100 Fun Facts About Modern History

The Wright brothers made the first controlled, powered flight in December 1903 near which town?

Kitty Hawk in North Carolina: the Wrights flew from the dunes at Kill Devil Hills, four miles south of the town, on 17 December 1903; the first hop lasted 12 seconds.

The Titanic sank in April 1912 on a voyage from Southampton to where?

New York City was the destination; Titanic struck an iceberg late on 14 April 1912 and sank early on 15 April, with about 1,500 of the roughly 2,200 aboard lost.

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

In Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 the Bosnian Serb student Gavrilo Princip shot the Archduke and his wife Sophie at close range, lighting the fuse of the First World War.

How many casualties did the British Army suffer on the first day of the Somme, 1 July 1916?

57,470 British casualties, including 19,240 killed, made 1 July 1916 the bloodiest single day in the British Army's history.

The Balfour Declaration of November 1917 was a letter from the British foreign secretary to whom?

Arthur Balfour addressed the 2 November 1917 letter to Lord Rothschild, a leader of Britain's Jewish community, pledging support for a 'national home for the Jewish people' in Palestine.

Who led the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution of 1917?

Vladimir Lenin led the Bolshevik seizure of power in Petrograd on 7 November 1917 (25 October in the old Russian calendar), toppling Kerensky's Provisional Government.

The 1918-1920 influenza pandemic is estimated to have killed at least how many people?

Estimates run from 17 to 50 million and possibly 100 million; the earliest probable cases were in Kansas, not Spain.

On what date was the Treaty of Versailles signed?

Exactly five years to the day after Franz Ferdinand's assassination.

Gandhi's 1930 march to Dandi was a protest against what?

The British salt monopoly was the target; the 24-day walk to Dandi ran from 12 March to 6 April 1930 as a campaign of tax resistance.

The Wall Street crash that began the Great Depression happened in which month and year?

October 1929: Black Thursday (24 October) and Black Tuesday (29 October) saw the Dow collapse, opening the Depression generally dated 1929 to 1939.

Which president introduced the phrase 'New Deal' when accepting his party's nomination in 1932?

Franklin D. Roosevelt told the 1932 Democratic convention 'I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people'; the reforms ran from 1933 to 1938 after his landslide over Hoover.

The Weimar Republic ended in what year?

Germany's first constitutional republic ran from November 1918 to March 1933; Hitler had joined the tiny DAP in September 1919.

The Spanish Civil War was fought between the Republicans and which rebel side?

The Nationalists under Franco, backed by Germany and Italy, defeated the Soviet-backed Republic in a war that ran from July 1936 to April 1939.

Kristallnacht, the Nazi pogrom against Jews, took place on which nights?

On 9-10 November 1938 the SA and SS led attacks that smashed Jewish shops and burned hundreds of synagogues while police looked on; some 30,000 Jewish men were sent to camps.

Which August 1939 pact secretly carved up Eastern Europe between Germany and the USSR?

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939 carried a secret protocol dividing Poland, the Baltic states and Bessarabia between Germany and the USSR; Germany invaded Poland on 1 September.

How many Americans were killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor?

2,403 Americans died, including 1,177 aboard USS Arizona; Roosevelt called 7 December 1941 'a date which will live in infamy'.

Which World War II battle, fought from July 1942 to February 1943, is considered the largest and deadliest urban battle in history?

Stalingrad ended on 2 February 1943 with the surrender of Paulus's Sixth Army; roughly two million soldiers and civilians were killed, wounded or captured in the city's ruins.

Which of the five D-Day beaches saw the highest casualties?

Omaha Beach cost the Americans about 2,400 casualties on 6 June 1944, the worst of the five beaches, as bluffs and intact German defences covered the shore.

The atomic bombs used in 1945 were designed at which laboratory?

Los Alamos, directed by Robert Oppenheimer, produced both designs: Little Boy was a uranium gun-type bomb, Fat Man a plutonium implosion device.

On which two dates were atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

6 and 9 August 1945: Little Boy hit Hiroshima and Fat Man hit Nagasaki, killing an estimated 150,000 to 246,000 people by the end of 1945.

How many leading Nazis were tried by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945-46?

22 defendants were tried (Martin Bormann in absentia); 24 had been indicted but Robert Ley killed himself and Gustav Krupp was ruled unfit. Twelve were sentenced to death.

India and Pakistan legally came into existence at midnight on which date in 1947?

At midnight on 14-15 August 1947 Nehru made his 'tryst with destiny' speech; Mountbatten had brought the date forward from June 1948, and partition displaced 12 to 20 million people.

How much did the United States transfer to Western Europe under the Marshall Plan?

$13.3 billion flowed through the European Recovery Program between April 1948 and 1951; Britain received the largest share, followed by France.

The Berlin Blockade of 1948-49 saw the Soviets cut off which access routes to West Berlin?

Railway, road and canal links were cut from 24 June 1948; the Allies flew in supplies by air until the Soviets lifted the blockade on 12 May 1949.

The People's Republic of China was proclaimed on which date?

On 1 October 1949 Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic from Tiananmen Gate in Beijing; Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists withdrew to Taiwan that December.

Along which line was Korea divided into occupation zones after 1945?

The 38th parallel split the Soviet and US zones in 1945; North Korea invaded across it on 25 June 1950, and the 1953 armistice line runs close to it.

Who nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956, prompting invasion by Britain, France and Israel?

Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the canal on 26 July 1956; pressure from both the US and USSR forced Britain, France and Israel to withdraw, a humiliation that ended Britain's great-power pretensions.

The Treaty of Rome, signed in 1957, created what?

The European Economic Community was created by the six signatories (Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany) and came into being on 1 January 1958 alongside Euratom.

Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, was launched on which date?

4 October 1957: Sputnik 1 went up from Baikonur; its beeps set off the Space Race and, in the U.S., a scramble to fund science education.

Aboard which spacecraft did Yuri Gagarin become the first person in space on 12 April 1961?

Vostok 1 carried Gagarin once around Earth in 108 minutes on 12 April 1961; it was his only spaceflight, and he died in a 1968 jet crash.

Construction of the Berlin Wall began on which date?

13 August 1961: East German troops sealed the border overnight with barbed wire; concrete followed, and the Wall stood for 28 years.

How many days did the Cuban Missile Crisis last?

13 days, from 16 to 28 October 1962; the Soviet missiles in Cuba matched US missiles already in Britain, Italy and Turkey.

Who shot Lee Harvey Oswald two days after the Kennedy assassination?

Jack Ruby fired on live television, and the Warren Commission later found no conspiracy.

Rosa Parks's 1955 refusal to give up her bus seat sparked a boycott in which city?

The Montgomery bus boycott made a young Martin Luther King Jr. a national figure.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlaws discrimination on which grounds?

Race, colour, religion, sex and national origin are the five grounds; 'sex' was added to Title VII by a floor amendment, while age (1967) and disability (1990) came in later laws.

Which 1964 naval episode led Congress to hand President Johnson broad war powers in Vietnam?

The war ended with the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975.

The Cultural Revolution in China lasted from 1966 until what event?

Mao Zedong's death in September 1976 ended it; the Gang of Four were arrested within a month, and Deng Xiaoping then steered China toward a market economy.

Which territories did Israel capture in the Six-Day War of June 1967?

West Bank, Gaza, Sinai and Golan Heights all fell to Israel between 5 and 10 June 1967; East Jerusalem came with the West Bank, and Sinai was returned to Egypt in 1982.

Which forces invaded Czechoslovakia in late summer 1968 to end the Prague Spring?

Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary and Poland joined; Alexander Dubček's reforms had begun that January.

Who stayed in lunar orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the Moon?

Michael Collins circled the Moon alone in Columbia while Eagle sat in the Sea of Tranquility for more than 21 hours from 20 July 1969.

Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign on which date?

August 9, 1974: Nixon's resignation took effect at noon and Gerald Ford was sworn in; the Watergate break-in had happened on 17 June 1972.

Which cleric replaced the Shah as Iran's supreme leader after the 1979 revolution?

Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile on 1 February 1979 and became Supreme Leader under the new Islamic constitution; he had been expelled in 1964 after attacking the Shah's reforms.

Solidarity was founded in 1980 at a shipyard in which city?

The Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk was where the August 1980 strike, led by electrician Lech Wałęsa, won the right to form the Eastern bloc's first independent trade union.

Which unit exploded at Chernobyl on 26 April 1986?

Reactor 4 exploded during a botched safety test at 01:23 on 26 April 1986; the ruined unit was entombed in a concrete sarcophagus that November.

The Berlin Wall fell on which date?

Weeks later Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution, 17 to 28 November, toppled its communist government without violence.

Whose death in April 1989 triggered the Tiananmen Square protests?

Hu Yaobang, the reformist former party general secretary, died on 15 April 1989; mourning turned to protest, martial law was declared on 20 May and troops cleared the square on 3-4 June.

To whom did Gorbachev transfer the Soviet nuclear launch codes when he resigned on 25 December 1991?

Boris Yeltsin, as Russia's president, received the nuclear briefcase; that evening the Soviet flag came down from the Kremlin for the last time, and the USSR was dissolved the next day.

How many years did Nelson Mandela spend in prison?

27 years, from his 1962 arrest to 11 February 1990: first on Robben Island, then Pollsmoor and Victor Verster; F. W. de Klerk freed him and he became president in 1994.

The Maastricht Treaty of 1992 is the founding treaty of what?

The European Union was created when the twelve member states signed at Maastricht on 7 February 1992, promising EU citizenship and a single currency; it took effect on 1 November 1993.

The Rwandan genocide of 1994 unfolded over roughly how many days?

About 100 days, from 7 April to mid-July 1994, in which Hutu extremists killed an estimated 500,000 to 800,000 people, mostly Tutsi, before the RPF took Kigali.

The Good Friday Agreement was signed on 10 April of which year?

1998: the agreement, signed in Belfast on 10 April 1998 and endorsed by referendums on both sides of the border that May, ended most of the violence of the Troubles.

On 11 September 2001, which building was hit by American Airlines Flight 77?

The Pentagon was struck by Flight 77 at 9:37 a.m., killing 125 in the building and 64 aboard; Flight 93's passengers fought back and it crashed in Pennsylvania.

Whose self-immolation in Tunisia set off the Arab Spring?

Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor, set himself alight in Sidi Bouzid on 17 December 2010 and died on 4 January 2011; Tunisia's president Ben Ali fled ten days later.

What share of the vote did Leave win in the 2016 Brexit referendum?

Leave took 51.9% (17.4 million votes) to Remain's 48.1% on 23 June 2016; the UK finally left at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020.

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while working where?

CERN, the particle physics lab near Geneva, was where Berners-Lee wrote his March 1989 proposal; CERN released the web software into the public domain on 30 April 1993.

The COVID-19 pandemic began with an outbreak in which city in December 2019?

Wuhan, in Hubei province, reported the first cluster, linked to the Huanan seafood market, in December 2019; the WHO declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020.

Barack Obama, the first African American president, was which numbered US president?

Obama was the 44th president, serving from 20 January 2009 to 20 January 2017; Grover Cleveland's two non-consecutive terms mean he was only the 43rd person to hold the office.

The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997 but did not enter into force until which year?

2005: the protocol entered into force on 16 February 2005, 90 days after Russia's ratification met the threshold of 55 parties covering 55% of 1990 emissions.

What codename covered the 1975 helicopter airlift of Americans out of Saigon as it fell?

Operation Frequent Wind, 29-30 April 1975, lifted some 7,000 Americans and Vietnamese out of Saigon by helicopter as North Vietnamese tanks closed in; US combat units had left in March 1973.

What nickname did Czechoslovakia's peaceful 1992 split into two countries earn?

The Velvet Divorce echoes the bloodless Velvet Revolution of 1989; the dissolution took effect on 31 December 1992.

How many people did police records say were killed at Sharpeville, South Africa, in 1960?

69 people were killed and more than 180 wounded when police opened fire on 21 March 1960 on a crowd protesting the pass laws; South Africa marks the date as Human Rights Day.

How many days did the 1982 Falklands War last?

74 days, from the Argentine landing on 2 April 1982 to the surrender at Stanley on 14 June; 907 people died, 649 of them Argentine.

Which leader of Hungary's 1956 uprising was tried and executed for treason in 1958?

Imre Nagy, hanged on 16 June 1958 after a secret trial, was buried in an unmarked grave; his ceremonial reburial in June 1989 drew 200,000 people and helped bring down the communist regime.

What was the name of the Cuban exile force that landed at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961?

Brigade 2506 took its number from the serial of Carlos Rodríguez Santana, a recruit killed in training; the CIA-backed force of about 1,400 surrendered within three days at Playa Girón.

For how many days were 52 Americans held hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran?

444 days: 66 people were seized on 4 November 1979, and the last 52 were freed on 20 January 1981, minutes after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated.

The 1917 Zimmermann telegram proposed a German military alliance with which country?

Mexico was offered Texas, Arizona and New Mexico in return for joining Germany; British codebreakers in Room 40 intercepted the telegram, and its publication in March 1917 pushed the US toward war.

Which Dublin building served as the rebel headquarters during the 1916 Easter Rising?

The General Post Office on O'Connell Street: Pearse read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic outside it on 24 April 1916, and two republican flags flew from its roof during the week.

Which U.S. president brokered the 1905 treaty that ended the Russo-Japanese War?

Theodore Roosevelt mediated the Treaty of Portsmouth, signed at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, in September 1905; it made him the first American Nobel Peace laureate in 1906.

Which general commanded the Viet Minh forces that besieged the French at Dien Bien Phu?

Võ Nguyên Giáp hauled artillery onto the hills ringing Dien Bien Phu and took the base on 7 May 1954 after a 56-day siege; the defeat ended French rule in Indochina.

On what date did the Khmer Rouge capture Phnom Penh?

17 April 1975, thirteen days before Saigon fell: the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh, ended the Cambodian Civil War and began emptying the city within hours.

Roughly how many Bosniak men and boys were killed at Srebrenica in July 1995?

More than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb forces after the UN 'safe area' fell on 11 July 1995; the ICTY and ICJ both ruled it genocide.

The 1995 Bosnian War peace deal was negotiated at an air force base in which U.S. state?

Ohio: the talks ran at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside Dayton in November 1995, and the Dayton Agreement was formally signed in Paris on 14 December.

Who was the first prime minister of the independent Congo in 1960?

Patrice Lumumba held office only from June to September 1960, was dismissed by President Kasa-Vubu, and was shot in Katanga on 17 January 1961, aged 35.

Which country won independence from Britain on 6 March 1957?

Ghana, the former Gold Coast, became independent on 6 March 1957 under Kwame Nkrumah, whose Convention People's Party had demanded immediate self-government since 1949.

The Évian Accords of March 1962 ended France's war in which country?

Algeria: the accords, signed on 18 March 1962, brought a cease-fire the next day after more than seven years of war, and Algeria became independent on 5 July 1962.

Which general seized power in Chile on 11 September 1973, ending Salvador Allende's rule?

Augusto Pinochet, the army commander, led the junta that bombed La Moneda palace on 11 September 1973; Allende died inside, and Pinochet ruled until 1990.

How many seconds into its flight did Space Shuttle Challenger break apart in January 1986?

73 seconds after lift-off on 28 January 1986: cold had stiffened the rubber O-rings in the right solid rocket booster, hot gas burned through and the external tank failed, killing all seven aboard.

Aboard which spacecraft did Valentina Tereshkova become the first woman in space in 1963?

Vostok 6 lifted off on 16 June 1963 and Tereshkova orbited 48 times in nearly three days, more time in space than all the American astronauts before her combined.

What codename was given to the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, in July 1945?

Trinity, fired at 05:29 on 16 July 1945 in the New Mexico desert, tested the implosion plutonium 'gadget', the same design as the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki.

How many Japanese fleet carriers were sunk at the Battle of Midway in June 1942, six months after Pearl Harbor?

Four went down, Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū and Hiryū, along with the heavy cruiser Mikuma.

On what date did Germany launch Operation Barbarossa, its invasion of the Soviet Union?

22 June 1941, a Sunday: more than three million Axis troops attacked along a front stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea; Stalin had ignored repeated warnings.

The Battle of the Bulge was launched through which densely forested region?

The Ardennes forest of Belgium and Luxembourg: the offensive that opened on 16 December 1944 aimed to seize Antwerp and split the Allied lines; the Germans called it Wacht am Rhein.

Aboard which battleship did Japan formally sign its surrender on 2 September 1945?

USS Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay, hosted the ceremony on her deck; MacArthur signed for the Allies and Foreign Minister Shigemitsu for Japan, with about 250 Allied vessels in the bay.

How many original member countries did the United Nations have in 1945?

51: fifty countries signed the Charter in San Francisco on 26 June 1945 and Poland signed later that year; the first General Assembly met in London in January 1946.

How many states signed the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949 to found NATO?

Twelve: the US, Canada, Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Norway and Iceland signed in Washington on 4 April 1949; West Germany joined in 1955.

Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in April 1968 on the balcony of which Memphis motel?

The Lorraine Motel: King was shot on the balcony outside room 306 at 6:01 p.m. on 4 April 1968; James Earl Ray pleaded guilty in 1969 and was sentenced to 99 years.

In which year did Britain hand Hong Kong back to China?

1997: Britain handed Hong Kong back at midnight on 30 June-1 July 1997 under the 1984 Joint Declaration, which promised 'one country, two systems' for 50 years.

Which group carried out the attack on the Israeli team at the 1972 Munich Olympics?

Black September, a Palestinian group linked to Fatah, sent eight gunmen into the Olympic Village on 5 September 1972; eleven Israelis and one West German police officer died.

How many people in total died in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie?

270: all 259 aboard the Boeing 747 Clipper Maid of the Seas died on 21 December 1988, along with 11 residents of Lockerbie hit by falling wreckage.

In which city did Rabin and Arafat publicly sign the first Oslo Accord in 1993?

Washington, D.C.: the Declaration of Principles was signed on the White House lawn on 13 September 1993, sealed by the Rabin-Arafat handshake; the secret talks had been hosted in Norway by the Fafo institute.

In which city were Nicholas II and his family murdered in July 1918?

Yekaterinburg's Ipatiev House: on the night of 16-17 July 1918 a squad under Yakov Yurovsky shot and bayoneted the family on orders from the Ural Regional Soviet.

In which Pakistani city was Osama bin Laden killed in May 2011?

Abbottabad, a garrison town near Pakistan's military academy: Navy SEALs flown from Jalalabad in two Black Hawks killed bin Laden in his compound in the early hours of 2 May 2011, local time.

On what date did Lehman Brothers file the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history?

15 September 2008: Lehman filed with more than $600 billion in assets, and the Dow fell 504 points (4.4%) that day, its worst drop since the 2001 attacks.

By roughly how many weeks did Amundsen beat Scott to the South Pole in 1911-12?

Five weeks: Amundsen reached the pole on 14 December 1911 and Scott on 17 January 1912, 34 days later; Scott's party of five all died on the return journey.

Roughly how many kilometres long was the Baltic Way human chain of 23 August 1989?

675 kilometres: about two million people linked hands from Tallinn through Riga to Vilnius on the 50th anniversary of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact that had carved up the region.

In which Romanian town were the Ceaușescus tried and executed on 25 December 1989?

Târgoviște: held at the army barracks there after their helicopter flight from Bucharest was abandoned, the couple faced a 55-minute military trial and were shot by firing squad the same day.

Which U.S. national security adviser secretly flew to Beijing in July 1971 to prepare Nixon's visit?

Henry Kissinger slipped into Beijing from Pakistan on 9 July 1971, feigning illness to cover his absence, and met Zhou Enlai to arrange Nixon's visit of February 1972.

Which company's pesticide plant leaked methyl isocyanate gas over Bhopal, India, in 1984?

Union Carbide India's plant released the gas on the night of 2-3 December 1984, exposing more than 500,000 people in the world's worst industrial disaster; Union Carbide paid $470 million in 1989.

The 1976 Soweto uprising began as a protest against teaching in which language?

Afrikaans: a 1974 decree made it a compulsory medium of instruction alongside English in black schools; pupils marched on 16 June 1976, a date South Africa marks as Youth Day.

Which March 1918 agreement took Russia out of the First World War?

The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed on 3 March 1918, cost Russia Poland, the Baltic provinces, Ukraine and Finland; a supplementary protocol that August added six billion marks in reparations.