morning.

Adler

 

[Adler17]

A first poster:
Greekguy: 6 pts.

Adler

 

[Adler17]

We have a new leader. Also I forgot to add the points of question #9 so I corrected that. Greekguy´s points are still the same.

New scorerlist:

Adso: 8.5 pts
Greekguy: 6 pts.
Sydhe: 5.5 pts.

Adler

 

[Adler17]

Okay here is the solution:

1. It is said that Petrus was the longest ruling pope. However this is not a known fact and only historical accurate is Pius IX., ruling from 1846- 1878.

2. Fabianus. In 236 it is said he was elected to pope because a dove set on him, which was seen as holy sign. His pontificate was very important for the early church.

3. Michelangelo seemed to make revenge on several people by painting them burning in hell. Adso gave with Biagio da Cesena a perfect example. However I thought on another guy I read in a book. However I closed the book and do not find the page again. So I am sorry that I con only give Adso´s example as result. Since no one posted another name nothing is changed in this quiz.

4. Phillip Reis, who spoke the sentence "Das Pferd frißt keinen Gurkensalat (the horse does not eat cucumber salad)" in 1864 through an early telephone at Frankfurt in front of some witnesses. Antonio Meucci claimed to have built a telephone earlier. However he has no witnesses nor patents and so is excluded from the question. Since we had this discussion earlier I supposed an easy question here.

5. Venezuela was given to the Welser as security by Emperor Chalrs V in 1528. They looked for El Dorado. In 1556 the land was reannexed by the Spanish terminating the first German colony.

6. Khan Ogodei died and so the army commanders had to return for the election and inthronisation of a new Khan.

7.
a) Cuba´s socialistic regime was save for a US invasion
b) No nuclear war
c) no longer US nukes in Turkey

8. The battle of the Somme.

9. On the Lechfeld for the first time heavily armoured rider appeared: the knights. Also the Hungarians were not only beaten but nearly annhiliated forcing them to stop the attacks and settling down. I gave a half point for the strengenthing of Otto´s power after the battle since he was indeed a weak monarch before but not after the battle. BTW He was not the first emperor since Carolus Magnus.

10. Lothar Sieber, Lieutenant in the German Luftwaffe. He was one of the first space pioneers but also the very first victim. He flew a Bachem Ba 349 Natter rocket fighter on March 1st 1945. This was the first time a manned rocket was started. However during the flight, where he achieved more than Mach 1, he lost the control over his rocket by loosing the orientation. After 55 seconds the rocket was rammed into the earth.

11. Zheng He was a chinese Eunuch and Admiral leading a huge fleet around Africa.

12. Persia and Germany.

Adler

 

[Adler17]

Since the scorelist of post #88 is still actual, Adso is our winner and can make a new quiz. Congratulations.

Adler

 

[Adso de Fimnu]

Thank you, Adler.

A quiz shall be coming shortly.

 

[Adso de Fimnu]

Ten points. I've tried to make these relatively easy, as to encourage higher participation. Best of luck to all.

1. Which wife of Henry VIII was rumoured to have six fingers on her hand?

2. What nine-year-old boy beat General Winfield Scott in chess (twice)?

3. What was the second country in the Americas to gain its independence from Europe?

4. Which king collected tall soldiers?

5. Which king chose nuns to be his mistresses?

6. Which illiterate dock-worker founded a school of philosophy?

7. Name an author who was also a lepidopterist and synaesthete.

8. Name an island whose inhabitants reverted to being hunter-gatherers (and were subsequently massacred as a result).

9. What famous person can be linked to these three images? (Two points.)

As to avoid what happened last time, I will follow Roi de Cinq's wise precedent and give twenty-four hours warning. However, I may not be able to check this in a while - I'm leaving for New York on Friday and probably won't be able to do much on the internet for a week.

If I haven't done anything by Sunday the 24th, then something horrible happened to me in New York.

 

[Adso de Fimnu]

After nearly a week we have two submissions, Oryctolagus and Sydhe, with six and seven points, respectively. Here's a scoreboard:

Oryctolagus 6
Sydhe 7

Twenty-four hours from now, then, I'll be giving out the answers. There's still plenty of time for more players.

 

[Adso de Fimnu]

Well, the score has remained the same, making Sydhe our winner. Kudos to him.
Here are the answers:

1. Anne Boleyn
2. Paul Morphy
3. Haiti
4. Frederick William I of Prussia
5. João V of Portugal
6. Ammonius Saccas
7. Vladimir Nabokov
8. The Chatham Islands
9. Leon Trostky, who was once exiled to Almaty (now in Kazakhstan), famously had an affair with Frida, and whose name means "lion", of course.

 

[sydhe]

It'll take a while to get the post together. How do I post an image without it showing the url?

 

[Adso de Fimnu]

It'll take a while to get the post together. How do I post an image without it showing the url?

Here's the advice Luceafarul gave me:

Usually I use this page's upload system.
On the bottom of the page you can find a upload file function.
Just upload your images there from your hard disk and make shortcuts to your post from that server.
Around each you should put the brackets

after.

The code, when you're writing a post, should look something like this:

*** will be the filename of the picture you uploaded. Of course, it won't necessarily be a .jpg, either.
I hope that helps.

 

[sydhe]

Got it (I checked in the preview). It'll be a day or so before the quiz is complete.

 

[sydhe]

1) Between 1815 and 1914 there were three conflicts called “Pig Wars”, none of which actually involved a death, except for the pigs. They took place in 1841, 1859 and 1906. Name the countries involved in each. (1 point per country, six total)
2) What is “an artist of stealing in”? (1 points)

3) Recent history: what do the dates December 14, 1962, July 14, 1965, and March 29, 1975 have in common? (2 points)
4) Where would you find Erdil, Eflak, Bugdan, Bucak and Silistre? (2 points)
5) It’s rather obvious what is happening in this picture. One of the people is pretty well known. Who was he, what is best known for, and what city did this take place in.? (3 points)

 

[sydhe]

6) Who is the author of the following passage, and what place is he describing:
“Beasts and birds there are none, because they find nothing to eat. But I assure you, that one thing is found here, and that a very strange one, which I will relate to you.
“The truth is this: When a man is riding by night through this desert and something happens that to make him loiter and lose touch with his companions, by dropping asleep or for some other reason, and afterwards he wants to rejoin them, then he hears spirits talking in such a way that they seem to be his companions. Sometimes, indeed, they even hail him by name. Often these voices make him stray from the path, so that he never finds them again. And in this way, many travelers have been lost and have perished.” (2 points)
7) What war was allegedly started by a complaint about snoring hippopotamuses? (2 points)
8) This country had to wait twice within a twelve year period to see if its new ruler would be born. Which county was it, and what years did it happen? (2 points)
9) Which ruler is referred to as the second of his name, when the first ruled 15 centuries earlier over another county in the same area of the world? (1 points)
10) Here are four rather famous gentlemen. Who are they, what do they all have in common, and who was most recent person I could have included and kept the same theme? (1/2 pt. per photo, and 1 each for other questions.)

25 points total

 

[sydhe]

Answers will be posted on the evening of July 29.