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History General Knowledge #6

Can you answer these random history questions?
Quiz by Quizmaster
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Last updated: April 30, 2023
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First submittedJanuary 9, 2015
Times taken62,153
Average score65.0%
Rating4.33
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Question
Answer
Who is said to have committed suicide by letting an asp bite her?
Cleopatra
Who was the wife of Louis XVI of France?
Marie Antoinette
What modern-day country is the origin of Chaturanga, the ancestor of the
board game chess?
India
Muhammad was born in Mecca. Where did he die?
Medina
On what famous statue is it written
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses"?
The Statue of Liberty
What city marked the easternmost point of Napoleon's conquests?
Moscow
What caused the population of Johannesburg, Melbourne, and San Francisco
to explode at different times in the 19th century?
Gold rushes
On what ship did English sailors mutiny against Captain Bligh?
HMS Bounty
What "stick-thin" model became a symbol of Swingin' Sixties London?
Twiggy
What ancient Mediterranean language was the first to develop a sound-based alphabet?
Phoenician
What Russian princess, murdered in 1918, did many imposters claim to be?
Anastasia
What name is given to the Japanese suicide pilots of WWII?
Kamikaze
In what city did Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier have a "thrilling" fight?
Manila
Whose advisors included Sir Thomas More, Cardinal Wolsey, and Thomas Cromwell?
King Henry VIII
What term was given to a person who was forced to row the oars of a ship?
Galley slave
What notable person was born near the Nepal/India border around 500 B.C.?
Buddha
What was the last name of power couple Eva and Juan?
Perón
What became the 50th U.S. state in 1959?
Hawaii
What type of money was first used in the 11th century in China?
Paper money
What drug did Sigmund Freud recommend as a pain reliever, stimulant,
and nasal decongestant?
Cocaine
+9
Level 82
Jun 11, 2015
oh... Moscow... duh.... somehow I misread that clue as Alexander, not Napoleon, and spent two minutes guessing cities in India and Pakistan.
+3
Level 78
Jun 11, 2015
I tried about twenty different spellings for Marie Antoinette... :(
+2
Level 24
Nov 8, 2017
Didn't work for mary antoinette.
+13
Level 73
Dec 16, 2017
Because her name was Marie, not Mary.
+12
Level 68
Feb 26, 2021
I still don't think you should just accept "Marie". Her name was Marie-Antoinette. I'd much rather see the quiz accept a misspelling such as Mary-Antwanet than accept half her name.
+8
Level 64
Sep 6, 2021
Agree absolutely! It's Marie-Antoinette, and double and hyphenated names in French need to be in full. Ever heard of Jean-Claude Van Damme being referred to as Jean Damme? Or Jean-Marie Le Pen as Jean Pen?

No, me neither.

+2
Level 23
Jun 15, 2015
Can you accept Madeenah for Medina.
+2
Level 82
Dec 15, 2017
Or even Yathrib... the name of the city. Medina/Madinah is just short for "Madinah an Nabi": city of the prophet.
+3
Level 58
Jan 16, 2017
If only I knew east from west. D'oh!
+5
Level 83
Oct 21, 2017
Too monarch-centric...
+10
Level 63
Dec 15, 2017
No, no, no. We need more kings.
+13
Level ∞
Nov 1, 2020
A benevolent dictatorship/monarchy is probably the best form of government. Too bad that the non-benevolent version is so much more common.
+2
Level 49
Jan 29, 2021
Like the Gulf countries? Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar
+7
Level 74
Apr 4, 2023
This is pure fantasy if you bother to factor in human frailty at all. Everybody has weaknesses and idiosyncrasies and when those get turned into national policy, regardless of benevolence, weird stuff happens. It's not a good plan, even if it has, a few times in all of human history, turned out okay.
+3
Level 68
Aug 11, 2023
I fail to see any reason why a "benevolent" dictatorship/monarchy would be any better - but several reasons why it would be considerably worse. First of all, that idea seems to stem from the myth that there is a "right thing to do", an ideal policy, and that a government's role is to just discover and implement it - which ignores that there are competing interests in a society, and that the main role of a government is precisely to arbiter between them. Second, there is no reason to believe that a dictator/monarch would be any "freer" from special interests - even hereditary absolute monarchs relie on a power structure that upholds their claim. Kings have courts, dictators advisors and ministers, and both more often than not relie on the cooperation of religious leaders, economic interests, and whole clientele of other special interests (the nobility, the military, their party...).

Democracies are just more acceptable because you can fire your leaders without violence.

+2
Level 78
Feb 26, 2021
I would argue that Qaboos bin Said, the former Sultan of Oman would count as an enlightened despot. His response to the Arab Spring was not the best, but overall, he was pretty good for Oman. Emir Sabah al-Ahmad of Kuwait was also pretty good for his country. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar I would argue are the non-benevolent types with the UAE being a special case since there are seven emirates and each ruling house is different.
+2
Level 61
Feb 26, 2021
Emma Lazarus's extraordinary poem — which includes the words "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses" — is not actually written or engraved on the Statue of Liberty. Indeed, it wasn't even there when it was first unveiled. A few years later, a plaque with her poem inscribed was placed inside the statue's pedestal.
+2
Level 65
Feb 26, 2021
Gaah! I couldn't get the Napoleon one because I was thinking of Alexander!
+3
Level 65
Feb 26, 2021
The Proto-Sinaitic script is ancestral to the Phoenician script and is just as sound-based. However, since you're asking for the language rather than the script, "Phoenician" is still sort of correct because the Phoenicians would have adopted the Proto-Sinaitic script before developing it into their own script. Even so, this was not the first "sound-based alphabet." Proto-Sinaitic was in turn derived from Egyptian heiroglyphs, a partially sound-based system which included symbols for words, for grammatical features, and for sounds. Mesopotamian cuneiform had a similar structure, also predating the Proto-Sinaitic script. The distinction of the Proto-Sinatic script is that it was the first writing system in which *all* the symbols represented sounds. So you could describe it as the first "fully sound-based alphabet." Personally I prefer "fully sound-based writing system" because the term "alphabet" has multiple conflicting definitions.
+1
Level 14
Feb 27, 2021
After doing this quiz I felt very stupid😖
+1
Level 49
Feb 14, 2024
I felt very clever.

Both of us were probably wrong.

+10
Level 75
Apr 30, 2023
just me who was imagining the inhabitants of johannesburg and melbourne literally all exploding simultaneously?
+1
Level 45
Aug 11, 2023
i think fiat should also be accpeted as an answer to the money question
+1
Level 62
Feb 1, 2024
allow punic for phoenician