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 was chosen for its strong, steady winds; the brothers flew from the dunes at Kill Devil Hills, four miles south, and the first flight covered just 120 feet.

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

New York City received the survivors instead: the liner Carpathia picked them up from the lifeboats and landed them there three days after the sinking, which took about 1,500 of the 2,200 aboard.

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.

The first day of which 1916 battle, 1 July, is the bloodiest in the British Army's history?

The Somme cost Britain 57,470 casualties on 1 July 1916, 19,240 of them dead, after a week-long bombardment failed to cut the German barbed wire or silence the defenders.

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

Lord Rothschild, a leader of Britain's Jewish community, received Balfour's letter of 2 November 1917 with a request to pass its pledge of a Jewish 'national home' on to the Zionist Federation.

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.

Which country gave its name to the 1918 influenza pandemic, although the first recorded cases were in Kansas?

Spain was neutral in the First World War, so its uncensored newspapers reported the outbreak freely, even the king's illness, while the warring countries kept theirs quiet.

In which room at Versailles was the 1919 peace treaty signed?

The Hall of Mirrors had hosted the reverse scene in 1871, when the German Empire was proclaimed in the same room after Prussia's victory over France.

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

The British salt monopoly made it illegal for Indians to collect their own salt; at Dandi Gandhi picked up a lump from the shore, and some 60,000 people were jailed for following his lead.

What name is given to 29 October 1929, when panicked investors dumped some 16 million shares on Wall Street?

Black Tuesday followed a 13% plunge the day before; by mid-November the Dow had lost almost half its value, and the slide into the Great Depression had begun.

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

Franklin D. Roosevelt broke with tradition by flying to Chicago to accept the nomination in person, and there promised the convention 'a new deal for the American people'.

Germany's interwar republic takes its name from which city?

Weimar hosted the national assembly in 1919 because Berlin was judged unsafe after an uprising there; the republic lasted until Hitler took power in 1933.

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

The Nationalists under Franco, backed by Germany and Italy, beat the Soviet-backed Republic in a war that ran from July 1936 to April 1939; Franco then ruled as dictator until he died in 1975.

By what name is the Nazi pogrom of 9-10 November 1938 known?

Kristallnacht, the 'Night of Broken Glass', was named for the shattered glass left in the streets; tens of thousands of Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration 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.

Which battleship sunk at Pearl Harbor still lies beneath a memorial?

USS Arizona blew up when a bomb set off her forward magazine, accounting for almost half of the 2,403 Americans killed that day; more than 900 of her crew are still entombed in the wreck.

Which World War II battle, which ended in 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 was the worst of the five beaches because the bombardment had left the German defences on the bluffs largely intact, and the first American waves were cut down by machine-gun fire.

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

Los Alamos, directed by Robert Oppenheimer, was set up in the commandeered buildings of a remote boys' ranch school and turned out both bomb designs, Little Boy and Fat Man.

Which B-29 bomber dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945?

Enola Gay was named by its pilot, Paul Tibbets, after his mother; three days later a second B-29, Bockscar, dropped the plutonium bomb on Nagasaki.

Which Nazi leader, sentenced to hang at Nuremberg, swallowed cyanide the night before his execution?

Hermann Göring, once Hitler's designated successor, had asked to face a firing squad and been refused; the other ten condemned men in custody went to the gallows on 16 October 1946.

Who gave the 'tryst with destiny' speech as India became independent at midnight on 14-15 August 1947?

Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister, spoke to the Constituent Assembly in Delhi; Gandhi was not there, having gone to Calcutta to try to calm the violence between Hindus and Muslims.

Which president signed the Marshall Plan for rebuilding Western Europe into law in April 1948?

Harry Truman signed it on 3 April 1948; the aid had been offered to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe too, but Moscow turned it down for itself and its satellites.

How did the Western Allies supply West Berlin for almost a year after the Soviets blockaded it in 1948?

By cargo aircraft: with rail, road and canal links cut from 24 June 1948, the Berlin Airlift carried in food and fuel until the Soviets gave up the blockade on 12 May 1949.

To which island did Chiang Kai-shek's government retreat after losing China's civil war in 1949?

Taiwan became the refuge of Chiang's Republic of China after the People's Republic was proclaimed on 1 October 1949; from there it went on holding China's seat at the United Nations until 1971.

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

The 38th parallel was no historic border: two young American officials drew it across a map in August 1945 to split the peninsula roughly in half, and North Korea invaded across it on 25 June 1950.

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 the USSR forced Britain, France and Israel to withdraw, leaving the two old colonial powers visibly weakened.

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

The European Economic Community began with six members on 1 January 1958; Britain stayed out, then had two applications vetoed by France's Charles de Gaulle before finally joining in 1973.

Which dog became the first animal to orbit Earth, launched by the Soviet Union in November 1957?

Laika, a stray taken from the streets of Moscow, died of overheating within hours of launch; the Soviets long said she had lived for days, and the truth came out only in 2002.

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

Vostok 1 carried Gagarin once around Earth, but he did not land in it: he ejected during the descent and came down by parachute, a detail left out of the Soviet record claim.

Where on the Berlin Wall did American and Soviet tanks face off in October 1961?

Checkpoint Charlie saw the standoff less than three months after East Germany began sealing the border on 13 August 1961; it ended peacefully when both sides pulled their tanks back.

How many days did the Cuban Missile Crisis last?

13 days, from 16 to 28 October 1962, ended with Khrushchev agreeing to pull the missiles out of Cuba; in a secret part of the deal, the US removed its own Jupiter missiles from 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.

Which protected ground was added to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by an amendment from one of its opponents?

Sex was added on the House floor by Howard W. Smith of Virginia, an arch-conservative who opposed the bill; historians still argue over whether he meant to sink it, but the amendment stayed in.

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

The Gulf of Tonkin clash of 2 August 1964 was real, but the second attack reported two nights later almost certainly never happened; Congress passed its war resolution on 7 August all the same.

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

Mao Zedong's death in 1976 ended it: within a month his widow Jiang Qing and the rest of the Gang of Four were under arrest, blamed for the decade's worst excesses.

Which territory did Israel capture from Syria in the Six-Day War of June 1967?

The Golan Heights fell in the last phase of the fighting, on 9 and 10 June; Sinai and Gaza were taken from Egypt and the West Bank from Jordan, and Sinai went back to Egypt in 1982.

Which Soviet leader sent Warsaw Pact tanks into Czechoslovakia in August 1968 to crush the Prague Spring?

Leonid Brezhnev sent the tanks in on the night of 20 August 1968 and justified it with what became the Brezhnev Doctrine: Moscow's claimed right to step in wherever socialist rule was under threat.

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

Michael Collins flew the command module Columbia alone for the 21 hours his crewmates spent on the surface, losing all radio contact with Earth each time he passed behind the Moon.

Who became US president when Richard Nixon resigned over Watergate in August 1974?

Gerald Ford had been appointed vice president less than a year earlier, when Spiro Agnew resigned, so he became the only president never elected to either office.

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?

Gdańsk's Lenin Shipyard was where the August 1980 strike, led by electrician Lech Wałęsa, won workers the right to form an independent trade union; sixteen months later martial law drove it underground.

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 before the year was out.

The Berlin Wall opened after an official's slip at what event?

A press conference: asked when new travel rules would take effect, party spokesman Günter Schabowski improvised 'immediately, without delay', and crowds headed for the border crossings that night.

Which Chinese leader sent the army to clear Tiananmen Square in June 1989?

Deng Xiaoping backed martial law over the objections of party chief Zhao Ziyang, who was purged and spent the rest of his life under house arrest; the protests had begun as mourning for the reformer Hu Yaobang.

Which Russian president took over the Kremlin when Mikhail Gorbachev resigned on 25 December 1991?

Boris Yeltsin took over the Kremlin that day; in the evening the Soviet flag was lowered from it for the last time, and the USSR formally ceased to exist 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?

100 days is the usual count, from 7 April to mid-July 1994: two weeks into the killing the UN cut its peacekeeping force in Rwanda to just 270, and the slaughter stopped only when the rebel RPF took the country.

Which conflict did the 1998 Good Friday Agreement largely end?

The Troubles killed more than 3,500 people from the late 1960s; the agreement of 10 April 1998 went to referendums on both sides of the border on one day, winning 71% in the north and 94% in the south.

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.

In which country did a street vendor's self-immolation in December 2010 set off the Arab Spring?

Tunisia: Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight in Sidi Bouzid after officials seized his produce cart, and four weeks later President Ben Ali, in power for 23 years, fled to Saudi Arabia.

Which prime minister called the 2016 Brexit referendum and resigned after losing it?

David Cameron had campaigned for Remain; after Leave won by 52% to 48% he stood outside 10 Downing Street and said the country needed fresh leadership, and he was gone by July.

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, a city of 11 million in Hubei province, reported the first cluster in December 2019 and was sealed off from the rest of China on 23 January 2020; the WHO declared a pandemic on 11 March.

Which Republican did Barack Obama defeat to win the presidency in 2008?

John McCain, a Navy pilot shot down over Vietnam, had endured five and a half years as a prisoner of war; he lost the 2008 election by 365 electoral votes to 173.

Which 2015 climate deal succeeded the Kyoto Protocol?

The Paris Agreement asks every country, rich or poor, to set its own emissions pledge; Kyoto, adopted in 1997, took until 2005 to come into force and never bound the United States, which did not ratify it.

Which city fell to North Vietnamese forces on 30 April 1975, ending the Vietnam War?

Saigon's last Americans were lifted out by helicopter in Operation Frequent Wind, which carried more than 7,000 people to safety in two days; the city was then renamed after Ho Chi Minh.

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.

In which South African township did police kill dozens protesting the pass laws on 21 March 1960?

Sharpeville: the police record listed 69 dead and 180 wounded, many of them shot in the back as they fled; South Africa now keeps 21 March as Human Rights Day.

Who was Britain's prime minister during the Falklands War?

Margaret Thatcher assembled the task force within days of the Argentine landing in April 1982; the war lasted 74 days, and victory helped carry her to a second term the following year.

Which country's 1956 uprising was crushed by Soviet tanks that November?

Hungary's prime minister Imre Nagy took refuge in the Yugoslav embassy as Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest; he was seized soon afterwards and executed two years later.

Which US agency trained and funded the Cuban exiles who landed at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961?

The CIA trained some 1,400 Cuban exiles, known as Brigade 2506, in Guatemala under a plan begun by Eisenhower and inherited by Kennedy; Castro's forces quickly crushed the landing.

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

444 days: the embassy was stormed on 4 November 1979, and the last 52 hostages were freed only on the day Jimmy Carter handed the presidency to Ronald Reagan in January 1981.

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

Mexico was promised help to 'reconquer the lost territory' of Texas and the Southwest in return for joining Germany; British codebreakers deciphered 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: Patrick Pearse read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic outside it on 24 April 1916; the rebels surrendered within a week, and 15 of their leaders were shot that May.

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

Theodore Roosevelt's mediation of the Treaty of Portsmouth won him the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize, but in Tokyo the terms, which brought Japan no indemnity from Russia, set off rioting.

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

Võ Nguyên Giáp had artillery hauled up the hills ringing Dien Bien Phu and took the base on 7 May 1954 after a siege of nearly two months; the defeat ended French rule in Indochina.

Which leader's Khmer Rouge forces captured Phnom Penh in April 1975?

Pol Pot's regime drove the capital's people out to work the land almost at once; in under four years well over a million Cambodians died of starvation, overwork and execution.

In which Bosnian town were more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys killed in July 1995?

Srebrenica was a UN 'safe area' guarded by a small force of lightly armed Dutch peacekeepers, who failed to stop Ratko Mladić's Bosnian Serb forces; UN courts later ruled the killings genocide.

The 1995 Dayton Agreement that ended the Bosnian War was negotiated at an air force base in which US state?

Ohio: Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside Dayton was chosen to stop the Balkan leaders negotiating through the media; they initialled a deal there on 21 November 1995.

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, who had been in a British jail when his party won the 1951 election and was released to lead the government.

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 the country became independent that July.

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.

Who became the first woman in space in June 1963?

Valentina Tereshkova, an amateur parachutist, orbited Earth 48 times alone, logging more flight time in a single mission than all the American astronauts before her put together.

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

Trinity, fired at 5:29 a.m. on 16 July 1945, tested the plutonium bomb design later dropped on Nagasaki; the heat fused the desert sand into a green glass that was named trinitite.

At which June 1942 battle did Japan lose four aircraft carriers, turning the tide of the Pacific War?

Midway was a trap turned on the attacker: US Navy codebreakers had read enough Japanese signals to learn the target and the date, so American carriers were lying in wait.

What codename did Germany give its invasion of the Soviet Union, launched on 22 June 1941?

Operation Barbarossa took the nickname of a medieval German emperor, Frederick 'Red Beard'; more than three million troops attacked, and Stalin had brushed aside repeated warnings that it was coming.

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 a ceremony that was over in 23 minutes: MacArthur opened with a short speech, Foreign Minister Shigemitsu signed for Japan, and MacArthur accepted for the Allies.

In which American city was the United Nations Charter signed in June 1945?

San Francisco hosted delegates of 50 nations for two months in 1945; Poland, which had no agreed government to send, signed that October and so became one of the 51 original members.

Which founding member of NATO in 1949 joined despite having no armed forces of its own?

Iceland was one of the twelve founders, though not without a fight: a riot broke out in its capital on 30 March 1949, the day parliament voted to join.

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

The Lorraine Motel, where King was shot on the balcony outside room 306, is now the National Civil Rights Museum; James Earl Ray pleaded guilty in 1969, got 99 years, and recanted within days.

Which royal represented the Queen at Hong Kong's 1997 handover?

Prince Charles watched the British flag come down at midnight, ending more than 150 years of colonial rule, then sailed out of the harbour with the last governor, Chris Patten, on the royal yacht Britannia.

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

Black September, a Palestinian militant group, sent eight gunmen into the Olympic Village; eleven Israeli team members died, nine of them hostages killed in a failed airfield rescue, and the Games resumed after a short suspension.

Over which Scottish town did a bomb destroy Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988, killing 270 people?

Lockerbie lost 11 residents to the falling wreckage, on top of all 259 people aboard; a Libyan intelligence agent, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was convicted in 2001 at a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands.

In which city did Rabin and Arafat shake hands at the public signing of the first Oslo Accord in 1993?

Washington, D.C.: the accord was signed on the White House lawn on 13 September 1993, and Rabin and Arafat sealed it with a handshake before cheering crowds; the secret talks had been held in Norway.

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

Yekaterinburg's Ipatiev House: a squad under Yakov Yurovsky shot the family there on the night of 16-17 July 1918; most of the remains, hidden in a forest grave, were identified by DNA only in the 1990s.

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

Abbottabad, a garrison town, had hidden him less than a mile from Pakistan's military academy; Navy SEALs in two Black Hawk helicopters raided the compound in the early hours of 2 May 2011, local time.

Which Wall Street investment bank collapsed on 15 September 2008 in what was then the largest bankruptcy in US history?

Lehman Brothers went under with more than $600 billion in assets after no rescue was arranged; the very next day the Federal Reserve stepped in to save the insurer AIG.

Which explorer beat Robert Falcon Scott to the South Pole in December 1911?

Roald Amundsen had been preparing for the North Pole; on hearing it had been claimed he secretly turned south instead, and planted Norway's flag at the pole on 14 December 1911.

Which Soviet republic was the first to declare independence, in March 1990?

Lithuania declared independence on 11 March 1990, less than seven months after about two million people joined hands across the three Baltic republics in the Baltic Way human chain.

Which communist dictator was overthrown and shot by firing squad on Christmas Day 1989?

Nicolae Ceaușescu fled Bucharest by helicopter as crowds stormed his headquarters, but the army caught him; he and his wife Elena were tried by a military court in Târgoviște and shot 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 in July 1971 during an official trip to Pakistan, whose president had acted as go-between; the talks cleared the way for Nixon's visit in February 1972.

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

Union Carbide India's plant leaked the gas in the early hours of 3 December 1984, exposing some 500,000 people and killing thousands in what is widely called the world's worst industrial disaster.

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, but it lasted only eight months: Germany's defeat that November annulled it.