General History

Question 1

All cattle are descended from as few as 80 animals that were domesticated from wild ox in the Near East some 10,500 years ago

Question 2

During the English renaissance, poets and playwrights like Shakespeare and Thomas elyot introduced new words to the English language. This was called the ____ where people resisted these additions. Shakespeare himself added around 1750 words and idioms

Answer 2

inkhorn controversy

Question 3

The English language is an amalgamation of so many other languages. A lot of languages have contributed to the evolution of English, like Germanic languages, the Vikings language etc.. following war and conquest has resulted in the evolution of any language. Numerous words from India alone have become common in English today, such as: pyjamas; khaki; bungalow; jodhpurs; juggernaut; curry; chutney; shampoo and thug

Question 4

At one point of time, ___ worlds population was speaking sanskrit

Answer 4

a quarter of the

Question 5

Modern humans left Africa 60000 years ago. South America is the last continent they conquered

Question 6

Native Americans came to America after crossing the land bridge between Asia and Alaska. They originally seemed to have come from East Asia, but they don’t look similar to any East Asian population today (Japanese, Korean and Chinese). It’s been discovered that there was another Eurasian population this East Asian population mixed with to form the native american population we know today.

Question 7

Humans had seen Uranus before it had laid its eyes on Antarctica

Question 8

Angkor wat used slaves to build their temples.

Question 9

Switzerland has remained neutral for most of their existence. So much so, that they joined the UN in 2002. They are not part of the EU or NATO. During WW2, they remained neutral by rigging up their entry points (roads, bridges etc.. ) with explosives. One dark side of this is that during neutrality, they traded with everyone, but a lot more with Nazi Germany. They provided them with military help and also stored a lot of the looted gold and art for them. So they did pander a lot to the Nazis.

Question 10

Eiernockerl (German for “egg dumplings”) was hitlers favorite food. He was vegetarian. Hitler was a vegetarian because of his concern for animal suffering, noting that he was often distressed by images of animal cruelty and suffering

Question 11

The Achaemenid empire was an early Persian empire which existed before Islam. They followed the Zoroastrian religion and is considered the worlds first super power. They also conquered north (then) India around 535BC by Cyrus the great.

The Achaemenid or the Achaemenian Empire[15] (/əˈkiːmənɪd/; Old Persian: 𐎧𐏁𐏂, Xšāça, lit. ‘The Empire’[16] or ‘The Kingdom’[17]), also called the First Persian Empire,[18] was an ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Based in Western Asia, it was contemporarily the largest empire in history, spanning a total of 5.5 million square kilometres (2.1 million square miles) from the Balkans and ancient Egypt in the west to the Indus Valley in the east.[11][12]

By 330 BC, the Achaemenid Empire was conquered in its entirety by Greek Macedonia under Alexander the Great, an ardent admirer of Cyrus the Great.

Question 12

The Kremlin literally means a government building surrounded by walls. So every city in Russia has a Kremlin.

Question 13

https://qr.ae/pGYSz2

Question 14

Trivia:- in older times, the cake was supposed to represent the bride’s virginity and her cutting the cake was supposed to represent breaking of the hymen.Cake cutting was hardly known or practiced 125 years ago. It was brought to India by Britishers & Christians.What is the history and significance of Cake Cutting? What does the act of cutting cake represent? Cake cutting, now performed on birthdays, was initially practiced only on weddings.Traditionally, it was the bride who cut the cake on her wedding.Cake was a metaphor for bride (Although now gender neutral gender, English had terms like sweetpie, cupcake denoting women)In medieval Christian culture, the cake represented a woman (as they both could be bought, sold and transferred from hand to hand in their society), the very act of cake cutting represented “the imminent loss of virginity”

Question 15

The American bison (the one you see in Yellowstone) was an endangered species at the beginning of the century. White settlers had almost gotten rid of them because that was one way of controlling the Indian population. Native Indians used the American bison for everything including meat and hide and clothing. Getting rid of the bison would force native Indians to rely on federal food. Because of this they were systematically hunted.

Question 16

Afrikaans is the language spoken by the first Dutch settlers who settled in South Africa (its 90% dutch)

Question 17

The Phoenicians were an early civilization which originated in Lebanon in around 1000 bc. The are known for the creation of the earliest known alphabet. English alphabets today have origins dating back to the Phoenician script

Question 18

Herculaneum was hit with the pyroclastic flow first. People were vaporized here. In Pompeii people died by asphyxiation after similar pyroclastic flows.

Question 19

Mount Vesuvius last erupted in 1944 (Pompeii was 79AD)

Question 20

Plyny the younger wrote eye witness account of the Pompeii eruption. Plyny the elder was the head of the Roman army who lived close by. He took a navy boat to rescue refugees. He eventually died

Question 21

Elvis priestly died while pooping. He was putting too much pressure which resulted in a heart attack. He was suffering from constipation for the last 4 months of his life

Question 22

More people will die of starvation than the pandemic (during the covid 19 pandemic)

Question 23

In 1945, a B52 plane crashed into the empire state building. 14 people died.

Question 24

A US naval vessel(USS Vincennes ) accidentally shot down an Iranian commercial airplane thinking it was an enemy aircraft. Very similar to the Malaysian airlines shot down by Ukrainians thinking it was a fighter plane.

Question 25

Ferdinand Magellan (Portuguese explorer) travelled around the world in 1520.

Question 26

The first ever city that was to be was in Jericho. It was in modern day West Bank. Had a city wall and around 2000 people. Catalhoyuk (modern day turkey) and Uruk (Iraq) were other cities which came after Jericho. The name Iraq comes from this city Uruk .

Question 27

The Namib desert is the oldest desert in the world. Its 80M years old. Was there during the jurassic period.

Question 28

Operation Unthinkable was a 1945 plan by Winston Churchill to start World War Ill immediately after World War Il with a pre-emptive allied attack on the Soviet Union.

Question 29

The first Europeans landed in Australia in 1600s . In 500 years they seemed to have developed their own culture, own accent.

Question 30

Marquis de favras was a French aristocrat who was sentenced to death during the French Revolution. He is known for deadpanning (Deadpan, dry humour, or dry-wit humour is the deliberate display of emotional neutrality or no emotion, commonly as a form of comedic delivery): “I see that you have made three spelling mistakes,” upon reading his death sentence warrant.

Question 31

Pakistan made Urdu the official language of Bangladesh. One of reasons an independence movement erupted

Question 32

When Morarji desai became the first non congress PM of India in 1977, George fernandes was the industry minister. He threw out IBM, Coca Cola and Pepsi and threw out JRD Tata as the chairman of Air India. Air India started declining then. Indira Gandhi came back to power

Question 33

The Mỹ Lai massacre was the mass murder of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by United States troops in Sơn Tịnh District, South Vietnam, on 16 March 1968 during the Vietnam War. Between 347 and 504 unarmed people were killed by U.S. Army soldiers

Question 34

Lilith, the lesser-known first wife of Adam who was kicked out of the Garden of Eden. Adam insisted she lie beneath him, but she wanted to lie next to him and be equal. Because she refused to be subservient to Adam, Lilith left the Garden of Eden and became associated with the archangel Samael. We know of Lilith because she is represented as a demon in many religious mysticism texts; she is never mentioned in the Bible. It doesn’t get much more badass than getting rejected from the Bible, does it?

Question 35

In the 1968 Olympics, nearly five decades before Kaepernick’s act, two African American athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, raised their fists in the air during the American anthem to drive home a message on human rights.

Question 36

The term “lobbyist” gained currency in Washington, where people hung out in the Willard’s lobby seeking to influence US presidents and other politicians.willard intercontinental is also the hotel in DC where Trump and his folks had setup a war room to monitor Jan 6.

Question 37

American pioneers were European American and African American settlers who migrated westward from the Thirteen Colonies and later United States to settle in and develop areas of North America that had previously been inhabited or utilized by Native Americans.

Question 38

Why humans rule the world
- 70,000 years ago, we were very insignificant creatures. Our impact on the world was the same as a jellyfish, crow or woodpecker would have. Today in contrast we control the planet. HOW ? How did we change ourselves from being insignificant apes from a corner in africa to rulers of planet earth. How does my body or my brain make me so superior to a dog or chimpanzee.
- We are the only species that can cooperate very flexibly in very large numbers. Bees and ants for example do co-operate, but not flexibly. Their co-op is very rigid. There is just one way in which a be hive can function. If there is a new danger for example, they can never reinvent their social system overnight. They cannot execute the queen and establish a republic or a communist dictatorship of worker bees. What this means is that if they can never reinvent their social structures overnight.
- Chimpanzees and wolves and elephants live in social structures and can cope a little more fliexibly. If I am a chimp and your a chimp ill have to know what kind of chim are you. My co-op with you wil depend on that. Are you evil are you trustworthy, are you violent. Only we can do it both flxibly and in very large numbers. So if you pit one human vs another human, the chimp may win, but you pit 1000 chimps and 1000 humans, a 1000 chimps can never win as a 1000 of them can never cooperate. If you gather 100,000 chimps in tinamen square or eden gardens or yankee stadium, you will get chaos, utter chaos. But when you gather humans you usually get is extremely sophisticated and effective networks of co-op. If you look at great achievement of humans like building pyramids or going to the moon, all of this has been based on our ability to coop in large numbers.
- I dont know who made this computer, nor this software. Even though we dont know each other, we can work together to create this global exchange of ideas. Chimps can never do that. They communicate but not give a talk about bananas. A lot of bad things have also come about which represent the same co-op : prisons, slaughter houses and concentration camps. All are a result of coop. Chimps dont have them. What enables us to do something like this ?
- The reason we are able to do this is because of our imagination. We are the only species who can imagine fiction. All other animals can only perceive and imagine reality but not more. Animals use their language to describe reality (there is a banana tree or look there is a lion). Humans can use our imagination to create alternate realities. Humans can say there is this god which you have to believe else he will punish you. Then we all start believing the same god, the same norms, laws and values and we can coop. You can never convince a chimp that if you give me that banana you will go to chimp heaven and there will be lots and lots of bananas. The same fiction can be found in states and nations. What are states and nations, they are not objective reality. They are man made stories we have grown extremely attached to. Look at politics, companies, co-operations. Money is an another example. Its a worthless piece of paper, but when a govt tells you that its worth something and you and I believe it, I can go to a store, give that paper to a stranger and get bananas in return. Chimps can never do thart. Money is the most successful story ever told by humans, because everybody believes it. Not every one believe in god, in existence of statesm, in nationalism. We live in a dual reality, all other animals live in objective reality which ocnsists of rivers, trees, lions.

Question 39

Pandemics and deaths
COVID deaths - 5M
1918 Spanish Flu - 50M
AIDS - 40M
Bubonic Plague/Black death (1346-1353) - 70M - 200M (60% of europe)
Plague of Justinian (541-542) - 25M (50%of Europe’s population)

Question 40

Christians told Shaka Zulu (was the leader of the Zulu kingdom in the early 1800s. The Zulu Kingdom,, was a monarchy in Southern Africa) if he converted he will not burn in eternal fire.He replied, “Around here we eat fire!”

Question 41

Phillip II of Macedon to Sparta: “You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city.”

Sparta: “If.”

Question 42

Robert Surcouf, a famous French corsair (privateer) and all-around badass, discussing with a British officer after capturing his ship, the Kent:
British officer: “You French fight for money, while we British fight for honor.”
Robert Surcouf: “Sir, a man fights for what he lacks the most.”

Question 43

My favorite is a story of a Gurkha. Late on in the Second World War, as the Allies were fighting their way across northern Europe, a battalion of Gurkhas was asked to provide some volunteers for a mission behind enemy lines.

“The unit was paraded, and a staff officer explained the mission: “It is absolutely vital that you need to go in and secure the position. We only expect light resistance from the Germans. You’ll be dropped from an aircraft at 1200 feet.”

“The Gurkhas’ own commanding officer then asked for volunteers to take one step forward. About half of the men stepped forward.”

“The British officer was surprised. “I thought the Gurkhas were supposed to be the bravest men of all,” he said to the Gurkha c/o. “And it’s not as though we expect this to be a particularly dangerous job.”
“True,” said the Gurkha officer. “But half of them have just volunteered to jump from 1200 feet. Perhaps you should tell them they’ll have parachutes.”