Q 01/05

What did Peter the Great tax from 1698 in his drive to make Russian men look more western?

A) Wigs

B) Beards

C) Fur hats

D) Icons

Answer · why

B) Beards

Beards could be kept only by paying up and carrying a token as proof. Police were empowered to shave refusers forcibly and in public.

Q 02/05

By what nickname is Louis XIV known, echoing the Apollo role he danced in a ballet at fourteen?

A) The Sun King

B) The Citizen King

C) The Spider King

D) The Well-Beloved

Answer · why

A) The Sun King

The Sun King made his debut as Apollo in the Ballet Royal de la Nuit, a court spectacle that took 13 hours to perform.

Q 03/05

Which palace, grown from a royal hunting lodge, housed Louis XIV's court and government from 1682?

A) Fontainebleau

B) Chambord

C) Versailles

D) Tuileries

Answer · why

C) Versailles

Versailles began as a modest brick-and-stone lodge built for Louis XIII in 1623, about 19 km west of Paris. Apart from the Regency years after 1715, i...

Q 04/05

Louis XIV is credited, probably wrongly, with telling the Parlement of Paris that he was what?

A) The law

B) The Church

C) The nation

D) The state

Answer · why

D) The state

The state is what he allegedly called himself in 1655, yet the line is missing from the Parlement's registers. On his deathbed he said it would outlas...

Q 05/05

Which English king was beheaded in 1649 on a scaffold outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall?

A) Charles I

B) Richard II

C) Edward II

D) James II

Answer · why

A) Charles I

Charles I asked for two shirts that morning so the winter cold would not make him shiver and look afraid. He had been convicted of high treason days e...