98 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's Flyer was on loan to London's Science Museum from 1928 to 1948, because Orville was feuding with the Smithsonian, which had credited Langley.

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 said it was President Roosevelt, not Hitler, who snubbed him: he was never invited to the White House or even sent a telegram.

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

Sputnik 1's beeping from orbit shocked the United States into creating NASA, whose founding law Eisenhower signed the following July.

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

Spanish flu probably did not start in Spain, and in Spain itself it was known as the 'French flu'.

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: after Wallkill passed a law against it, Max Yasgur rented out his farm in Bethel just a month before.

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 kept quiet because record rules required a pilot to land inside.

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

Michael Collins later ran the National Air and Space Museum and got its new building on the Mall finished in time to open for the 1976 Bicentennial.

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.

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 was overthrown after nationalising Iran's British-run oil industry, and the CIA formally confirmed its role in the coup only in 2013.

Lord Mountbatten oversaw partition, but which British lawyer drew the India–Pakistan border in just five weeks?

Cyril Radcliffe had never visited India before drawing the line, and once the job was done he left the country and never returned.

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

Lake Placid's famous upset was not the final: the United States still had to beat Finland in its last game 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 was hit by a uranium gun-type bomb so trusted that its design was never fully tested, while the Trinity test had tried out the plutonium type.

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

Neville Chamberlain was echoing Disraeli's 1878 'peace with honour', yet less than a year later Germany invaded Poland and Britain declared war.

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 help, because Germany hoped his return would undermine Russia's war effort.

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

Resentment of the Treaty of Versailles helped power the Nazis' rise, and Germany made its last reparations-related debt payment only on 3 October 2010.

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, and both superpowers demanded that the invaders withdraw.

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's last individual medal was handed out only in 1974, after a historian found a scoring error that had cost American ski jumper Anders Haugen the bronze.

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

Three Mile Island's accident came the same month The China Syndrome opened, a meltdown thriller that the nuclear industry had dismissed as far-fetched.

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

The Intel 4004 began as a Busicom calculator chip, but when Busicom ran into financial trouble, Intel bought the rights and sold it for general computing.

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

John Logie Baird's mechanical television lost out in the end: in 1937 the BBC dropped his system in favour of Marconi-EMI's all-electronic one.

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

The Ford Model T's moving assembly line drew partly on the conveyors that carried carcasses through Chicago's meatpacking plants.

Which pancreatic hormone was first isolated at the University of Toronto in 1921–22?

Insulin won Frederick Banting a Nobel Prize shared with John Macleod, and on learning that, Banting gave half his prize money to his assistant Charles Best.

Whose polio vaccine was announced as safe on 12 April 1955 after a nationwide field trial on schoolchildren?

Jonas Salk, asked on television who owned the patent on his vaccine, replied: 'Could you patent the sun?'

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 first transistor, a point-contact device, was so ungainly that William Shockley's junction transistor soon replaced it and brought transistors into wide use.

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

Albert Einstein's Nobel Prize was for the photoelectric effect, not relativity, and its money went to his first wife under their divorce settlement.

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

The Jazz Singer is mostly a silent film: it contains only about two minutes of synchronized spoken dialogue, and the rest appears on intertitles.

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

Mickey Mouse was reportedly 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 did not fight from March 1967 to October 1970, and in 1971 the Supreme Court unanimously overturned his draft conviction.

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 is retired across Major League Baseball, yet every player wears it on April 15, Jackie Robinson Day.

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 festival did Bob Dylan famously go electric with a rock band in July 1965?

At the Newport Folk Festival, Pete Seeger fumed that he would cut the cable with an axe, but said he only wanted Dylan's words 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 US naval base did Japan bomb on a Sunday morning in December 1941, drawing America into war?

Pearl Harbor lost nearly half its American dead in one blast, when a shell set off the forward magazine of the battleship Arizona.

Which South African left prison in 1990 after 27 years and became president four years later?

Nelson Mandela spent 18 of those years on Robben Island, where inmates lectured one another in what they called the University of Robben Island.

Which Soviet nuclear plant exploded in April 1986, leaving the nearby city of Pripyat abandoned?

Chernobyl reactor 4 blew up in the night, yet Pripyat's residents were not alerted and the city was not evacuated at once; a new town, Slavutych, was later built to replace it.

Which pharaoh's tomb did Howard Carter uncover in the Valley of the Kings in November 1922?

Tutankhamun was buried with so many objects that Carter needed ten years to catalogue them all.

Which German airship burst into flames while docking at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in May 1937?

The Hindenburg's last moments survive in sound only because a radio reporter had chosen that landing to try out recording for delayed broadcast.

Which teenage diarist spent two years hiding from the Nazis behind a bookcase in Amsterdam?

Anne Frank died at Bergen-Belsen in early 1945, and her father Otto, moved by her wish to be an author, published the diary in 1947.

Which Chicago crime boss was finally jailed in 1931 for tax evasion, not bootlegging or murder?

Al Capone got 11 years and was moved to Alcatraz, where good behaviour earned him a spot playing banjo in the prison band.

Which human disease was declared eradicated worldwide in 1980 after a mass vaccination campaign?

Smallpox had its last natural case in October 1977, making it the first human disease ever wiped out.

Which New Zealand climber reached the summit of Everest with Tenzing Norgay on 29 May 1953?

Edmund Hillary and Tenzing's success was announced in London on the morning of Elizabeth II's coronation, and the press called it a coronation gift.

Which American aviator vanished over the Pacific in July 1937 while trying to fly around the world?

Amelia Earhart was bound for tiny Howland Island when she disappeared, five years after becoming the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo and nonstop.

Which programme of relief, recovery and reform did President Roosevelt launch in 1933?

The New Deal began with the banks: Roosevelt signed an Emergency Banking Act within days of taking office, and a second 1933 law created the FDIC to insure deposits.

Which nickname was given to the drought-hit Great Plains of the 1930s, which thousands of farm families abandoned?

The Dust Bowl was named by an Associated Press editor as he rewrote a reporter's story about the 'Black Sunday' storms of April 1935.

Which phrase for Europe's East–West divide did Winston Churchill make famous at Fulton, Missouri?

The Iron Curtain image was not new at Fulton: Churchill had first used it ten months earlier, in a May 1945 telegram to President Truman.

Which communist leader proclaimed the People's Republic of China from atop a gate in October 1949?

Mao Zedong made the announcement at exactly 3 pm, and 1 October became the new country's first National Day.

Which capital fell to North Vietnamese forces in April 1975 and was later renamed after Ho Chi Minh?

Saigon's final hours saw 7,000 people lifted out by air in Operation Frequent Wind, the largest helicopter evacuation in history.

Which last tsar of Russia abdicated in 1917 and was later shot with his family in Yekaterinburg?

Nicholas II gave up the throne in the February Revolution, ending 304 years of Romanov rule, and the family was shot sixteen months later.

Which Norwegian explorer reached the South Pole in 1911, five weeks ahead of Robert Falcon Scott?

Roald Amundsen's party travelled fast on skis with sled dogs, and heard only about a year later that Scott and his four companions had died on the way back.

Which American pilot flew alone and nonstop from New York to Paris in 1927, taking over 33 hours?

Charles Lindbergh was chasing the $25,000 Orteig Prize, put up by a New York hotelier for the first flight between the two cities.

Which Central American country is crossed by a waterway opened in 1914 to link two oceans?

Panama's crossing was formally opened by the cargo ship SS Ancon, though an American commission had earlier favoured a route through Nicaragua.

Which international body, created in 1945, first met in a London Methodist hall with 51 countries?

The United Nations held that first session in Methodist Central Hall, taking over from a League that America had never joined.

Which country's invasion by Germany on 1 September 1939 led Britain and France to declare war?

Poland was soon attacked from the east as well: the Soviet Union invaded sixteen days after Germany did.

Which island was at the centre of a 13-day nuclear standoff between Kennedy and Khrushchev in 1962?

Cuba's crisis ended with a secret trade: America quietly agreed to dismantle the missiles it had placed in Turkey.

In which Texas city was President Kennedy shot while riding in a motorcade in November 1963?

Dallas also saw the next president sworn in: Lyndon Johnson took the oath aboard Air Force One at Love Field two hours and eight minutes later.

Which US president resigned over the Watergate scandal in August 1974, the first ever to quit?

Richard Nixon stepped down facing almost certain impeachment and removal, and a month later his successor pardoned him.

Which independence leader walked 240 miles to the sea in 1930 to make salt, defying British law?

Mahatma Gandhi's Salt March ended at Dandi, where he made salt by evaporation, and the British answered by arresting over sixty thousand people.

Which code name did Robert Oppenheimer give the first nuclear test, held in the desert in July 1945?

Trinity tested an implosion-type bomb, the first nuclear device ever detonated, at White Sands Proving Ground three weeks before one was used in war.

Which general won a three-year civil war in 1939 and then ruled from Madrid until his death in 1975?

Francisco Franco named Prince Juan Carlos as his heir in 1969, and after Franco's death the new king led Spain's transition to democracy.

In which capital did a lone man block a column of tanks after troops crushed protests in June 1989?

Beijing's 'Tank Man' stepped out on 5 June, once the army had cleared the main square, and neither his name nor his fate has ever been confirmed.

Which oil-rich neighbour did Saddam Hussein's Iraq invade in August 1990, setting off the Gulf War?

Kuwait was overrun within two days, and most of its officials fled into exile in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

Which South Atlantic territory did Argentina invade in April 1982, starting a ten-week war?

The Falklands were back in British hands after 74 days, when the Argentine garrison surrendered on 14 June.

Which British monarch gave up the throne in 1936 to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson?

Edward VIII explained himself in a BBC radio address from Windsor Castle, where he was introduced no longer as king but as Prince Edward.

Which Cunard liner was torpedoed by a German U-boat off Ireland in May 1915 and sank in 18 minutes?

The Lusitania was hit by a single torpedo, but a second explosion inside the ship followed, and nearly 1,200 of those aboard were lost.

Which subject was Tennessee teacher John Scopes put on trial for teaching to his class in 1925?

Evolution may never have come up in his lessons: Scopes was unsure he had taught it, but incriminated himself on purpose so the test case would have a defendant.

Which California city was over 80% destroyed by an earthquake and days of fires in April 1906?

San Francisco suffered less from the shaking than from what followed: fires fed by ruptured gas mains caused most of the destruction.

Which author introduced Big Brother and the Thought Police in a novel published in June 1949?

George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four on the Scottish island of Jura, finishing the second draft in November 1948, and it was his ninth and final completed book.

Which Picasso painting responds to the 1937 bombing of a Basque town by German and Italian aircraft?

Guernica is painted only in grey, black and white, and it stayed at New York's Museum of Modern Art until it was ceded to Spain in 1981.

Which supersonic airliner, built jointly by two countries, began scheduled flights in January 1976?

Concorde cruised at twice the speed of sound, a limit chosen so the airframe could be aluminium, which air friction would soften at higher speeds.

Which West German city's 1972 Olympics were scarred by a Black September attack on the Israeli team?

Munich's hostage crisis ended when a police ambush killed five of the eight attackers but failed to save any of the hostages.

Which 14-year-old gymnast was awarded the first perfect 10 in Olympic history at Montreal in 1976?

Nadia Comăneci's score appeared as 1.00, because the scoreboard's makers had been told a 10 was impossible and never programmed it to show one.

Which 1954 Supreme Court ruling found that racially segregated public schools were unconstitutional?

Brown v. Board of Education was decided unanimously, 9–0, rejecting for schools the 'separate but equal' doctrine the court had endorsed in 1896.

Which territory under Russian rule gave women the right both to vote and to stand for parliament in 1906?

Finland went further a year later, when its voters elected 19 women as the first female members of a representative parliament.

Which former textile worker and amateur skydiver became the first woman in space in June 1963?

Valentina Tereshkova orbited the Earth 48 times in almost three days, despite nausea and discomfort for much of the flight.

Which US aid programme, proposed at Harvard in 1947, sent over $13 billion to rebuild Western Europe?

The Marshall Plan took its name from Secretary of State George Marshall, a retired general, and its aid reached 17 European countries.

Which Dutch city gave its name to the 1992 treaty that founded the European Union?

Maastricht saw twelve member states sign a treaty that also promised a shared European citizenship and the eventual introduction of a single currency.

Which country, formerly the Gold Coast, won independence under Kwame Nkrumah in March 1957?

Ghana was born at midnight on 6 March 1957, uniting four British territories: the Gold Coast, Ashanti, the Northern Territories and British Togoland.

Which capital gave its name to the 1968 'Spring' of reforms ended by a Warsaw Pact invasion in August?

Prague's reformer Alexander Dubček was arrested on the night of the invasion and taken to Moscow, and a hardline period called normalization undid his changes.

Which 1916 battle named after a French river cost the British Army 57,470 casualties on day one?

The Somme opened with the worst day in the British Army's history, 19,240 of those casualties being deaths, and that September it saw the first use of the tank.

Which exiled cleric flew home from Paris in February 1979 to lead Iran's Islamic Revolution?

Ruhollah Khomeini had spent more than 14 years in exile, mostly in the Iraqi city of Najaf, and a crowd reported at up to five million welcomed him back.

Which Russian president climbed onto a tank in Moscow to rally crowds against the August 1991 coup?

Boris Yeltsin addressed the crowd from the tank after the plotters failed to detain him, and he came out of the coup's collapse as the dominant leader.

Which surgeon performed the first human-to-human heart transplant, at a Cape Town hospital in 1967?

Christiaan Barnard's patient, Cape Town grocer Louis Washkansky, woke and talked easily with his wife but died of pneumonia 18 days later.