150 Fun Facts About World History

Machu Picchu, likely built for the emperor Pachacuti, was the work of which civilization?

Inca: Hiram Bingham mistook Machu Picchu for the last Inca capital, which was really Vilcabamba.

The Rosetta Stone repeats one decree in hieroglyphs, Demotic and which third script?

Greek: comparing the Greek text with the two Egyptian versions helped Champollion crack hieroglyphs in the 1820s.

What kept water flowing along Rome's aqueducts?

A gentle downhill slope: the water moved by gravity alone, and where a valley was too deep for arches, engineers used inverted siphons to carry it down and back up.

Which Greek city-state is often called the birthplace of democracy?

Athens: citizens could exile a politician for ten years by scratching his name on pottery shards, a vote called ostracism.

The Great Wall of China was primarily built to defend against invasions from which direction?

North: the walls guarded against steppe nomads such as the Xiongnu, yet in 1644 a Chinese general opened the gates at Shanhai Pass to the invaders.

The Epic of Gilgamesh survives on clay tablets written in which script?

Cuneiform: once it fell out of use in ancient times, no one could read it until 19th-century scholars cracked the Behistun Inscription.

Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC on a date the Roman calendar knew by what name?

The Ides of March: Caesar was stabbed 23 times and fell beside a statue of Pompey, the rival he had beaten in civil war.

Cyrus the Great, who took Babylon in 539 BC, founded which Persian dynasty's realm?

Achaemenid: Cyrus's clay cylinder boasts that he restored temples and let exiles go home, propaganda to justify his rule to the Babylonians.

What volcanic eruption in 79 AD buried the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum?

Mount Vesuvius erupted on 24 August 79 AD (by the traditional date); ash and pyroclastic flows sealed Pompeii and Herculaneum so completely that their 18th-century rediscovery gave an unmatched snapshot of Roman daily life.

Which general led war elephants across the Alps to invade Roman Italy?

Hannibal: most of his elephants were dead within months of the crossing, yet in 216 BC he still destroyed a Roman army at Cannae.

What name did Ferdinand von Richthofen popularise in 1877 for the network of Asian trade routes?

Silk Road: in the 6th century, agents of the Byzantine emperor smuggled silkworm eggs back along these routes so Byzantium could make its own silk.

Which pandemic reached Europe in 1347 and killed at least 30 percent of Europeans?

The Black Death: so many workers died that the survivors could demand much higher wages for their labour.

Magna Carta, sealed at Runnymede in 1215, primarily limited the power of which English monarch?

John: he then persuaded Pope Innocent III to annul the charter, and the rebel barons went back to war against him.

Which city was the capital of the Byzantine Empire for over a thousand years?

Constantinople: the giant cannon that battered its walls in 1453 had first been offered to the Byzantines, who could not afford the gunmaker's price.

Which weapon did the archers of Henry V's army carry at Agincourt in 1415?

Longbow: rain had turned the freshly ploughed field to mud, so armoured French knights floundered under the arrows and the outnumbered English won.

Which Mongol leader founded the empire that became history's largest contiguous land empire?

Genghis Khan: after his father was poisoned, his tribe abandoned the family to poverty, yet by 1206 the Mongol tribes had proclaimed him their ruler.

A century after its founder died in 632, which religion's rulers held Spain to Central Asia?

Islam: when the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyad caliphs in 750, a surviving prince escaped to Spain and founded his own emirate at Córdoba.

Taken by the First Crusade in 1099 and retaken by Saladin in 1187, which city were the Crusades chiefly fought to control?

Jerusalem: after Saladin retook it, Emperor Frederick II won it back by treaty in 1229, in a Sixth Crusade fought with diplomacy rather than battles.

Which West African state did Mansa Musa rule when he made his lavish 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca?

Mali: Mansa Musa is said to have handed out so much gold in Cairo that its value there fell for years.

What 1517 document by Martin Luther is considered to have launched the Protestant Reformation?

The 95 Theses: Luther sent them to bishops to protest the sale of indulgences, and whether he also nailed them to a church door is still debated.

Which Italian artist painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling for Pope Julius II between 1508 and 1512?

Michelangelo: far from keen on the commission, he still finished the ceiling in four years, working largely alone high on a scaffold.

Which explorer, sailing for Spain, kept insisting that the lands he had reached were part of Asia?

Christopher Columbus: believing he was in the Indies, he called the people he met 'indios', which is how the word Indian came to be used for them.

The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas divided newly discovered lands between which two powers?

Spain and Portugal: the line ran 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands, which is why Brazil, jutting east across it, became Portuguese.

Johannes Gutenberg printed his famous Bible in which language?

Latin: soon after it was printed, Gutenberg's backer Johann Fust sued him over the loans and won control of the workshop.

Which Ottoman sultan, aged just 21, ended the Byzantine Empire in 1453 by capturing its capital?

Mehmed II: to get past the chain across the Golden Horn, he had warships hauled overland and launched into the harbour behind it.

What name was given to the ocean crossing that carried enslaved Africans to plantations across the Atlantic?

The Middle Passage: it was the middle leg of a three-part voyage, as ships carried goods to Africa, captives to the Americas and plantation goods back to Europe.

Which philosopher wrote 'The Prince,' a political treatise on gaining and maintaining power, in 1513?

Niccolo Machiavelli: he wrote it on his farm after the Medici had him jailed and tortured, hoping it would win him their favour.

Which general, the first president of Gran Colombia, led much of South America to independence from Spain?

Simón Bolívar: Bolivia was named in his honour, yet he died in 1830 as the Gran Colombia he had built was breaking apart.

Leonardo da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa' is housed in which famous museum?

The Louvre: Vincenzo Peruggia, a glazier who had worked at the museum, stole the painting in 1911, and the theft made it world-famous.

The Peace of Westphalia, two treaties signed in Osnabrück and Münster in 1648, ended which conflict?

Thirty Years' War: Westphalia was long credited with founding the modern system of sovereign states, though some historians now call that a myth.

Holding just seven prisoners, which Paris fortress was stormed on 14 July 1789 in the symbolic start of the French Revolution?

The Bastille: the crowd came mainly for the gunpowder stored inside, and within months workers had demolished the fortress.

Which country did Napoleon invade in 1812, leading to a disastrous retreat that destroyed much of his army?

Russia: Napoleon reached Moscow only to find it deserted and soon ablaze, and the retreat through the Russian winter wrecked his army.

Whose separate condenser, patented in 1769, made the steam engine far more efficient?

James Watt patented the separate condenser in 1769, cutting the fuel a Newcomen-type engine burned by well over half; Boulton & Watt engines then powered mills and mines across Britain.

The Declaration of Independence lists grievances against which British king?

George III: the Declaration blames him for a long list of grievances yet never names him, calling him only 'the present King of Great Britain'.

Which formerly enslaved leader of the Haitian Revolution was seized by the French and died in a French prison?

Toussaint Louverture: the French lured him in with talk of peace before arresting him, and he died at Fort-de-Joux in 1803.

What 1884-85 gathering set rules for Europe's colonisation of Africa?

Berlin Conference: no African state was invited, and within about three decades European powers controlled nearly all of Africa.

Which event in 1914 is widely considered the immediate trigger for World War I?

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand: a bomb thrown at his car that morning failed, but later his driver took a wrong turn and stopped beside the gunman, Gavrilo Princip.

What nickname was given to Article 231 of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles?

The War Guilt Clause: Article 231 made Germany accept responsibility for the Allies' war losses, the legal basis for reparations. The German delegation saw it as an insult, and resentment of it fed the politics of the 1920s and 1930s.

Which 1917 upheaval led to the creation of the world's first communist state?

Russian Revolution: Lenin's Bolsheviks seized power in a nearly bloodless coup, but it set off a civil war between the Red and White armies.

By what name is General Dyer's April 1919 shooting of a Baisakhi crowd in Amritsar known?

Jallianwala Bagh massacre: in protest, the poet Rabindranath Tagore gave up the knighthood the British had awarded him.

What was the codename of the Allied campaign whose Normandy landings began on 6 June 1944?

Overlord: to keep the Germans guessing, the Allies invented an entire fictitious army under George Patton that seemed poised to invade at Calais.

The Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs were developed under what secret programme?

The Manhattan Project: it took its name from its first offices in Manhattan, although the bombs themselves were designed at Los Alamos in New Mexico.

Of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, about half came from which country?

Poland: some three million Polish Jews were murdered, and the Nazis built their main death camps, including Auschwitz and Treblinka, on occupied Polish soil.

In which US state, President Truman's home, did Churchill give his 1946 'iron curtain' speech?

Missouri: Truman travelled with Churchill to Westminster College in Fulton and introduced him before the speech.

Which Cold War crisis ended partly because the US secretly agreed to pull its weapons out of Turkey?

Cuban Missile Crisis: the Turkey promise could not be announced, so the public saw Khrushchev remove his missiles in return only for a US pledge not to invade Cuba.

Which US president told Mikhail Gorbachev to 'tear down this wall' in a 1987 Berlin speech?

Ronald Reagan: State Department officials called the line needlessly provocative and tried to cut it, but Reagan told his aides to leave it in.

Which 1930 Gandhi protest defied a British tax?

Salt March: when Gandhi broke the salt laws at the coast, it set off mass civil disobedience, and more than 60,000 people were arrested.

Which Nazi leader, sentenced to hang at Nuremberg, took cyanide the night before his execution?

Hermann Göring: he had long been Hitler's designated successor, until his April 1945 telegram offering to take over led Hitler to strip him of all his offices.

Which country was divided at the 38th parallel after World War II, leading to a war from 1950 to 1953?

Korea: North Korea invaded the South in June 1950, and the fighting stopped in 1953 with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.

Nelson Mandela spent most of his 27 years in prison on which island?

Robben Island: Mandela was held there for 18 of his 27 years in prison, yet four years after his release in 1990 he was elected South Africa's president.

Which Portuguese navigator first rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488?

Bartolomeu Dias: tradition says he named it the Cape of Storms, and in 1500 a storm off that same cape sank his ship with all hands.

Which Greek philosopher founded the Peripatetic school, also known as the Lyceum?

Aristotle: 'Peripatetic' probably comes from the covered walkway at the Lyceum, though a later legend said he lectured while walking.

Which pair of officials, elected each year, led the Roman Republic after Rome's kings were overthrown?

Consuls: each could veto the other, a check designed so that no single man could hold the kind of power the kings had.

Who defeated Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings in 1066?

William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, defeated Harold at Hastings on 14 October 1066, three weeks after Harold had beaten Harald Hardrada at Stamford Bridge; William was crowned on Christmas Day.

Which explorer set out to sail around the world for Spain but was killed in the Philippines on the way?

Ferdinand Magellan: of about 270 men who sailed from Spain in 1519, only 18 came home on the Victoria three years later.

Which great-nephew and adopted heir of Julius Caesar became Rome's first emperor in 27 BC?

Augustus: he avoided royal titles in public, calling himself only 'princeps', first citizen, while holding real power until his death in AD 14.

Which Mongol ruler completed the conquest of China and established the Yuan Dynasty in the 13th century?

Kublai Khan: Marco Polo served at his court, and the fleets he sent against Japan were wrecked by storms the Japanese called kamikaze, 'divine winds'.

Which Central Asian conqueror made Samarkand his capital and died in 1405 marching on China?

Tamerlane: he sacked Delhi in 1398, and his descendant Babur later founded the Mughal Empire in India.

Which ancient figure is traditionally credited with unifying Upper and Lower Egypt?

Narmer: his famous palette shows him wearing the crowns of both Upper and Lower Egypt, though scholars still debate whether it records a real conquest.

Rome's last Western emperor, deposed in 476, shared his first name with which legendary founder of the city?

Romulus: rather than kill the boy emperor, Odoacer sent him to live in Campania on a yearly allowance.

What post-WWII American initiative funded Western European reconstruction?

Marshall Plan: by the time the aid ended in 1952, the economies of the countries it funded had passed their pre-war levels.

The Meiji Restoration of 1868 restored imperial rule in Japan after the collapse of which shogunate?

Tokugawa: its last shogun handed power back to the emperor in 1867, yet his forces were still defeated in a civil war the next year.

Which Egyptian leader's nationalisation of the Suez Canal triggered the tripartite invasion of 1956?

Gamal Abdel Nasser: Britain, France and Israel invaded that autumn, but pressure from the United States and the United Nations forced them to pull out.

Hong Xiuquan's Taiping Rebellion of 1850-64 set out to overthrow which Chinese dynasty?

Qing: the war killed more than 20 million people, yet the dynasty outlasted the rebels, whose last stronghold fell in 1864.

Who led the Frankish forces that defeated an Umayyad army at the Battle of Tours in 732?

Charles Martel: he ruled the Franks as mayor of the palace while a Merovingian figurehead held the title of king.

After his bloody conquest of Kalinga, which Indian emperor turned toward Buddhism?

Ashoka: his own edicts record his sorrow at the slaughter in Kalinga, though historians think his turn to Buddhism came gradually.

Which African stone city did colonial-era Europeans refuse to believe black Africans had built?

Great Zimbabwe: archaeological evidence proved that ancestors of the Shona people built it, overturning those colonial theories.

Which statesman chaired the Congress of Vienna in 1814-15?

Metternich: Europe's leading champion of conservatism was himself forced out by Vienna's 1848 uprising and fled into exile in England.

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

The Great Pyramid of Giza: it is by far the oldest of the seven, yet the other six have fallen or vanished.

Borobudur, the world's largest Buddhist temple, stands on which Indonesian island?

Java: Borobudur lay hidden for centuries under volcanic ash and jungle until Stamford Raffles had it tracked down in 1814.

Hammurabi, whose law code survives on a basalt stele, was the sixth king of which city?

Babylon: Hammurabi reigned there from about 1792 to 1750 BC, and his stele was found at Susa in Iran in 1901, where an Elamite king had carried it off as loot.

The Holy League's 1571 naval victory at Lepanto crushed which empire's fleet?

Ottoman: Miguel de Cervantes fought in the battle, and a wound there cost him the use of his left hand for the rest of his life.

Farmers digging a well near Xi'an uncovered the Terracotta Army guarding which ruler's tomb?

Qin Shi Huang: the clay army was buried to protect China's first emperor in the afterlife, yet as of 2025 his own tomb had never been opened.

Which king led the relief army that broke the 1683 siege of Vienna?

John III Sobieski: an alliance he had made with the Holy Roman Emperor earlier in 1683 bound him to come to Vienna's rescue if the city was attacked.

In which French city was Joan of Arc tried for heresy and burned at the stake in 1431?

Rouen: a retrial in 1456 overturned her conviction, and in 1920 the Church made her a saint.

Menelik II's 1896 victory at Adwa kept which African state free from Italian rule?

Ethiopia: news of the defeat set off violent protests in Italian cities and brought down Prime Minister Francesco Crispi's government.

The tea dumped into Boston Harbor in 1773 was the cargo of which firm?

The East India Company: its tea was dumped on 16 December 1773, and Britain answered with the Coercive Acts, which closed the port and pushed the colonies toward war.

Boxer rebels besieged the foreign diplomats' legation quarter in which Chinese city?

Beijing: diplomats and Chinese Christians held out in the legation quarter for 55 days until an international relief force broke the siege.

The 1842 Treaty of Nanking, ending the First Opium War, ceded which island to Britain?

Hong Kong Island was ceded in perpetuity in 1842; it returned to China only on 1 July 1997 along with Kowloon and the leased New Territories.

Who was the last viceroy of British India, overseeing its 1947 partition into India and Pakistan?

Lord Mountbatten: London had set June 1948 for the handover, but he judged the situation too dangerous to wait and brought independence forward to August 1947.

Admiral Zheng He's treasure-fleet voyages of 1405–33 sailed under which Chinese dynasty?

Ming: born Ma He in Yunnan, Zheng He was captured as a boy and became a court eunuch, yet he rose to command fleets that reached East Africa.

Which Byzantine emperor built the present Hagia Sophia between 532 and 537?

Justinian I: rioters had destroyed the previous church in the Nika riots of 532, and his new one was completed in 537.

Robert Clive's 1757 victory at Plassey secured British control over which Indian region?

Bengal: Clive had secretly promised the nawab's throne to Mir Jafar, one of his commanders, so Mir Jafar's troops never joined the battle and he became a puppet nawab.

The Suez Canal links the Mediterranean with which sea?

Red Sea: the canal opened in 1869, and only six years later Egypt's ruler sold his shares in the canal company to Britain.

After Waterloo, Napoleon was exiled to which remote island in the South Atlantic?

Saint Helena: he died there in May 1821, aged 51, having already escaped from his first island exile on Elba to return to power.

Tenochtitlan, reached by Hernán Cortés in 1519, was the capital of which empire?

Aztec: Tenochtitlan stood on an island in Lake Texcoco, linked to the shore by causeways, and after its fall to Cortés in 1521 Mexico City was built over its ruins.

Atahualpa offered a room of gold to buy his freedom from which conquistador?

Pizarro: the ransom was delivered, but the Spanish executed Atahualpa anyway in July 1533.

Which US naval officer's warships forced Japan to open its ports to American ships in 1853-54?

Matthew Perry: he sailed four warships into Tokyo Bay in 1853, and within a year Japan had agreed to open Shimoda and Hakodate to American ships.

Which Spanish king sent the Armada against Elizabeth I's England in 1588?

Philip II: only a handful of his ships were lost in battle, but storms off Scotland and Ireland wrecked many more on the voyage home.

The 1916 Easter Rising against British rule was centred on which city?

Dublin: the British executed 16 of the Rising's leaders, and the backlash swung Irish opinion behind the rebels' cause.

Which power's blockade of West Berlin's roads, railways and canals led to the Berlin Airlift?

The Soviet Union: it lifted the blockade in May 1949, yet the Western airlift kept flying supplies in until the end of September.

Angkor Wat, built by Suryavarman II as a temple to Vishnu, stands in which country?

Cambodia: unlike most temples around it, Angkor Wat faces west, and it was later turned into a Buddhist temple.

At Gaugamela in 331 BC, Alexander the Great routed which Persian king?

Darius III: he fled the battle, and in 330 BC he was killed by his own satrap Bessus, who then claimed the throne.

The Third Punic War ended in 146 BC with Rome destroying which rival city?

Carthage: the Romans burned the city to the ground, but the story that they then sowed its ruins with salt is a modern myth.

A 793 Viking raid on which Northumbrian monastery is often taken as the start of the Viking Age?

Lindisfarne: after repeated Viking attacks its monks fled with St Cuthbert's remains, and the saint's tomb ended up at Durham, where it still lies.

The Congo Free State (1885–1908) was the personal property of which European monarch?

Leopold II of Belgium: reports of forced labour and mutilation in the rubber trade caused an international outcry, and in 1908 Belgium took the colony from him.

Which tsar founded the Baltic city that replaced Moscow as Russia's capital?

Peter the Great: he made Saint Petersburg the capital in 1712, yet his grandson Peter II moved the court back to Moscow in 1728.

Which Baltic port was the leading city of the medieval Hanseatic League?

Lübeck: the league it led was strong enough to wage war on Denmark in 1361-70, win, and dictate the peace terms.

Which Russian tsar was executed with his family by the Bolsheviks in July 1918?

Nicholas II: the family was shot in Yekaterinburg, and their remains were confirmed by DNA analysis decades later.

The city where the 1942–43 Battle of Stalingrad was fought was renamed what in 1961?

Volgograd: the battle ended in February 1943 with the surrender of Germany's 6th Army, and in 1961 the city dropped Stalin's name.

Which queen of Egypt sided with Mark Antony and died after their fleet's defeat at Actium?

Cleopatra reportedly killed herself rather than be paraded through Rome in the victor's triumph. She was the last active pharaoh of the Ptolemaic line.

Which flower's bulbs cost over ten times a craftsman's yearly pay before a Dutch crash in 1637?

Tulip prices collapsed in the first week of February 1637. The most prized blooms owed their flame-like streaks to a virus infecting the bulb.

Which Siberian mystic won Tsarina Alexandra's trust by seeming to heal her haemophiliac son Alexei?

Grigori Rasputin began acting as a faith healer for the boy in late 1906. Nobles who feared his hold over the empress murdered him in December 1916.

Which Thracian gladiator escaped a training school near Capua and led a slave revolt against Rome?

Spartacus broke out with about 70 fellow gladiators in 73 BC. When the revolt was finally crushed, 6,000 captured rebels were crucified along the Appian Way.

Which Venetian merchant dictated his tales of travel in Asia to a cellmate in a Genoa prison?

Marco Polo told his tales to fellow inmate Rustichello da Pisa, who wove in stories of his own. Venice was at war with Genoa when he was captured.

Which pharaoh, who died at about 18, lay in the near-intact tomb Howard Carter found in 1922?

Tutankhamun's is the only royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings found in near-intact condition. Carter took 10 years to catalogue its contents.

Which staple crop, ruined by blight in the 1840s, failed and caused Ireland's Great Famine?

Potato blight struck across Europe, but over three million Irish people depended entirely on the crop for food. Roughly one million died and over one million more emigrated.

Which Jewish teenager kept a diary while hiding in a secret annex behind a bookcase in Amsterdam?

Anne Frank wrote in the annex from 1942 until the family's arrest in 1944. Her diary has since been translated into over 70 languages.

Which Roman emperor is said to have sung and played the lyre while Rome burned in AD 64?

Nero may in fact have been 35 miles away at his villa in Antium when the fire broke out. He blamed the city's Christians, who were arrested and killed.

Which Norwegian reached the South Pole in December 1911, a month before Robert Falcon Scott?

Roald Amundsen had planned a voyage to the Arctic, and told his men only at Madeira that they were bound for Antarctica. His party of five planted Norway's flag at the pole on 14 December.

Which philosopher, the teacher of Plato, was condemned in 399 BC to die by drinking hemlock?

Socrates had been convicted of impiety and of corrupting the young, and refused offers to help him escape. He authored no texts, so his ideas survive through his students.

Which Roman emperor had a 73-mile frontier wall built across Britain, beginning in AD 122?

Hadrian visited Britain in 122, and his wall was built with forts and manned milecastles along its whole length. It is the largest Roman archaeological feature in Britain.

Which river did Julius Caesar lead his legion across in January 49 BC, igniting a Roman civil war?

The Rubicon helped mark the boundary of Italy proper, where Caesar was not allowed to command an army. By crossing it he was defying the law and risking death.

The ancient Olympic Games were held at the sanctuary of Olympia in honour of which god?

Zeus had a temple at Olympia, and its statue of the god was counted as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The last recorded games were held in AD 393.

Which Chinese thinker's sayings were compiled by followers, long after his death, in the Analects?

Confucius presents himself in the book as a transmitter who invented nothing. Under Emperor Wu of Han his ideas won official sanction and became required reading for would-be officials.

Which civilisation built Tikal and Chichen Itza and dated its monuments with the Long Count?

Maya scribes used the most sophisticated writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas. The last Long Count date was inscribed at Toniná in 909, as city after city stopped raising dated monuments.

Which ruler of the Huns, nicknamed the Scourge of God, invaded Roman Gaul in 451 and died in 453?

Attila was stopped in Gaul at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains. He is said to have died after a feast celebrating his marriage to a new bride, perhaps choking on a nosebleed.

Which Frankish king was crowned emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day 800?

Charlemagne normally had texts read aloud to him and dictated his replies. His biographer Einhard records that he only attempted to learn to write later in life.

Which Norse explorer, raised in Greenland, do the Icelandic sagas credit with settling Vinland?

Leif Erikson's Vinland is usually taken to be the coast of the Americas. A Norse site found at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland was occupied about 1,000 years ago.

Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, cities with elaborate drains, belonged to which Bronze Age civilisation?

The Indus Valley civilisation gave its houses water and drainage that were advanced for the age. Its script has never been deciphered, so even its language is uncertain.

Which order of warrior monks, founded to protect pilgrims, was disbanded by Pope Clement V in 1312?

The Knights Templar grew rich issuing letters of credit to travellers, an early form of banking. The French king had scores of them arrested at dawn on Friday, 13 October 1307.

Which scholar from Tangier roamed some 73,000 miles across Africa and Asia in the 1300s?

Ibn Battuta travelled more than any other explorer in pre-modern history. He set off at 21 on a pilgrimage that would ordinarily take sixteen months, and did not see Morocco again for 24 years.

Which Tuscan banking family produced four popes and two queens of France?

The Medici ran the largest bank in Europe in the 15th century, which carried them to political power. Officially they remained citizens rather than monarchs until the 16th century.

Which English king broke with Rome after the Pope refused to annul his first marriage?

Henry VIII had himself made Supreme Head of the Church of England in 1534. He went on to dissolve the monasteries and seize their wealth, and married six times in all.

Which astronomer did the Inquisition force to recant his view that the Earth moves around the Sun?

Galileo Galilei spent the rest of his life under house arrest. Popular legend has him muttering 'And yet it moves' after recanting.

Which Mughal emperor built the Taj Mahal as a tomb for his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal?

Shah Jahan was imprisoned in Agra Fort by his own son from 1658 until his death in 1666. He was laid to rest next to his wife in the Taj Mahal.

Which Austrian-born queen of France went to the guillotine nine months after her husband, in 1793?

Marie Antoinette was the youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa. There is no evidence that she ever said 'let them eat cake'.

Which lawyer from Arras on the Committee of Public Safety was executed without trial in July 1794?

Maximilien Robespierre had argued for the harsh measures of the Reign of Terror. He was labelled an 'incorruptible' for his modest way of living and his refusal to take bribes.

Which navigator led the first recorded European visit to eastern Australia and was killed in Hawaii?

James Cook died in 1779 when a dispute with Native Hawaiians turned violent. His ship Endeavour had begun life as a merchant collier, the Earl of Pembroke.

Which French scholar, fluent in Coptic, made the 1822 breakthrough in reading Egyptian hieroglyphs?

Jean-François Champollion showed that the script mixed phonetic and ideographic signs. He had learned Coptic from a priest in Paris, rightly believing it the last stage of the ancient Egyptian language.

Which admiral was fatally shot by a French marksman aboard HMS Victory at Trafalgar in 1805?

Horatio Nelson had already lost his right arm and part of the sight of one eye in earlier actions. His body came home in a cask of brandy lashed to the ship's mainmast.

From which Mediterranean island of exile did Napoleon escape after ten months to march on Paris?

Elba was left to him as a nominal sovereign, with a personal guard of 400 men. He slipped away in February 1815 with around a thousand men and reclaimed control of France.

Which Prussian statesman unified Germany in 1871 and served as its first chancellor until 1890?

Otto von Bismarck's firm governance earned him the nickname Iron Chancellor. He was finally dismissed from office by Kaiser Wilhelm II and retired to write his memoirs.

Which patriot landed in Sicily in 1860 with a thousand red-shirted volunteers to help unite Italy?

Giuseppe Garibaldi had first raised a force of Redshirts in Uruguay, where he took up the gaucho's red shirt and poncho. After landing in Sicily he declared himself its dictator in the king's name.

Which Crimean War nurse made night rounds among the wounded and later pioneered statistical charts?

Florence Nightingale won fame as 'The Lady with the Lamp'. She is also known for the polar area diagram, a relative of the pie chart, which she used to present her findings.

Which Zulu king, ruling from 1816 to 1828, armed his regiments with a short stabbing spear?

Shaka is credited with introducing the iklwa, a short spear with a broad, sword-like head, in place of the long throwing assegai. In 1828 he was assassinated by his half-brothers.

Which general led the Army of the Andes over the mountains in 1817 to free Chile from royalist rule?

José de San Martín then sailed to attack Lima, the royalist stronghold in Peru. After a closed-door meeting at Guayaquil in 1822 he left the task to a fellow liberator and later moved to France.

Which country, the last in the Americas to abolish slavery, did so with the Golden Law of 1888?

Brazil's law was signed by Princess Isabel, acting as regent while her father, Emperor Pedro II, was in Europe. Pope Leo XIII awarded her the Golden Rose.

Which West African republic, settled by Black emigrants from America, declared independence in 1847?

Liberia began as a venture of the American Colonization Society, which promoted the emigration of Black Americans to Africa. The United States did not recognise its independence until 1862.

Which physician turned revolutionary was elected provisional president of republican China in 1911?

Sun Yat-sen is honoured on both sides of the Taiwan Strait: as 'Father of the Nation' by the Republic of China and as 'Forerunner of the Revolution' by the People's Republic.

Which Cunard liner sank in 18 minutes after a German submarine torpedoed it off Ireland in 1915?

Lusitania's loss killed 1,198 passengers and crew, 128 of them US citizens. The sinking significantly increased American public support for entering the war.

Which exiled Bolshevik crossed Germany by train to reach Petrograd's Finland Station in April 1917?

Vladimir Lenin wrote an outline of his plans for the Bolsheviks on the journey from Switzerland. Germany let his party of 32 exiles through, hoping they would cause trouble for its Russian enemy.

Which army officer founded the Republic of Turkey and swapped its Arabic script for a new alphabet?

Kemal Atatürk was granted that surname, meaning 'Father of the Turks', by parliament in 1934. He was the republic's first president from 1923 until his death in 1938.

At which February 1945 conference did Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin plan Europe's post-war order?

Yalta is a resort in Crimea, where the three leaders met in the Livadia, Yusupov and Vorontsov palaces. Churchill pressed there for free elections in Central and Eastern Europe.

Which leader proclaimed the People's Republic of China from Tiananmen Gate in October 1949?

Mao Zedong at first suggested keeping the name Republic of China under new leadership, but was urged to make a clean break with the former regime. The date became the country's National Day.

Who gave the 'Tryst with Destiny' speech on becoming India's first prime minister in 1947?

Jawaharlal Nehru held office for more than 16 years. His birthday, 14 November, is celebrated in India as Children's Day, and children remember him as Chacha (Uncle) Nehru.

Which cosmonaut became the first human in space, circling Earth once aboard Vostok 1 in April 1961?

Yuri Gagarin's flight took 108 minutes, and it was his only trip to space. His informal launch farewell, 'Poyekhali!' ('Let's go!'), was later celebrated in song.

Which nuclear power plant's reactor 4 exploded in April 1986 during a test of its cooling pumps?

Chernobyl's operators were simulating a power outage when design flaws caused a runaway reaction. The nearby city of Pripyat was not immediately evacuated, and was later abandoned.

In which South African township did police fire on a crowd protesting the pass laws in March 1960?

Sharpeville saw 69 people killed and 180 injured, by the police's own records. Since 1994 the anniversary, 21 March, has been commemorated as South Africa's Human Rights Day.

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

Maastricht's treaty was signed by twelve member states on 7 February 1992. It created a shared European citizenship and provided for the eventual introduction of a single currency.