50 Fun Facts About 20th Century

Which White Star liner sank on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York in April 1912?

Titanic carried lifeboats for only about half the people aboard, and that was fully legal under the safety rules of the day.

Which Dayton bicycle-shop brothers made the first powered, controlled airplane flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903?

Orville and Wilbur Wright made a first flight of just 12 seconds and 120 feet, shorter than the wingspan of a Boeing 747.

Whose assassination in Sarajevo in June 1914 set off the crisis that became the First World War?

Archduke Franz Ferdinand's driver was never told of a route change, turned at the Latin Bridge and stopped right in front of Gavrilo Princip.

Which drug did Alexander Fleming discover in 1928 when a mould killed the bacteria on a culture plate by chance?

Penicillin was not mass-produced until the Second World War, after Florey and Heatley carried the mould to the United States in 1941.

Which barrier, built in 1961 to stop East Germans fleeing west, was opened on the night of 9 November 1989?

The Berlin Wall opened after spokesman Günter Schabowski, reading a note he had not been briefed on, told reporters the new travel rules took effect 'immediately'.

Which American sprinter won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics staged by Nazi Germany?

Jesse Owens's four golds in the same four events went unmatched until Carl Lewis repeated the feat at the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

Which metal sphere launched by the USSR in October 1957 became the first artificial satellite to orbit Earth?

Sputnik 1 beeped for about three weeks until its batteries died, then burned up re-entering the atmosphere in January 1958.

Which 1918 pandemic got its name because a neutral country's uncensored newspapers reported it freely?

Spanish flu did not start in Spain; wartime censors elsewhere buried the outbreak while Spain's press covered it, making the country look like the epicentre.

Which 1969 music festival was held on Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York?

Woodstock never took place in the town of Woodstock; Yasgur's farm in Bethel lay 60 miles to the southwest.

Which host nation beat West Germany 4–2 after extra time in the 1966 World Cup final?

England lifted a trophy that had been stolen four months earlier and found wrapped in newspaper by a dog named Pickles.

Which cosmonaut made the first human spaceflight, a single orbit of Earth aboard Vostok 1 in April 1961?

Yuri Gagarin ejected and parachuted down separately from his capsule, which the USSR denied until 1971 because record rules required landing inside the craft.

Which Apollo 11 astronaut stayed in lunar orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the Moon in July 1969?

Michael Collins spent 48 minutes of every orbit out of radio contact behind the Moon, yet reported feeling 'almost exultation' rather than loneliness.

Which Moscow stray became the first animal to orbit Earth in November 1957, with no plan to bring her home?

Laika died of overheating within hours, on the fourth orbit, a fact the Soviet authorities did not make public until 2002.

Which space shuttle broke apart 73 seconds after lift-off in January 1986 with teacher Christa McAuliffe aboard?

Challenger was lost because record-low cold had stiffened the rubber O-rings in a booster joint, letting hot gas burn through to the fuel tank.

Who delivered the 'I Have a Dream' speech at the March on Washington in August 1963?

Martin Luther King Jr. left his script for the 'dream' passage after Mahalia Jackson shouted 'Tell 'em about the dream, Martin!' from behind him.

Which Alabama city's buses were boycotted for over a year after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in 1955?

The Montgomery boycott ran from December 1955 to December 1956, with Black residents organising carpools and taxi drivers charging the ten-cent bus fare.

Which city hosted the 1986 Reagan–Gorbachev summit that collapsed at the last minute over missile-defence tests?

Reykjavik came unexpectedly close to a deal eliminating all nuclear weapons within a decade, and the progress made there led to the 1987 INF Treaty.

Which Iranian prime minister was overthrown in an August 1953 coup organised by MI6 and the CIA?

Mohammad Mosaddegh's overthrow was not officially admitted by the CIA until documents released in 2013, six decades after the coup.

Which British lawyer drew the 1947 partition line between India and Pakistan in just five weeks?

Cyril Radcliffe had never been east of Paris before he was handed the job, and knew no one in India when he arrived on 8 July 1947.

At which Winter Olympics venue did the United States beat the Soviet Union 4–3 in the 1980 'Miracle on Ice'?

Lake Placid's upset was not the final: the United States still had to beat Finland 4–2 two days later to secure the gold medal.

Which Japanese city was hit by 'Little Boy', the first atomic bomb used in war, on 6 August 1945?

Hiroshima's bomb was a uranium gun-type weapon, while 'Fat Man', dropped on Nagasaki three days later, used plutonium instead.

Which British prime minister flew home from meeting Hitler in September 1938 and promised 'peace for our time'?

Neville Chamberlain refused a suggestion to say 'peace for our time' from a Downing Street window, then said it anyway, echoing Disraeli.

Which Bolshevik leader returned from Swiss exile in April 1917 and seized power in Petrograd that October?

Vladimir Lenin crossed wartime Germany by train with the German government's consent; the famous 'sealed train' was a cover story, and passengers even spent a night in Frankfurt.

Which 1919 treaty made Germany accept responsibility for the First World War and pay reparations?

Germany's debt under the Treaty of Versailles was not settled until 3 October 2010, when a final instalment of $94 million was paid.

Which waterway did Egypt's Nasser nationalise in July 1956, prompting an invasion by Britain, France and Israel?

The Suez Canal invasion collapsed when the United States put financial pressure on Britain, whose reserves had lost $45 million in four days.

Which June 1942 battle cost Japan four aircraft carriers after US codebreakers learned its target in advance?

Midway's codebreakers confirmed the target by having the base radio a fake report of a broken water purifier, then reading that 'AF' was short on water.

Which French resort's 1924 'International Winter Sports Week' was later declared the first Winter Olympics?

Chamonix was only recognised as the first Winter Olympics in 1925, and its final individual medal was not presented until 1974.

Which Pennsylvania nuclear plant's Unit 2 reactor suffered a partial meltdown on 28 March 1979?

Three Mile Island's accident came just twelve days after The China Syndrome, a film about a reactor meltdown, opened in cinemas.

Which 1971 chip, designed for a Busicom calculator, became the first commercial microprocessor for general use?

The Intel 4004 was born when Busicom asked for seven chips for a calculator in 1969, and the finished 4-bit processor packed just 2,300 transistors.

Which Scottish inventor first publicly demonstrated true television images in his London laboratory in January 1926?

John Logie Baird's first televised face belonged to a ventriloquist's dummy nicknamed 'Stooky Bill', scanned at five pictures per second.

Which car, the first mass-produced on moving assembly lines, had sold more than 15 million by 1927?

The Ford Model T came only in black from 1914 to 1925, and by 1925 the factories were turning out 9,000 to 10,000 cars a day.

Which hormone, first isolated in Toronto in 1921, turned diabetes from a death sentence into a treatable condition?

The insulin patent was sold to the University of Toronto for one dollar, and Frederick Banting became the youngest ever medicine Nobel laureate at 32.

Whose polio vaccine was announced as safe on 12 April 1955 after a trial on about a million children?

Jonas Salk, asked on television who owned the patent, replied 'Could you patent the sun?'; the unpatented vaccine has been valued at $7 billion.

Whose X-ray image of DNA, known as Photo 51, was shown to James Watson without her permission in 1953?

Rosalind Franklin died of ovarian cancer at 37 in 1958, four years before the double-helix Nobel Prize went to Crick, Watson and Wilkins.

At which physics laboratory near Geneva did Tim Berners-Lee propose the World Wide Web in March 1989?

CERN released the web software into the public domain in April 1993, so anyone could build on it without paying a licence fee.

Which device, first built at Bell Labs in 1947, replaced bulky vacuum tubes and made modern electronics possible?

The transistor earned John Bardeen a share of the 1956 Nobel Prize, and he remains the only person to have won the physics prize twice.

Who published four landmark physics papers in 1905, including special relativity, while a Swiss patent examiner?

Albert Einstein's Nobel Prize was awarded for the photoelectric effect, not relativity, which some physicists still doubted in 1921.

Which 1927 Al Jolson film was the first feature-length movie with synchronized spoken dialogue?

The Jazz Singer contains barely two minutes of synchronized talking, much of it improvised; the rest of the dialogue sits on silent-era intertitles.

Which Disney character starred in Steamboat Willie, the 1928 short that impressed audiences with synchronised sound?

Mickey Mouse was going to be called 'Mortimer Mouse' until Walt Disney's wife, Lillian, talked him into changing the name.

Which 1975 Spielberg film, shot at sea with malfunctioning mechanical sharks, is the prototypical summer blockbuster?

Jaws's three prop sharks were nicknamed 'Bruce' after Spielberg's lawyer, Bruce Ramer, and broke down so often that the shark is barely shown.

Which rock and roll star was drafted into the US Army in 1958 and served in West Germany, living in Bad Nauheim?

Elvis Presley, then 24, met 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu while in Bad Nauheim; they married after a courtship of seven and a half years.

Which heavyweight champion was stripped of his title in 1967 for refusing induction into the US Army?

Muhammad Ali's 1974 'Rumble in the Jungle' in Zaire started at 4 am local time so that it could air at 10 pm on the US East Coast.

Who broke Major League Baseball's colour line when he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers in April 1947?

Jackie Robinson's number 42 was retired across every Major League team in 1997, the first such honour in any major US sport.

Which British runner broke the four-minute mile at Oxford's Iffley Road track on 6 May 1954?

Roger Bannister's record lasted just 46 days before his rival John Landy ran 3:57.9 in Turku, Finland.

Where did Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise black-gloved fists on the medal podium at the 1968 Olympics?

Mexico City's salute used a single pair of gloves: Carlos had forgotten his, so Australian Peter Norman suggested he wear Smith's left one.

At which Rhode Island event did Bob Dylan play his first electric set with a band in July 1965?

Newport Folk Festival legend says Pete Seeger wanted an axe to cut Dylan's cable; Seeger said he only wanted the lyrics to be heard over the distortion.

Which faint signal did Penzias and Wilson detect in 1964 with a horn antenna in Holmdel, New Jersey?

The cosmic microwave background was nearly dismissed as noise: Penzias and Wilson evicted nesting pigeons and scrubbed out their droppings, yet the hiss remained.

Which US military-funded computer network sent its first message from UCLA to Stanford Research Institute in 1969?

ARPANET's first message was meant to be 'login', but the receiving computer crashed after two characters, so the first word ever sent was 'lo'.

Which Scottish research centre created Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, in 1996?

Roslin Institute scientists named Dolly after Dolly Parton, because the donor cell had been taken from a mammary gland.

Which Australian cricketer retired in 1948 with a Test batting average of 99.94, four runs short of 100?

Don Bradman needed only four runs in his final innings to finish with an average of 100, but was bowled for a duck by Eric Hollies's googly.