98 Fun Facts About Middle School History

King Hammurabi, famous for the law code he issued, ruled which ancient city?

Babylon's king Hammurabi had his laws carved on a tall stone stele; centuries later it was carried off to Susa as war plunder, dug up there in 1901, and now stands in the Louvre.

The Silk Road took its name from a luxury textile produced mainly in which country?

China kept silk-making a closely guarded secret for centuries, so the cloth had to travel west by caravan; the name 'Silk Road' was only popularised in 1877, by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen.

The plague bacterium behind the Black Death spread mainly through the bites of which pest?

Fleas carried the plague bacterium, most likely riding on the black rats aboard merchant ships, which is how the Black Death is thought to have reached Europe's ports.

Twelve Genoese galleys brought the Black Death in October 1347 to which Mediterranean island?

Sicily's port of Messina was where the galleys docked, many of their sailors already dead or dying; the plague spread across the island and reached mainland Italy within months.

The Renaissance was first centred in which Italian city?

Florence's dominant banking family, the Medici, bankrolled artists and scholars, one reason the Renaissance took root there before spreading through the rest of Italy and Europe.

Whose Ninety-five Theses set off the Protestant Reformation?

Martin Luther wrote the theses against the sale of indulgences, then being preached in Germany to help pay for St Peter's in Rome; printers quickly spread them from city to city.

The Industrial Revolution began around 1760 in which country?

Great Britain, with its coal, canals and textile mills, industrialised first from about 1760; by about 1840 steam power and the factory system had spread to continental Europe and the United States.

How much did the United States pay France for the Louisiana territory in 1803?

The price was $15 million for about 828,000 square miles, less than three cents an acre, and the purchase nearly doubled the size of the United States.

Which leader had regained Louisiana for his country in 1800, three years before selling it to the US?

Napoleon Bonaparte regained Louisiana from Spain in the 1800 Treaty of San Ildefonso, trading territory in Tuscany for it, in the hope of rebuilding France's empire in North America.

Which president sent Lewis and Clark to explore the newly bought western lands?

Thomas Jefferson commissioned the Corps of Discovery in 1803; Lewis and Clark crossed the Continental Divide at Lemhi Pass and reached the Pacific in November 1805.

Sacagawea, who travelled with Lewis and Clark, was a young woman of which people?

Sacagawea was Lemhi Shoshone by the expedition's account, seized in a Hidatsa raid at about twelve; Lewis and Clark met her at Fort Mandan, where they hired her husband, the fur trader Toussaint Charbonneau, as interpreter.

The Golden Spike completing America's first transcontinental railroad was driven in 1869 in which state?

The Golden Spike was driven at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869, joining the Union Pacific from Omaha with the Central Pacific from Sacramento after six years of building.

The first immigrant processed at Ellis Island in 1892 was a teenage girl from which country?

Annie Moore from County Cork, Ireland, landed on January 1, 1892, with her two younger brothers to join their parents in America; as the first arrival she was handed a $10 gold piece.

About how many immigrants passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954?

About 12 million immigrants entered through Ellis Island between its opening in 1892 and its closure in 1954; by one estimate two-fifths of Americans have an ancestor among them.

The Wright brothers' first powered flight in 1903 happened near which North Carolina town?

Kitty Hawk drew the Wrights from Ohio because it was known for strong, frequent winds; on December 17, 1903, they made four flights nearby, the longest lasting 59 seconds with Wilbur at the controls.

Which amendment gave American women the right to vote nationally in 1920?

The 19th Amendment, ratified when Tennessee approved it in August 1920, barred denying the vote on account of sex; Wyoming had let women vote since 1869.

The Great Depression is usually said to have begun with which event in 1929?

The Wall Street crash of October 1929, with Black Thursday on the 24th and Black Tuesday on the 29th, is the usual starting point; the downturn lasted a decade and brought bank failures and mass unemployment worldwide.

The five D-Day landing beaches were Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and which other?

Sword, the easternmost beach and the one nearest Caen, was taken by the British 3rd Division on 6 June 1944; the landings, codenamed Operation Neptune, were the largest seaborne invasion in history.

Which Apollo 11 astronaut stayed in lunar orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the Moon?

Michael Collins circled the Moon alone in the command module Columbia; he was often described as the world's loneliest man, yet he insisted he never felt lonely.

Which 1962 standoff is considered the closest the Cold War came to nuclear war?

The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 began when US spy planes photographed Soviet missile sites in Cuba; the 13-day standoff ended with the Soviets withdrawing the missiles.

The best-known sections of the Great Wall of China were built by which dynasty?

The Ming dynasty (1368-1644) built the brick-and-stone sections near Beijing that tourists know, such as Badaling; the earliest walls date to the 7th century BC and were first joined under the Qin.

The Aztec capital Tenochtitlan was founded on islets in which body of water?

Tenochtitlan rose on islets in Lake Texcoco, linked to the shore by causeways; the lake was later drained, and Mexico City stands on the site today.

Which city was the political and military centre of the Inca Empire?

Cusco, high in the Peruvian Andes, was the capital from which the Inca realm's four quarters radiated; the Spanish later built their churches and palaces directly over its Inca walls.

Mansa Musa, one of history's richest people, ruled which West African empire?

Mansa Musa ruled the Mali Empire from about 1312 to 1337; his 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca, with a huge entourage carrying gold, made him famous across the Mediterranean world.

In Greek myth, Paris took Helen from her husband, the king of which city?

Helen's husband Menelaus was king of Sparta; her abduction launched the Trojan War, which ended with the trick of the wooden horse and is partly told in Homer's Iliad.

Which philosopher tutored the young Alexander the Great until he was 16?

Aristotle taught Alexander at Mieza from 343 BC, when the prince was 13, until he was 16; as his fee, the king rebuilt Aristotle's home town of Stagira, which he himself had destroyed.

Which German printer produced the 42-line Bible in the 1450s, Europe's first major book printed with movable type?

Johannes Gutenberg printed the Bible in Mainz, but before it could make his fortune his backer Johann Fust demanded his money back, and a court handed Fust the printing workshop.

Which English king sealed Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215?

King John, confronted by rebel barons, sealed Magna Carta on 15 June 1215 to head off civil war; four copies from that year survive, two of them in the British Library.

How many amendments make up the US Bill of Rights?

Ten amendments were ratified on December 15, 1791, out of twelve that Congress proposed in 1789; one of the two left behind, on congressional pay, finally became the 27th Amendment in 1992.

Which representative drafted the proposals that became the Bill of Rights?

James Madison, then a Virginia congressman, introduced the amendments in June 1789 after studying Anti-Federalist objections to the Constitution and turning them into corrective proposals.

On the Underground Railroad, what were the guides who led escaping people called?

Conductors led escapees from one safe house, or 'station', to the next; after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, anyone caught helping risked six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Besides the northern free states, escaping slaves on the Underground Railroad headed for which country?

Canada, where slavery had been abolished throughout the British Empire in 1834, was the main goal beyond the free states; the network was secret routes and safe houses rather than an actual railway.

Which Missouri town was the classic jumping-off point for wagons on the Oregon Trail?

Independence, Missouri, was where most emigrants of the 1840s outfitted their wagons and set off west; the trail ran about 2,000 miles to Oregon's Willamette Valley.

Which Frenchman, builder of the Suez Canal, led the failed first attempt to dig the Panama Canal?

Ferdinand de Lesseps, fresh from Suez, tried to dig a canal across Panama in the 1880s, but disease and bankruptcy ended the project; the canal finally opened under American control in August 1914.

Which US president championed the Panama Canal and sailed to inspect the dig in 1906?

Theodore Roosevelt sent warships to back Panama's break from Colombia in 1903, securing the canal zone; his 1906 visit to the dig was the first official trip abroad by a sitting president.

Roughly how many people died when the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage in April 1912?

About 1,500 of the roughly 2,200 people aboard died; the ship carried lifeboats for only about half of them, and the Carpathia picked up just over 700 survivors.

The Titanic was sailing from Southampton to which city when it hit an iceberg?

New York was where the Titanic's maiden voyage from Southampton was meant to end; the Carpathia picked up the survivors from the lifeboats and carried them there instead, arriving three days later.

The Rosetta Stone carries the same text in hieroglyphs, Demotic and which third script?

The third script is Greek, which scholars could already read; comparing it with the hieroglyphic text let Jean-François Champollion crack hieroglyphs in 1822.

Soldiers of which army found the Rosetta Stone in 1799?

French officer Pierre-François Bouchard found it in July 1799 during the French expedition to Egypt; after the French surrender it passed to Britain and has sat in the British Museum since 1802.

Which Spanish conquistador toppled the Aztec Empire, capturing its capital in 1521?

Hernán Cortés took the Aztec capital in August 1521 after a siege of nearly three months, and he won only with the help of thousands of native allies such as the Tlaxcalans.

Who was the last leader of the Soviet Union, resigning in December 1991?

Mikhail Gorbachev resigned on 25 December 1991 as the Soviet flag came down over the Kremlin; he had taken power in 1985 hoping to reform the Soviet system, not to end it.

Which US president gave his name to the Great Depression's shantytowns?

Herbert Hoover took office in March 1929, months before the slump began; his opponents dubbed the camps of the homeless 'Hoovervilles', and he was soundly beaten in the 1932 election.

The tea dumped into Boston Harbor in December 1773 belonged to which company?

The East India Company owned the 340-odd chests that the protesters dumped; Parliament answered in 1774 with the Coercive Acts, which pushed the colonies closer to revolt.

The Mayflower Pilgrims of 1620 founded Plymouth Colony in which present-day state?

Massachusetts was not the plan: the Mayflower's 102 passengers had permission to settle farther south, in the Virginia Company's lands, but made landfall at Cape Cod in November 1620 and stayed.

Which second ship was meant to sail with the Mayflower but was left behind as unseaworthy?

The Speedwell leaked twice after leaving Southampton, forcing both ships back into Dartmouth and then Plymouth; she was abandoned there, and the Pilgrims crossed in the Mayflower alone from 16 September 1620.

Which US president said in Berlin, 'Tear down this wall'?

Ronald Reagan made the demand at the Brandenburg Gate on 12 June 1987, over the objections of advisers who wanted the line cut as too provocative; the wall opened on 9 November 1989.

Columbus's three ships on his 1492 voyage were the Niña, the Pinta and which other?

Santa María, the largest of the three, ran aground on Christmas Day 1492 and had to be abandoned; Columbus had her dismantled to build a small fort, left 39 men there and sailed home.

Which of Lincoln's wartime acts declared enslaved people in the rebel states free from January 1, 1863?

The Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves only in the states in rebellion, but it also opened the Union army and navy to Black men, and almost 200,000 had served by the end of the war.

Alexander the Great became king at 20 when which ruler, his father, was assassinated?

Philip II was stabbed to death by Pausanias, one of his own bodyguards, in 336 BC; he had built Macedon's army and subdued most of Greece, the foundations of his son's conquests.

Marco Polo spent years in the service of which Mongol emperor before returning to Venice in 1295?

Kublai Khan sent Marco Polo on missions around his realm; Polo was away from Venice for 24 years in all, and his story survives because he dictated it while held in a Genoese prison.

The Great Pyramid of Giza was built as the tomb of which pharaoh?

Khufu's vizier Hemiunu is thought by some to have been the architect, and three smaller pyramids nearby were built for Khufu's wives.

Cuneiform, the earliest known writing system, was first developed to write which language?

Cuneiform was first used to write Sumerian in southern Mesopotamia more than 5,000 years ago; the wedge-shaped script grew out of clay accounting tokens, so the earliest writing was largely bookkeeping.

The ancient Olympic Games, first recorded in 776 BC, were held at Olympia in honor of which god?

Zeus was honoured at Olympia every four years; at the first recorded games the only event was a footrace of about 192 metres, won by a cook named Coroebus.

Which Roman senator, together with Cassius, led the plot to kill Julius Caesar on the Ides of March?

Brutus and some sixty fellow senators stabbed Caesar on 15 March 44 BC, hoping to restore the Republic; instead the killing set off the civil wars that finished it.

Which volcano buried the Roman city of Pompeii in 79 AD?

Vesuvius buried Pompeii under a deep blanket of ash and pumice in 79 AD, sealing the city so well that the explorers who rediscovered it in 1748 found it largely intact.

Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, fell in 1453 to which empire?

The Ottoman army of Sultan Mehmed II took the city on 29 May 1453 after a 53-day siege, and he promptly made it his new capital.

Which king of the Franks was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III in Rome on Christmas Day 800?

Charlemagne was crowned by Leo at Christmas mass in St Peter's; his biographer Einhard claimed the king would not have entered the church that day had he known the pope's plan.

According to the sagas, Leif Erikson founded a Norse settlement in a land he called what?

Leif called it Vinland, named in the sagas for the grapes found there; many link it to L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, a Norse site occupied about 1,000 years ago.

Which English king was defeated and killed at the Battle of Hastings in 1066?

Harold Godwinson died at Hastings on 14 October 1066; only three weeks earlier he had beaten Harald Hardrada's Norwegian invasion at Stamford Bridge, then marched south to face the Normans.

Pope Urban II's call at Clermont in 1095 launched the First Crusade, which captured which city in 1099?

Jerusalem fell to the crusaders in July 1099, nearly four years after Urban's sermon; they founded a Christian kingdom there that held the city until Saladin retook it in 1187.

Joan of Arc is famous for her role in lifting the 1429 siege of which city?

Joan reached Orléans in late April 1429 and the English abandoned the siege on 8 May; she was about seventeen then, and about nineteen when she was burned at Rouen in 1431.

What was Genghis Khan's birth name?

He was born Temüjin, around 1162; after his father Yesügei was poisoned, his family was abandoned by its tribe, an unlikely start for the founder of the Mongol Empire.

Which Chinese admiral led seven treasure-fleet voyages between 1405 and 1433?

Zheng He, a Muslim-born court eunuch, led the fleets for the Yongle Emperor, carrying envoys and luxury goods as far as Hormuz and Mogadishu to show off the dynasty's wealth and power.

After Magellan died in the Philippines, who led the expedition's return to Spain in 1522?

Juan Sebastián Elcano brought the Victoria home to Spain in September 1522 with just eighteen survivors; five ships and about 270 men had left in 1519, and his crew completed the first circumnavigation.

Which Jamestown leader ruled that only colonists who worked would eat?

John Smith became president of Jamestown's council in September 1608, the year after the colony was founded; under his work rule the settlers dug a well, planted crops and repaired their burned fort.

In which New England town were nineteen people hanged for witchcraft in 1692?

Salem's trials sent nineteen people to the gallows, and Giles Corey was crushed under stones for refusing to plead; in 1697 the colony held a day of fasting to atone for the tragedy.

Which silversmith rode to Lexington to warn that British troops were coming?

Paul Revere reached Lexington ahead of William Dawes, who had been sent by a longer road, and warned Samuel Adams and John Hancock, whom the troops were thought to be coming to arrest.

Which British general's army was defeated at the Siege of Yorktown in 1781?

Charles Cornwallis was trapped at Yorktown between Washington's allied army and de Grasse's fleet; his surrender in October 1781 ended the last major land battle of the war and opened the way to peace talks.

The 1787 Constitutional Convention that wrote the US Constitution met in which city?

Philadelphia's State House hosted the delegates from May to September 1787; called together to revise the Articles of Confederation, they wrote a new constitution instead, and 39 of the 55 signed it.

British troops burned the White House and the Capitol during which war?

The War of 1812 was in its third year; with fighting in Europe over by spring 1814, Britain sent veteran troops who took Washington late that August and burned the White House and Capitol.

Key's "Star-Spangled Banner" lyrics describe the 1814 bombardment of which place?

Fort McHenry guarded Baltimore's harbor; Francis Scott Key watched the British bombard it through the night of 13-14 September 1814 from a truce ship, and at dawn saw its flag still flying.

Which Mexican general led the troops that retook the Alamo in 1836?

Santa Anna, then Mexico's president as well as its general, stormed the Alamo on March 6, 1836, ending a 13-day siege; his execution of captured defenders spurred Texians to join the Texian Army.

Which 1830 law set in motion the Trail of Tears?

The Indian Removal Act, signed by Andrew Jackson, let the government exchange tribes' homelands for land west of the Mississippi; in 1838 soldiers forced the Cherokee from their homes and marched them west, and thousands died.

Gold-seekers who rushed to California after the find at Sutter's Mill were nicknamed what?

Forty-niners took their name from 1849, the year the great wave of gold-seekers arrived; the rush filled California so quickly that it became a state in 1850.

Harriet Tubman's rescue missions on the Underground Railroad earned her which biblical nickname?

Moses was the name fellow abolitionists gave Tubman; in about 13 trips into Maryland she brought some 70 people out of slavery and, by her own account, never lost a passenger.

The Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 was fought in which state?

Gettysburg, in southern Pennsylvania, was where the Union army halted Lee's invasion of the North in three days of fighting, July 1-3, 1863, and forced his army to retreat.

Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, in the parlor of whose house?

Wilmer McLean had moved to Appomattox from a farm near Manassas, where the war's first major battle, Bull Run, was fought in 1861; the war, he is said to have remarked, began in his front yard and ended in his parlor.

Lincoln was watching which play at Ford's Theatre when he was shot in April 1865?

Lincoln was watching Our American Cousin, a comedy, on April 14, 1865; Booth and his conspirators had first plotted to kidnap the president, not to kill him.

Which engineer built the metal framework inside the Statue of Liberty?

Gustave Eiffel took over after the statue's first engineer, Viollet-le-Duc, died in 1879; instead of a rigid core he designed an iron skeleton that lets Bartholdi's thin copper skin move.

The USS Maine exploded and sank in which harbor in February 1898?

The Maine blew up in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898, for reasons never settled; 'Remember the Maine' became the cry that helped push the US into the Spanish-American War that April.

Henry Ford's Model T was popularly known by what nickname?

Tin Lizzie was the Model T's nickname; Ford's assembly line made the car cheap enough for ordinary families, and millions had been built by the time production ended.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated on 28 June 1914 in which city?

Sarajevo's plotters first threw a bomb that missed the archduke's car; later that day, as he drove to visit the wounded in hospital, a wrong turn left the car stopped in front of Gavrilo Princip, who shot the couple.

Which British ocean liner was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat in May 1915?

Lusitania sank in under 20 minutes on 7 May 1915 with the loss of nearly 1,200 lives, more than 120 of them American, and the outrage helped turn US opinion against Germany.

The Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919 in which room of the palace?

The treaty was signed in the Hall of Mirrors on 28 June 1919, the fifth anniversary of the assassination that triggered the war, in the room where the German Empire had been proclaimed in 1871.

Pearl Harbor, attacked by Japan on December 7, 1941, is on which island?

Oahu's Pearl Harbor was struck just before 8 a.m. on a Sunday; more than 2,400 Americans were killed, and the United States declared war on Japan the next day.

What was the nickname of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945?

Little Boy was a uranium gun-type bomb dropped by the B-29 Enola Gay; the design was never tested before use, since the only test, Trinity, had been of the plutonium type later dropped on Nagasaki.

Anne Frank's family hid from the Nazis in a secret annex in which city?

The annex was at Prinsengracht 263 in Amsterdam, concealed behind a bookcase in the building where her father Otto's business operated; the family hid there from July 1942 until August 1944.

Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color line in 1947 with which team?

Robinson debuted for the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field on April 15, 1947; general manager Branch Rickey had signed him from the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro leagues.

Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat in 1955 in which Alabama city?

Parks was arrested in Montgomery on December 1, 1955; she had been secretary of the city's NAACP chapter since 1943, long before the bus boycott made her famous.

The 1954 school segregation case Brown vs. Board of Education came from which city?

Topeka parent Oliver Brown sued in 1951 after his daughter Linda was refused a place at the city's all-white elementary schools; the Supreme Court ruled unanimously for him three years later.

Martin Luther King Jr. gave "I Have a Dream" in 1963 from the steps of which landmark?

King spoke from the Lincoln Memorial to about 250,000 marchers on August 28, 1963; the 'dream' passage was not in his script, and came after the singer Mahalia Jackson called out to him to tell the crowd about the dream.

Which Soviet satellite became the first artificial object to orbit Earth?

Sputnik 1, a metal sphere under two feet across, circled Earth in just over an hour and a half; the shock it gave the United States set off the Space Race and led to NASA's creation.

Which queen of France was executed by guillotine in October 1793?

Marie Antoinette, the Austrian-born wife of Louis XVI, was guillotined in Paris on 16 October 1793; the line 'Let them eat cake' was pinned on her, but there is no evidence she ever said it.

Howard Carter discovered the nearly intact tomb of which pharaoh in November 1922?

Tutankhamun's tomb was opened in November 1922 by Carter and his patron, Lord Carnarvon; when Carnarvon died a few months later, newspapers spread the legend of a pharaoh's curse.

Which American historian brought Machu Picchu to international attention in 1911?

Hiram Bingham, a Yale lecturer, was led up to the ruins in July 1911 by a local farmer and made them famous abroad; the site had never been lost to the people who lived nearby.

The Great Fire of London in 1666 began in a bakery on which street?

The fire began in Thomas Farriner's bakery on Pudding Lane shortly after midnight on Sunday 2 September 1666, and an east wind turned it into a firestorm before demolitions could stop it.

Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison on which island?

Robben Island, a former leper colony off Cape Town, held Mandela from 1964 to 1982 in a small cell, with days of hard labour in a lime quarry; he walked free in 1990 and became president in 1994.

Who in 1932 became the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic?

Amelia Earhart left Newfoundland on May 20, 1932, in a red Lockheed Vega and came down the next day in a cow field near Derry; Congress awarded her the Distinguished Flying Cross for the flight.