Q 01/05

Which former country, a union of South Slavic peoples long led by Tito, broke up in the early 1990s?

A) Czechoslovakia

B) Yugoslavia

C) Soviet Union

D) East Germany

Answer · why

B) Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia had been created after World War I as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and it split at first into five countries, setting off the...

Q 02/05

Which US state was an independent republic for almost ten years before the United States annexed it in 1845?

A) California

B) Vermont

C) Texas

D) Florida

Answer · why

C) Texas

Texas was a sovereign country for nine years and entered the Union as the 28th state, though the formal handover of power waited until February 1846.

Q 03/05

Which empire, the eastern heir of Rome, ended when Mehmed II captured Constantinople in 1453?

A) Carolingian

B) Sasanian

C) Seljuk

D) Byzantine

Answer · why

D) Byzantine

The Byzantine state was the last surviving part of the Roman Empire, so its fall closed a story that had begun in roughly 27 BC, nearly 1,500 years ea...

Q 04/05

Which French Enlightenment writer quipped that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire?

A) Voltaire

B) Montesquieu

C) Rousseau

D) Diderot

Answer · why

A) Voltaire

Voltaire's jibe outlived its target: Emperor Francis II dissolved the empire in 1806 after a military defeat by the French under Napoleon.

Q 05/05

Which tiny state was created in 1929, decades after Italy absorbed the much larger Papal States?

A) San Marino

B) Vatican City

C) Liechtenstein

D) Andorra

Answer · why

B) Vatican City

Vatican City was created by the Lateran Treaty, which ended the decades after 1870 when popes, having lost Rome, lived as self-declared prisoners in t...