Q 01/05

Georg von Trapp, a naval officer decorated in the Boxer Rebellion, later inspired which Broadway show?

A) The Sound of Music

B) The King and I

C) South Pacific

D) Fiddler on the Roof

Answer · why

A) The Sound of Music

The Sound of Music tells the story of the family he went on to raise. In 1900 he was a young officer on an Austro-Hungarian cruiser and joined the ass...

Q 02/05

Which future US president, then a young mining engineer, was trapped in a besieged Chinese port city in 1900?

A) Woodrow Wilson

B) Calvin Coolidge

C) Warren Harding

D) Herbert Hoover

Answer · why

D) Herbert Hoover

Herbert Hoover and his wife Lou were caught in the foreign settlement for weeks. He helped build barricades while she nursed the wounded and carried a...

Q 03/05

What supernatural protection did Boxer fighters believe their rituals of spirit possession gave them in battle?

A) Invisibility at night

B) The gift of prophecy

C) Immunity to bullets

D) Breathing underwater

Answer · why

C) Immunity to bullets

Immunity to bullets was the Boxers' great promise. Leaders staged proof for new recruits by firing guns loaded with blanks at one another.

Q 04/05

Kaiser Wilhelm II urged German troops sailing for China in 1900 to fight like which ancient warriors?

A) The Huns

B) The Vikings

C) The Spartans

D) The Vandals

Answer · why

A) The Huns

The Huns under Attila were the model Wilhelm named, telling his men to take no prisoners. British propaganda later turned the word into a wartime insu...

Q 05/05

Which American author called the Boxer a patriot and attacked clergy who seized reprisals from Chinese villages?

A) Jack London

B) Ambrose Bierce

C) Mark Twain

D) Henry James

Answer · why

C) Mark Twain

Mark Twain wished the Boxers success, and in a scathing 1901 essay he went after a respected American churchman who had led soldiers through villages ...