100 Fun Facts About Social Studies

Splitting government into legislative, executive and judicial branches is called what?

Separation of powers: the French thinker Montesquieu argued in 1748 that liberty is safest when no single body makes, enforces and judges the law, and America's founders built the idea into their Constitution.

The US Constitution has been in effect since which year?

1789: the Constitution took effect on 4 March 1789, after being drafted in 1787 and ratified by the ninth state in June 1788; the Bill of Rights followed in 1791.

Which amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery?

The 13th Amendment, ratified on 6 December 1865, abolished slavery throughout the United States, while its text permits involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime.

Which US body has nine members?

The Supreme Court was given six justices in 1789, and its size changed six times before a law of 1869 settled on nine; a 1937 plan to add up to six more seats failed.

Besides being at least 35 and a 14-year resident, what must a US president be under the Constitution?

A natural-born citizen: the clause exempted anyone already a citizen when the Constitution was adopted, which the earliest presidents needed, since all those before Martin Van Buren were born before independence.

Which part of the US government has 100 members, two from each state?

The Senate gives every state two seats whatever its population, the 1787 compromise that won over small states afraid of being outvoted; until 1913, state legislatures chose the senators.

Which of these rights does the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protect?

Freedom of the press shares the First Amendment with speech, religion, assembly and petition; the amendment was third on the list of twelve sent to the states in 1789 and moved up only because the first two failed to pass at the time.

Who has the power to declare war according to the U.S. Constitution?

Congress has formally declared war only eleven times, the last during the Second World War, so the conflicts in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq were all fought without a declaration.

Which US elections put every House seat on the ballot in years with no presidential race?

Midterm elections exist because House members serve only two-year terms; between 1934 and 2022 the president's party lost House seats in all but three of them.

What is the constitutional process by which the House brings charges against a president called?

Impeachment is only the charge, passed by a simple House majority; removal takes a two-thirds vote at the trial that follows, which Andrew Johnson survived by a single vote in 1868.

If buyers want more of a product at every price and supply stays fixed, what happens to price?

It rises: when more buyers want the same limited stock, they bid against each other and sellers can charge more, until the higher price puts off enough of them to clear the market.

What does GDP stand for?

Gross Domestic Product leaves out unpaid work, so a loaf a baker sells adds to it, while the same loaf baked for his own family adds nothing.

What is inflation?

A general increase in prices over time: each unit of currency buys less, and the word, borrowed from inflating with air, first described prices swollen by too much money in circulation.

Which economic system is characterized by private ownership and free markets?

Capitalism was named by its enemies: in its modern sense the word comes from socialist writers of the mid-1800s such as Louis Blanc, who used it as a term of abuse.

What is the role of the Federal Reserve in the United States?

Acting as the central bank: the Federal Reserve was created in 1913 after the Panic of 1907, when the financier J.P. Morgan had to pledge his own money and rally other bankers to stop the runs.

What is a tariff?

A tax on imported goods, paid by the importer rather than the foreign seller; the rarer export tax is levied on goods leaving the country instead.

What is the term for a prolonged period of economic decline?

Recession: in the US a committee of economists makes the call rather than the popular rule of two shrinking quarters, a test the 2001 recession would have failed.

What is opportunity cost?

The value of the best alternative forgone: the cost of a year at college is not just tuition but the wages given up by not working, which is why economists say there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Which Geneva-based body replaced GATT in 1995?

World Trade Organization: GATT was drawn up in 1947 as a stopgap and ended up governing much of world commerce for 47 years.

In economics, which three basic questions must every society answer?

What, how, and for whom to produce: scarcity forces the choice, since no society can make everything its people want; market economies leave the answers to buyers and sellers, command economies to the state.

Which continent has the most countries?

Africa has 54 recognised states; nearly all were European colonies after the Scramble for Africa, which took European control from about a tenth of the continent in the 1870s to nine-tenths by 1914.

Which river is usually listed as the longest in the world?

Nile: it has long been ranked first, but the title is disputed, because some measurements make the Amazon, which carries far more water, the longer of the two.

The varna hierarchy of Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras belongs to which country's traditional social system?

India's ancient texts rank Brahmins as priests, Kshatriyas as rulers and warriors, Vaishyas as farmers and merchants and Shudras as labourers; the 1950 constitution outlawed untouchability, the shunning of those placed below all four.

What is the most widely spoken language in the world by total number of speakers?

English: Ethnologue counts about 1.5 billion speakers, but fewer than 400 million of them are native, which ranks it only third on that measure, behind Mandarin and Spanish; second-language users carry it past every rival.

Which of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is the only one still standing?

The Great Pyramid of Giza is by far the oldest of the seven, built as the pharaoh Khufu's tomb some 4,500 years ago, yet it is the only one that survives largely intact.

Which is the largest desert on Earth, counting cold as well as hot ones?

Antarctica counts as a desert because so little snow falls there, the equivalent of only a few centimetres of water a year in the interior; the Sahara is merely the largest hot desert.

Which religion has the most followers worldwide?

Christianity had about 2.3 billion followers in Pew's 2020 count against Islam's 2 billion, but Islam is growing faster, and Pew has projected the two will be nearly level by 2050.

Lines of latitude, which circle the globe east to west and measure distance from the equator, are also known as what?

Parallels is the name because every line of latitude runs parallel to the equator, measuring degrees north or south from 0 at the equator to 90 at the poles.

Which imaginary line divides the Earth into the Eastern and Western Hemispheres for maps and navigation?

The Prime Meridian was fixed at Greenwich by an international conference in 1884, yet satellite navigation now puts zero longitude about 102 metres east of the line tourists straddle at the observatory.

Machu Picchu, the famous 15th-century citadel, was built by which civilization?

The Inca built it, it is believed, as an estate for the emperor Pachacuti, then abandoned it about a century later; it stayed little known to the outside world until Hiram Bingham was led there in 1911.

What event is widely called the spark of World War I?

The killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 came after his driver took a wrong turn and the car stopped right in front of Gavrilo Princip, one of the plotters.

Which Cold War term did Winston Churchill popularise in a 1946 speech in Fulton, Missouri?

Iron Curtain: Churchill said one had descended across Europe 'from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic', speaking in a college gymnasium with President Truman looking on.

What did the 1954 ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education do?

It outlawed segregated public schools: the unanimous ruling overturned the 'separate but equal' doctrine of 1896, but a follow-up order in 1955 asked only for 'all deliberate speed', and many districts stalled for years.

Which part of the U.S. Constitution opens with the words "We the People"?

The Preamble, a brief statement of purposes and guiding principles, opens the Constitution with 'We the People'; courts have held that it grants no powers of its own.

What was the chief purpose of the United Nations when it was founded in 1945?

Maintaining international peace and security is the first purpose named in the UN Charter, drafted by 50 countries in San Francisco in the closing months of the Second World War in the hope of preventing a third.

What was the Industrial Revolution?

A shift from hand production to machines: it began in Britain's textile trade around 1760, where inventions such as the spinning jenny let one worker do the work of several and drew spinners out of cottages into mills.

Magna Carta, sealed at Runnymede in 1215 under pressure from rebel barons, limited the power of which kingdom's monarch?

England's King John sealed it at Runnymede; Pope Innocent III annulled it within months, sparking the First Barons' War, and four exemplars of the 1215 charter survive, two of them in the British Library.

What form of government gives one hereditary ruler power with no legal limits?

Absolute monarchy: France's Louis XIV, the textbook example, reigned for 72 years without once summoning the Estates General, which did not meet at all between 1614 and 1789.

What is the electoral college?

The electors who formally choose the president are awarded state by state, so a candidate can win the White House while losing the nationwide popular vote, as happened in 2000 and 2016.

In which Alabama city did Rosa Parks's arrest in 1955 set off a year-long bus boycott?

Montgomery: the boycott ended only when the city's buses were integrated in December 1956, and it turned its leader, a 26-year-old local pastor named Martin Luther King Jr., into a national figure.

In which system do citizens deliberate and vote on legislation themselves?

Direct democracy: in ancient Athens the citizens themselves gathered in an open-air assembly, where any member could speak and most questions were settled by a show of hands.

What is ethnocentrism?

Judging other cultures by one's own norms is ethnocentrism; the word is often credited to the American sociologist William Graham Sumner in 1906, but Ludwig Gumplowicz was using it years earlier.

What do 'checks and balances' let each branch of the US government do?

Limit the powers of the other branches: the thinking, set out in Federalist No. 51, was that 'ambition must be made to counteract ambition', so each branch was given tools such as the veto to resist the others.

Which 1919 treaty imposed peace terms on Germany after World War I?

Versailles: the treaty was signed in the palace's Hall of Mirrors, the very room where the German Empire had been proclaimed in 1871 after France's defeat by Prussia.

Who chaired the UN committee that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948?

Eleanor Roosevelt, the former First Lady, steered the drafting committee, and in the end the declaration passed without a single vote against, though eight countries abstained.

A historian's book analysing soldiers' diaries and letters from a war is what kind of source?

Secondary: such a book interprets the originals, though the label depends on use, and a history textbook from 1900 becomes primary evidence for anyone studying how schools of that time taught the past.

What is gerrymandering?

Drawing district lines for partisan gain: the word first appeared in the Boston Gazette in March 1812, mocking a Massachusetts state senate district shaped like a salamander under Governor Elbridge Gerry.

What was the postwar Marshall Plan primarily designed to do?

Fund the economic recovery of Western Europe: the aid, some $13 billion over four years, was also offered to the Soviet Union and its allies, but Moscow refused it and made them turn it down.

What do anthropologists call the spread of ideas and technologies between societies?

Diffusion: papermaking is a classic case, invented in China, taken up across the Islamic world from the 8th century and passed on from there to medieval Europe.

What is the constitutional purpose of the US census taken every ten years?

To reapportion seats in the House: after the 2020 count, Texas gained two seats while California, New York and five other states each lost one.

In 1773, protesters disguised as Mohawk warriors dumped about 340 chests of what into Boston Harbor?

Tea was the target because the Tea Act of 1773 let one favoured British company sell it in the colonies, and the protesters objected to being taxed without representation.

Which ocean did Ferdinand Magellan name in 1520 for the calm waters he found after rounding South America?

Pacific comes from his word for peaceful, an odd fit for an ocean that covers about 32% of the planet's surface, more than all of Earth's land combined.

Which seafaring people settled briefly in Newfoundland around the year 1000, long before Columbus sailed?

Vikings were the first Europeans to reach North America, and the remains of eight of their sod buildings survive at L'Anse aux Meadows.

Whose 1955 arrest for refusing to give up a bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, sparked a year-long boycott?

Rosa Parks was not the first to refuse: 15-year-old Claudette Colvin had been arrested for the same act in March 1955, months before the boycott began.

Which ship carried 102 passengers, known today as the Pilgrims, across the Atlantic to Cape Cod in 1620?

Mayflower crossed alone after its partner ship, Speedwell, proved unseaworthy and was left behind, and the voyage took ten weeks.

Which Jewish teenager kept a diary while hiding from the Nazis in a secret annex in Amsterdam?

Anne Frank's diary was rescued by two of her father's secretaries after the arrest, and Otto Frank, the family's only survivor, published it in 1947.

Which sea did the ancient Romans call Mare Nostrum, or Our Sea, once they ruled its whole coastline?

The Mediterranean Sea has had its shores held by a single power only once: Rome remains the only state in history to have controlled the entire coast.

From which country did the United States buy the Louisiana Territory in 1803, nearly doubling the nation's size?

France sold all 828,000 square miles for $15 million, under three cents an acre, after a failed campaign in the Caribbean left Napoleon ready to sell.

Which Cold War barrier, begun in August 1961, stood for 28 years to stop East Germans fleeing west?

The Berlin Wall went up after millions of East Germans had already left, many by crossing into the city's western half.

Which woman escaped slavery in Maryland, then returned about 13 times to lead some 70 others to freedom?

Harriet Tubman, known as Moses, travelled by night along the Underground Railroad and later said she never lost a passenger.

Which Virginian drafted the Declaration of Independence largely alone in 1776 and later became the third president?

Thomas Jefferson was chosen by the Committee of Five to write the first draft, though he and John Adams later gave conflicting accounts of how the choice was made.

Which president issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, in the middle of the Civil War?

Abraham Lincoln framed it as a necessary war measure, so it applied only to areas still in rebellion and left out the loyal border states.

Mount Everest, Earth's highest mountain, marks part of the China–Nepal border in which mountain range?

The Himalayas take their name from the Sanskrit for abode of snow, a fair label for the range that holds the tallest peaks on the planet.

Which desert, the largest hot desert on Earth, stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea?

Sahara comes from an Arabic word that simply means desert, so calling it the Sahara Desert says the same thing twice.

Florida, Italy and Korea are all examples of which landform, joined to a mainland on only one side?

Peninsula comes from Latin words meaning almost and island, which is how such land looks on a map: water nearly all the way round.

Which ancient region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in modern Iraq, is called a cradle of civilization?

Mesopotamia has been credited with the invention of the wheel and the planting of the first cereal crops, as well as early mathematics and astronomy.

Which Roman dictator was stabbed about 23 times by a group of conspirators on the Ides of March?

Julius Caesar was killed by some 60 plotters led by Brutus and Cassius, but the civil war that followed helped bring down the Republic they meant to save.

What is the term for a US president's power to reject a bill passed by both houses of the legislature?

Veto comes from the Latin for I forbid, though a two-thirds vote in each chamber can still turn the rejected bill into law.

What is the system of trade, revived when currencies collapse, in which goods are swapped directly without money?

Barter is often pictured as the way all trade began, yet anthropologists have found no evidence that money emerged from it.

Which economic theory, dominant in early modern Europe, measured a nation's wealth in gold and silver?

Mercantilism pushed empires to hoard precious metal, and belief in it began to fade in the late 18th century under the arguments of Adam Smith.

Which New York town's Wesleyan Chapel hosted the landmark two-day women's rights convention of July 1848?

Seneca Falls drew about 300 people, and exactly 100 of them signed the Declaration of Sentiments that Elizabeth Cady Stanton helped present.

Which waterway, formally opened in August 1914, cuts across a narrow isthmus to join two oceans?

The Panama Canal lifts ships through locks to Gatun Lake, an artificial lake 26 metres above sea level, then lowers them again at the other end.

Which of the five Great Lakes is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area?

Lake Superior covers 31,700 square miles, about the size of Austria, though Lake Baikal in Siberia holds more water.

Which river flows about 2,300 miles from Lake Itasca in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico?

The Mississippi was set by the 1783 Treaty of Paris as the western border of the new United States, and its watershed reaches from the Rockies to the Appalachians.

Which Native American nation was forced out of Georgia in 1838 on the march known as the Trail of Tears?

Cherokee removal was brought on by the discovery of gold near Dahlonega, Georgia, in 1828, and thousands died of disease on the way west.

Which Virginia settlement, founded in 1607, lost most of its colonists in the winter called the Starving Time?

Jamestown began as James Fort, set up by the Virginia Company of London, and only about 60 colonists were still alive after the winter of 1609–1610.

Which 1896 Supreme Court case upheld whites-only rail cars under the doctrine known as separate but equal?

Plessy v. Ferguson began in 1892 when Homer Plessy, a mixed-race man, deliberately boarded a whites-only train car in New Orleans to challenge the law.

Which agreement served as the first constitution of the United States after all 13 states ratified it by 1781?

The Articles of Confederation let states ignore requests for money, so the Constitution that replaced them added a president, national courts and the power to tax.

Which Baptist minister won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for fighting racial inequality through nonviolent resistance?

Martin Luther King Jr. was born Michael King Jr. and was a prominent leader of the movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968.

A surprise attack on which US naval base on December 7, 1941, brought the United States into World War II?

Pearl Harbor was struck by aircraft launched from carriers, and the US declared war on Japan the very next day.

Which immigration station near the Statue of Liberty processed about 12 million new arrivals between 1892 and 1954?

Ellis Island lost its first station to fire in 1897, five years after opening, and by one estimate two-fifths of Americans descend from people processed there.

Which Native American woman helped the Lewis and Clark Expedition in her teens while carrying her infant son?

Sacagawea gave birth to Jean Baptiste in February 1805, weeks before the party headed up the Missouri River, and the men nicknamed the boy Pomp.

Which network of trade routes, active from the second century BCE, linked China with the Roman Empire and beyond?

The Silk Road takes its name from the lucrative trade in silk textiles made mostly in China, and it stayed in use until the mid-15th century.

Which ancient Greek city-state, the great rival of Sparta, is often regarded as the birthplace of democracy?

Athens took a decisive step in 508 BC, when Cleisthenes broke the nobles' grip by grouping citizens by where they lived rather than by family ties.

Which craftsman from Mainz invented the movable-type printing press and printed a celebrated Bible with it?

Johannes Gutenberg produced the first printed version of the Bible, and a museum opened in his hometown in 1900 to mark 500 years since his birth.

Which anti-apartheid leader served 27 years in prison, at first on Robben Island, before winning a 1994 election?

Nelson Mandela became his country's first black head of state after negotiating an end to apartheid with President F. W. de Klerk.

Which lawyer led the 24-day Salt March to the sea at Dandi in 1930 to defy a British monopoly?

Mahatma Gandhi walked about 240 miles from his ashram, made salt by evaporation on the shore, and drew worldwide attention to the independence movement.

Which cultural movement began in Florence and produced polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo?

The Renaissance means rebirth, and it spread from one city to the rest of Italy and then across Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries.

Which Ming dynasty admiral commanded seven treasure voyages between 1405 and 1433, sailing as far as Arabia?

Zheng He sailed for two emperors, and his largest ships are said to have been almost twice as long as any wooden ship ever recorded.

Which Caracas-born general, known as El Libertador, became president of the newly merged Gran Colombia?

Simón Bolívar was also president in Peru and in Bolivia, a nation named after him.

Which 14th-century pandemic, spread mainly by flea bites, killed between 30% and 60% of Europe's population?

The Black Death was not called black in any European language while it raged; the name was attached to it later.

Which leader, born Temüjin, founded the Mongol Empire, the largest contiguous empire in history?

Genghis Khan lost his father at eight and saw his family abandoned by its own tribe, decades before he became the first khan of the Mongol Empire in 1206.

Which Virginian, acclaimed as the Father of the Constitution, went on to serve as the fourth president?

James Madison earned the title with his Virginia Plan, the outline that became the basis for the 1787 convention's deliberations.

What term describes the constitutional division of power between the US national government and the state governments?

Federalism was resisted at the founding by Anti-Federalists, who wanted strong state governments and a weak national one.

Which power, established by the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall, lets American courts strike down laws?

Judicial review dates from an 1803 case that is regarded as the single most important decision in American constitutional law.

Which philosopher, called the father of liberalism, argued that government rests on the consent of the governed?

John Locke made the case in his Two Treatises of Government, which is believed to have shaped the wording of the 1776 Declaration of Independence.

Which Byzantine capital fell in 1453 to the Ottoman army of Sultan Mehmed II, who made it his own capital?

Constantinople's fall marked the effective end of the Roman Empire, a state that had lasted nearly 1,500 years.

Which US policy, first set out in an 1823 address, warned European powers against meddling in the Americas?

The Monroe Doctrine did not carry the name of the president who announced it until 1850, almost three decades after his speech.

Which Babylonian king had his law code carved on a basalt stele that now stands in the Louvre?

Hammurabi's stele was rediscovered in 1901 at Susa in present-day Iran, where it had been carried off as plunder 600 years after it was made.

Which emperor of Mali is said to have lowered the value of gold in Cairo with his lavish gifts in 1324?

Mansa Musa was passing through on his way to Mecca with an enormous entourage, and his reign is often regarded as the peak of his empire's power.