40 Fun Facts About Political Cartoons

Benjamin Franklin's 1754 cartoon 'Join, or Die' urged the colonies to unite by showing which animal cut into pieces?

A snake in eight segments stood for the divided colonies. A superstition of the day held that a severed snake would come back to life if its pieces were joined before sunset.

Which animal is Thomas Nast credited with first using for the Republican Party, in a cartoon about President Grant?

The elephant made its debut in Nast's 'Third Term Panic', where a donkey in a lion's skin scares the other animals amid rumours that Grant wanted a third term.

A 1902 Washington Post cartoon of which president refusing to shoot a captive bear inspired a famous stuffed toy?

Theodore Roosevelt thought shooting a tied-up bear unsporting, and Clifford Berryman's cartoon of the moment inspired toymaker Morris Michtom to create the teddy bear.

Which children's author drew more than 400 political cartoons for the New York newspaper PM in the early 1940s?

Dr. Seuss served as PM's chief editorial cartoonist from 1941 to 1943, years before The Cat in the Hat made him a household name.

An 1812 Boston Gazette cartoon of a monster-shaped Massachusetts voting district gave English which political word?

Gerrymander blends the name of Governor Elbridge Gerry with salamander, the animal his party's contorted new district was said to resemble.

Political cartoonist Thomas Nast also drew the first modern image of which Christmas figure, during the Civil War?

Santa Claus appeared in Nast's 1863 picture as a Union supporter, holding a puppet of Confederate president Jefferson Davis with a noose around its neck.

Which cartoon figure personifying the United States is said to be named after a meatpacker from Troy, New York?

Uncle Sam is said to honour Samuel Wilson, who supplied rations to American soldiers in the War of 1812, though the true origin of the name is unclear.

Washington Post cartoonist Herblock coined which term in a 1950 cartoon about anti-communist witch-hunts in Washington?

McCarthyism was Herblock's name for the tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who stayed a regular target of his pen through the early 1950s.

Thomas Nast's cartoons helped bring down which corrupt leader of New York's Tammany Hall political machine in the 1870s?

William Tweed, known as Boss Tweed, later fled to Spain, where officials identified the fugitive using one of Nast's cartoons.

Bill Mauldin's cartoon after John F. Kennedy's assassination shows which earlier president's statue with head in hands?

Abraham Lincoln's statue at the Lincoln Memorial buries its face in its hands, one assassinated president grieving for another, in what may be Mauldin's best-known cartoon.

Which British humour magazine in 1843 became the first to use the word 'cartoon' for a satirical drawing?

Punch meant the term as a joke at first, printing John Leech's drawing 'Substance and Shadow' under the heading 'Cartoon, No. 1'.

Which 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' illustrator spent over 50 years as a leading British political cartoonist?

John Tenniel also drew 'Dropping the Pilot', showing Bismarck as a ship's pilot stepping off the vessel under the idle gaze of the young Kaiser Wilhelm II.

James Gillray's 1805 print 'The Plumb-pudding in Danger' shows William Pitt and which French ruler carving up the globe?

Napoleon is said to have complained that Gillray's prints, which drew him as unusually short, did more than all the armies of Europe to bring him down.

Which Garry Trudeau comic strip became the first to win the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, in 1975?

Doonesbury won after its strips on the Watergate scandal, and by then one newspaper had already moved it from the comics to its editorial page.

Which French satirical newspaper lost several star cartoonists when gunmen attacked its Paris office in January 2015?

Charlie Hebdo had struggled along on sales of 30,000 a week, yet its first edition after the attack sold 8 million copies.

Jyllands-Posten, the newspaper whose 2005 cartoons of Muhammad sparked global protests, is published in which country?

Denmark faced a boycott and attacks on its diplomatic missions after the newspaper printed twelve cartoons in September 2005.

Which word for a portrait that distorts its subject's features comes from the Italian verb meaning 'to load'?

Caricature comes from 'caricare', to charge or load: the artist loads a likeness with exaggerated features until it is ridiculous but recognisable.

When a cartoonist draws a dove to stand for peace or a skull for death, which persuasive technique is at work?

Symbolism lets a simple object carry a big idea, which is why cartoonists lean on stock images that readers can decode at a glance.

Which stout, jolly countryman, first seen in a 1712 pamphlet, personifies England in political cartoons?

John Bull began as a character in a satire by John Arbuthnot, a friend of Jonathan Swift, and grew into the nation's cartoon stand-in.

Which term for sensational reporting came from an 1890s comic character fought over by publishers Pulitzer and Hearst?

Yellow journalism takes its name from the Yellow Kid, a strip that ran first in Pulitzer's New York World and then jumped to Hearst's New York Journal.

Which French artist was jailed in 1832 for 'Gargantua', a print showing King Louis-Philippe as a gluttonous giant?

Honoré Daumier was convicted of insulting the king and sentenced to six months in prison plus a fine of 500 francs.

In 1830s France, publisher Charles Philipon drew King Louis-Philippe's face changing, in four stages, into which fruit?

A pear became such a familiar stand-in for the king that Victor Hugo worked it into Les Misérables, where a boy sketches one on a wall.

Joseph Keppler's American magazine of colour political cartoons took its name from which Shakespeare character?

Puck appeared on every cover as a cherub in a top hat, beside his verdict from A Midsummer Night's Dream on the foolishness of mortals.

Udo Keppler's 1904 cartoon 'Next!' drew which giant company as an octopus with tentacles wrapped around Congress?

Standard Oil was broken up in 1911, seven years after the cartoon showed it reaching for the White House; its New Jersey arm later became part of ExxonMobil.

An 1830s cartoon by an unknown artist showed which president as a monarch holding a veto and a sceptre?

Andrew Jackson appears as 'King Andrew the First', dressed like a playing-card king, in a print that backed his opponents in the new Whig Party.

Herblock drew which politician with a heavy five-o'clock shadow and, in one 1954 cartoon, crawling out of a sewer?

Richard Nixon cancelled his Washington Post subscription over the sewer cartoon, and Herblock kept the stubble on him until he won the presidency.

David Low's 1939 cartoon 'Rendezvous' shows Adolf Hitler bowing politely to which dictator over the body of Poland?

Joseph Stalin and Hitler smile and doff their caps to each other, Low's comment on two sworn enemies who had just invaded Poland from opposite sides.

David Low created which pompous, walrus-moustached British officer who ranted from a Turkish bath in his cartoons?

Colonel Blimp was named after a type of airship, and Low said the idea came from overhearing two officers in a Turkish bath demand that cavalrymen wear spurs inside tanks.

An 1892 British cartoon drew which mining magnate as a giant straddling Africa from Cape Town to Cairo?

Cecil Rhodes holds a telegraph wire in the drawing, a nod to his dream of a Cape to Cairo line, and the pose is a pun on an ancient wonder, the Colossus of Rhodes.

Thomas Nast drew his most influential cartoons for which New York magazine, subtitled 'A Journal of Civilization'?

Harper's Weekly was known for its heavily illustrated coverage of the American Civil War, and Nast joined its staff in the middle of the war, in 1862.

When a cartoonist writes 'Congress' on a sinking ship so nobody can mistake its meaning, which technique is being used?

Labeling takes the guesswork out of a cartoon, and a careful reader asks why the artist chose to tag that particular person or object.

A cartoon showing a budget debate as a tug-of-war, comparing a complex issue to a familiar scene, uses which technique?

Analogy links two unlike things that share some traits, so a reader who understands the familiar half grasps the cartoonist's point about the other.

Which technique is at work when a cartoon shows a fire station burning down, the opposite of what readers expect?

Irony is the difference between the way things are and the way they should be, and cartoonists often use it to express their opinion on an issue.

Satirical political illustrations are often named after which English artist, creator of 'A Rake's Progress'?

William Hogarth told moral tales in series of pictures that read like comic strips, and they became so familiar that pointed political illustrations are called Hogarthian.

Thomas Nast denounced New York's Tammany Hall political machine as which ferocious big cat mauling the country?

The tiger tears into its prey in an 1871 Nast cartoon published just before election day, and it stuck as the emblem of Tammany Hall for decades.

Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada satirised upper-class women of the 1910s with which skeletal figure?

La Catrina began as a zinc etching of a dapper skull; Diego Rivera later gave her a full body in a mural and turned her into a Mexican national icon.

R. K. Laxman's cartoon character 'The Common Man' appeared for decades in a leading newspaper of which country?

India met the Common Man through 'You Said It', the daily cartoon that Laxman began drawing for a national newspaper in 1951.

Which robed female figure personified the United States in cartoons until the Statue of Liberty largely displaced her?

Columbia, named after Christopher Columbus, lives on as the central figure in the logo of the Hollywood studio Columbia Pictures.

Which illustrator of Charles Dickens's 'Oliver Twist' took a £100 royal bribe in 1820 not to mock the new king?

George Cruikshank accepted the money in return for a pledge not to depict His Majesty, the new king George IV, in any immoral situation.

Which Pulitzer-winning cartoonist designed the first Federal Duck Stamp and founded the National Wildlife Federation?

Ding Darling took up conservation young, after he was scolded for shooting a wood duck in nesting season.