Q 01/05

Which California ghost town is preserved in a state of 'arrested decay'?

A) Bodie

B) Cerro Gordo

C) Calico

D) Ballarat

Answer · why

A) Bodie

Bodie's interiors stay as the last residents left them, shelves still stocked; fires in 1892 and 1932 left fewer than a tenth of its roughly 2,000 bui...

Q 02/05

What 1986 event left the Soviet city of Pripyat abandoned?

A) Semipalatinsk test

B) Chernobyl explosion

C) Kyshtym accident

D) Spitak earthquake

Answer · why

B) Chernobyl explosion

The Chernobyl explosion at reactor No. 4 on 26 April 1986 forced Pripyat's residents out the next day; they were told the evacuation would last three ...

Q 03/05

Which Namibian diamond town near Lüderitz now has houses knee-deep in sand?

A) Oranjemund

B) Kolmanskop

C) Tsumeb

D) Walvis Bay

Answer · why

B) Kolmanskop

Kolmanskop grew up after a railway worker found a diamond there in 1908; once the mines moved south it emptied in the 1950s, and Namib sand has drifte...

Q 04/05

Why was the Italian hilltop village of Craco largely abandoned in the 20th century?

A) Volcanic eruptions

B) Severe droughts

C) Wartime bombing

D) Landslides and quakes

Answer · why

D) Landslides and quakes

Landslides and quakes emptied Craco: residents began moving downhill to Craco Peschiera in 1963 after a series of landslides, and the last were ordere...

Q 05/05

The French village of Oradour-sur-Glane was destroyed in a massacre during which conflict?

A) World War I

B) Franco-Prussian War

C) Algerian War

D) World War II

Answer · why

D) World War II

World War II's Waffen-SS killed the villagers on June 10, 1944; the ruins were left standing as a permanent memorial.