World (General) Flashcards
In 1792, Denmark became the first modern nation–and Mauritania, in 1981, the last–to do what?
Abolish slavery
The now-peaceful vista at The Somme might be a part of a tour of places that entered history as battlefields in this war.
World War I
A legend says John Alden was the first to set foot on this slab made of Dedham granite.
Plymouth Rock
“Tulip mania” was a period in this country’s history during which contract prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and fashionable tulip reached extraordinarily high levels and then dramatically collapsed in February 1637.
Netherlands
What was anatomically unusual about the eagle used as an imperial symbol by the medieval Byzantines, and then by the Holy Roman Empire and Tsarist Russia?
It was two-headed.
This nation joined the Warsaw Pact in 1955 and NATO in 2009, and was alphabetically first in each.
Albania
Human rights campaigner Rigoberta Menchú, who won the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, has fought for the rights of indigenous peoples in what country, her homeland, where she ran for president in 2007 and 2011 as a candidate of indigenous political parties?
Guatemala
The St. Lawrence River, Frobisher Bay, Davis Strait, Hudson River, Hudson Bay, and Baffin Bay were all discovered by European explorers seeking a route by sea between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. By what name was this desired “Passage” known most commonly, including by these explorers?
Northwest Passage
Sinhalese statesman Don Stephen Senanayake was a chief architect of the independence from the British Empire of what island nation, as well as its first Prime Minister?
Sri Lanka
Historians have called 1628 and particularly 1816 “the year without” what?
Unseasonably cold years like these are often dubbed “the year without a summer.” The 1816 one was caused by a massive volcanic eruption in southeast Asia, and led to hundreds of thousands of death from famine and cold toes.
The territorial extent of the historical region known as al-Andalus varied over time during the roughly 800 years of its existence that effectively ended in 1492, but it was always confined to what peninsula?
Iberia
The Princely States were more than 500 principalities and kingdoms, with rulers of various faiths, that existed from the 1850s until 1947, the majority of which located in what present-day country?
India
Numerous fossils found at the Zhoukoudian cave complex are of a homo erectus subspecies known colloquially as a “Man” named after what city?
Peking (Beijing)
What name fills in the blank in this partial, chronological list? Lie, Hammarskjöld, Thant, _______, Pérez de Cuéllar…
(Kurt) Waldheim
This is the name given to a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Easter Island. It has yet to be deciphered but could be one of the very few independent inventions of writing in human history.
Rongorongo
