198 Fun Facts About Political

The political terms 'left' and 'right' come from the seating in which body?

In the French National Assembly of 1789, supporters of the king sat to the president's right and revolutionaries to his left, a seating split that named the political spectrum.

Which animal did the Boston Gazette liken Elbridge Gerry's twisted 1812 district to?

The Boston Gazette likened a contorted district drawn to help Elbridge Gerry's party to a salamander, coining 'Gerry-mander' in 1812; Gerry lost the governorship that year anyway.

Which senator filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hours 18 minutes?

Strom Thurmond spoke for 24 hours 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957, opening with the election laws of all 48 states; the bill passed anyway, and Cory Booker's 25-hour speech in 2025 finally outlasted him.

The Watergate scandal began with a 1972 break-in at the headquarters of which organisation?

Five burglars were caught inside the Democratic National Committee's offices at the Watergate complex in June 1972, after a security guard noticed tape holding door locks open and called the police.

Which US president is the only one to have resigned from office?

Richard Nixon resigned on 9 August 1974 rather than face near-certain impeachment over the Watergate cover-up; no other US president has resigned.

Which party did Nelson Mandela, freed in 1990 after 27 years in prison, lead to victory in 1994?

The African National Congress, banned until 1990, won more than 60 percent of the vote in April 1994, South Africa's first election open to all races, and Mandela became president.

Which South African president released Mandela and later negotiated the end of apartheid with him?

F. W. de Klerk freed Mandela in February 1990 and negotiated the end of apartheid with him; the two shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize before Mandela won the 1994 election.

Before entering politics, Margaret Thatcher trained and briefly worked as what?

A research chemist for four years, Margaret Thatcher worked for a plastics firm and then for the food company J. Lyons; she later qualified as a barrister, specialising in tax, before entering Parliament.

Which 1978-79 wave of British strikes helped bring Thatcher to power in 1979?

The Winter of Discontent took its name from the opening line of Shakespeare's Richard III; rubbish piled up in Leicester Square, Liverpool's gravediggers walked out, and Labour lost the election that May.

Angela Merkel holds a doctorate in which field?

Quantum chemistry was the subject of Angela Merkel's 1986 doctorate; she worked as a researcher in East Berlin until the Wall fell in 1989, then joined the democracy movement and became a government spokeswoman.

Who became the world's first woman prime minister, in Ceylon in 1960?

Sirimavo Bandaranaike took office in July 1960, a year after her husband, the prime minister, was assassinated; in 1994 her daughter, newly elected president, appointed her to a third spell in the job.

Which country elected the world's first female president in a democratic vote, in 1980?

Iceland elected Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, a theatre director and divorced single mother, in June 1980; she says she would never have won without the 1975 strike in which most Icelandic women stopped work for a day.

Founded in 930, which legislature is often described as the oldest in the world?

Iceland's Althing first met at Thingvellir in 930, but it was abolished in 1800 and only restored in 1845, which lets the Isle of Man's Tynwald claim the longest unbroken run.

A Soviet boycott of which UN body enabled intervention in Korea?

The Security Council has fifteen members, five of them permanent with a veto; the Soviet delegate was boycotting it over China's seat in June 1950, so no veto blocked the Korea resolutions.

Ostracism, a vote to banish a politician for ten years, was practised in which ancient Greek city?

Athens held the vote by having citizens scratch a name on a shard of pottery, an ostrakon; the man named most often had ten days to leave the city and stayed away for a decade.

How many single-member constituencies elect the UK House of Commons?

650 single-member constituencies each return one MP, yet the Commons chamber has room for only 427 of them, so members stand at either end of the House during big debates.

Who is regarded as the first British prime minister, taking office in 1721?

Robert Walpole led the government from 1721 to 1742, the longest run of any prime minister; the title was then a term of abuse, and in 1741 he flatly denied that he held it.

Which British prime minister served the shortest tenure, seven weeks?

Liz Truss announced her resignation in October 2022, after her tax-cutting mini-budget set off financial turmoil; a tabloid's livestreamed lettuce, set up to see which would last longer, had not yet wilted.

In 1997 the new Labour government moved Prime Minister's Questions to a single weekly session on which day?

Wednesday got a single 30-minute session in 1997 in place of two 15-minute ones; the fixed slots dated from a 1961 experiment under Harold Macmillan, originally on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Instant-runoff (ranked-choice) voting is used to elect the lower house of which country's parliament?

Australia adopted preferential voting for its House of Representatives in 1918, after a split conservative vote handed Labor a safe seat at the Swan by-election; voters number the candidates in order.

The 'Australian ballot', pioneered in Australia's colonies in 1856, refers to what democratic innovation?

Voting in secret on a government-printed ballot began in Australia's colonies in 1856; American party workers had handed voters filled-out ballots until states, led by Massachusetts in 1888, copied it.

Which self-governing colony became the first to grant women the national vote, in 1893?

New Zealand granted women the vote on 19 September 1893 after Kate Sheppard's petition of nearly 32,000 signatures, about a quarter of the colony's adult European women.

Emmeline Pankhurst founded which militant British suffrage organisation in 1903?

The Women's Social and Political Union took the motto 'deeds, not words' and lived up to it: its members broke windows, defaced paintings and went on hunger strike in prison.

What botched event brought down the Berlin Wall?

A press conference went wrong: asked when new travel rules would take effect, East German spokesman Günter Schabowski said 'immediately', and crowds overwhelmed the border guards within hours.

Which Soviet leader approved the Berlin Wall's construction in 1961?

Nikita Khrushchev gave East Germany's Walter Ulbricht the go-ahead, and the border was sealed overnight on 13 August 1961 to stop an exodus that had already taken millions of East Germans west.

Churchill gave his 1946 'iron curtain' speech in which US state, the home of President Truman?

Missouri was President Truman's home state: he endorsed Westminster College's invitation and travelled to Fulton with Churchill, who spoke in the college gymnasium on 5 March 1946.

Which West Berlin mayor, later chancellor, stood beside Kennedy for his 1963 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech?

Willy Brandt, mayor since 1957, hosted Kennedy at the city hall on 26 June 1963; the tale that the president's phrasing made him a 'jelly doughnut' is a legend that surfaced two decades later.

Which Cuban dictator did Fidel Castro's rebels overthrow at the start of 1959?

Fulgencio Batista fled to the Dominican Republic on 1 January 1959; his 1952 coup had cancelled an election in which Castro, then a young lawyer, was preparing to stand.

Robert Mugabe led which country from 1980 until his removal in 2017?

Robert Mugabe led Zimbabwe from independence in 1980 until the army put him under house arrest in November 2017; he resigned by letter as parliament began impeaching him.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first elected female head of state, led which country?

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was president of Liberia from 2006 to 2018; the Harvard-trained economist had fled after Samuel Doe's 1980 coup and worked for Citibank before returning.

Benazir Bhutto was the first woman elected to lead which Muslim-majority country?

Benazir Bhutto was elected prime minister of Pakistan in 1988 and again in 1993; a former president of the Oxford Union, she was assassinated in Rawalpindi in December 2007.

Which Israeli prime minister grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin?

Golda Meir reached Milwaukee in 1906 aged eight; when her parents opposed her going to high school she ran away to her sister in Denver, and in 1921 she left for Palestine.

Lech Wałęsa had worked as what at the Gdańsk shipyard?

Lech Wałęsa was an electrician at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, fired in 1976 for union activism; he led the 1980 Solidarity strikes there and won the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize.

Who was the last leader of the Soviet Union, from 1985 to its dissolution in 1991?

Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary in March 1985 after the brief tenures of Andropov and Chernenko; his glasnost and perestroika reforms preceded the Union's dissolution in December 1991.

Which French city is the official seat of the European Parliament?

Strasbourg is the Parliament's official seat, though much of its work is done elsewhere, so members shuttle to the Alsatian city for plenary sessions; they have been directly elected since 1979.

Who became the first woman to serve as President of the European Commission, in 2019?

Ursula von der Leyen, a physician and Germany's defence minister, was put forward by EU leaders in July 2019 and approved by Parliament by 383 votes to 327; Germany itself had abstained on her nomination.

Which chamber of Germany's federal parliament is directly elected by the people?

The Bundestag is elected every four years, while the Bundesrat is made up of state-government delegates; after extra seats swelled it to 736 members in 2021, a reform fixed its size at 630.

What is the name of Israel's 120-seat parliament?

The Knesset takes its name and its 120 seats from the Knesset HaGdola, the Great Assembly of sages and prophets that Jewish tradition places in Jerusalem more than two thousand years ago.

Which Nordic parliament elects the committee that awards the Nobel Peace Prize?

The Storting, Norway's parliament, appoints the five-member Nobel Committee because Alfred Nobel's will said so; he left no reason for handing this one prize to Norway while his homeland kept the rest.

Which emperor introduced the first State Duma to the Russian Empire in 1905?

Nicholas II conceded an elected State Duma in the October Manifesto of 1905, but he kept an absolute veto and dissolved the first Duma in July 1906, barely ten weeks after it opened.

The first politburo was created in 1917 by which group?

The Bolsheviks set up a seven-man political bureau in 1917 to direct their seizure of power; its members included Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, and the shortened name stuck.

Which US president is the only one to have served more than two terms?

Franklin D. Roosevelt won four elections from 1932 to 1944 and died in office in April 1945; a constitutional amendment ratified in 1951 then capped presidents at two elections.

Who was the first woman to serve as Speaker of the US House of Representatives?

Nancy Pelosi took the Speaker's gavel in January 2007 and again in 2019, the first former Speaker to reclaim it since Sam Rayburn in 1955.

How many electors make up the US Electoral College?

538 electors: each state gets one per House seat plus two for its senators, and Washington, D.C. gets three, which is why the total sits three above the 535 members of Congress.

Who won the popular vote in 2000 but lost the Electoral College?

Al Gore won about half a million more votes than George W. Bush but lost the Electoral College 271 to 266, after the Supreme Court halted a recount in Florida, where Bush led by 537 votes.

As of the 2024 election, which two US states split their electoral votes by congressional district?

Maine and Nebraska give two electoral votes to the statewide winner and one to the winner of each congressional district, which is how Nebraska's Omaha-based district has broken with the rest of the state three times since 2008.

What is the opening section of the US Constitution called?

The Preamble opens 'We the People'; an earlier draft spoke for the people of the separate states until Gouverneur Morris, who penned the final text, made it the people of the United States.

The 27th Amendment, ratified in 1992, limits changes to what?

Congressional pay changes cannot take effect until after the next House election; Gregory Watson, a Texas student, revived the forgotten 1789 proposal after a paper he wrote on it earned a poor grade.

In which city was the US Constitution drafted and signed in 1787?

Philadelphia's Independence Hall hosted the convention from May to September 1787; called for the sole purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation, the delegates wrote a new constitution instead, and 39 signed it.

Which amendment limits US presidents to two elected terms?

The 22nd Amendment was ratified in 1951 but exempted the sitting president, so Harry Truman could have run again in 1952; he kept his name on the New Hampshire primary ballot before deciding against it.

How long is a term for a member of the US Senate?

Six years is the term, staggered so that about a third of the Senate is elected every two years and a state's two seats never come up at the same regular election.

Who chairs the US Senate when the VP is away?

The president pro tempore presides in the vice president's absence; by tradition the post goes to the most senior senator of the majority party, who usually lets junior senators take the chair.

Under what circumstance may the US vice president vote in the Senate?

To break a tie is the only time the vice president, as president of the Senate, may vote; Kamala Harris did so 33 times in four years, and her vote passed the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

Who was the first vice president of the United States?

John Adams became the first vice president in 1789 after finishing runner-up to Washington in the electoral vote; under the original rules the runner-up took the job, as Jefferson did in 1796.

How many justices sit on the US Supreme Court?

Nine justices have sat since 1869; the Court began with six, and a 1937 White House plan to enlarge it was voted down by the Senate.

Which 1803 case established judicial review in US federal law?

Marbury v. Madison (1803) saw Chief Justice John Marshall rule that courts may strike down laws that conflict with the Constitution; he did not recuse himself, though he was the official who had failed to deliver Marbury's commission.

Who is second in the US presidential line of succession, after the vice president?

Speaker of the House has come right after the vice president since 1947, when Harry Truman argued that an elected official, not a cabinet member the president picks, should be next in line.

Which Irish-born architect designed the White House?

James Hoban, born in County Kilkenny, caught George Washington's eye with a courthouse he built in Charleston; he then won the 1792 competition for the president's house and oversaw the building work.

Which Dublin building, today the seat of Ireland's parliament, was the model for the White House?

Leinster House was built in the 1740s on Dublin's then-unfashionable south side by an earl who predicted that society would follow him there, and it did; the Irish parliament moved in in 1922.

During which war did British forces burn the White House?

The War of 1812 brought British troops to Washington on 24 August 1814; they ate the dinner laid out for the president's party before torching the house, and a violent storm put out the fires.

Which king offered 10 Downing Street to his chief minister as a gift in 1732?

George II offered the house as a personal gift, but his minister took it only for the office of First Lord of the Treasury, the title still engraved on the front door's brass letterbox.

What job title does the resident cat of 10 Downing Street hold?

Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office is the full title; Larry, a tabby, was recruited from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home in 2011 on the strength of his mousing skills.

Peers who belong to no party sit on which House of Lords benches?

The crossbenches sit crossways between the government and opposition sides; by tradition a former Commons Speaker, who gave up party ties on taking office, joins them on entering the Lords.

What is the Woolsack in the House of Lords?

The Woolsack is the Lord Speaker's seat, a wool-stuffed cushion recalling the trade that made medieval England rich; in 1938 it was found to be packed with horsehair and had to be restuffed.

The first UN General Assembly met in January 1946 in a Methodist hall in which capital city?

London's Methodist Central Hall hosted delegates of 51 nations from 10 January 1946; its congregation moved out for the session and held Sunday services in theatres instead.

Which Norwegian politician was elected the first UN secretary-general in 1946?

Trygve Lie, Norway's wartime foreign minister, took the post in February 1946; his backing for UN action in Korea turned the Soviet Union against him, and he resigned in November 1952.

In which city did the UN Conference on International Organization open in April 1945?

The conference opened in San Francisco on 25 April 1945 and produced the UN Charter, signed there on 26 June by 50 nations.

Which numbered provision of the NATO treaty says an attack on one member is an attack on all?

Article 5 was written with a Soviet attack on western Europe in mind, yet its first use came in defence of the United States, after the attacks of 11 September 2001.

Who was NATO's first supreme commander?

Dwight Eisenhower was president of Columbia University when Truman asked him in 1950 to command NATO's forces, a year after the alliance was founded; he left in 1952 to run for the White House.

In which city is NATO's main headquarters?

NATO's political headquarters has been in Brussels since 1967, when France's withdrawal from the integrated command forced a move from Paris; its military command, SHAPE, sits near Mons.

Which treaty, signed in 1992, formally established the European Union?

The Maastricht Treaty, signed on 7 February 1992 and in force from 1 November 1993, created the European Union and set the timetable for a single currency.

Which Senate procedure, usually needing 60 votes, cuts off a filibuster?

Cloture dates from 1917, after a dozen senators talked to death a bill to arm merchant ships against German submarines; the bar was lowered in 1975 to three-fifths of the Senate, or 60 votes.

The US Republican Party was founded to oppose the spread of what?

Slavery's spread into the western territories drove activists to found the party at meetings such as one in Ripon, Wisconsin; its candidate Abraham Lincoln went on to win the White House.

Which cartoonist gave the Republican Party its elephant symbol in 1874?

Thomas Nast drew the Republican vote as an elephant in Harper's Weekly in 1874; his cartoons also helped bring down New York's Boss Tweed and fixed the modern image of Santa Claus.

What does the Republican nickname 'GOP' stand for?

Grand Old Party was in print for the Republicans by 1876; a year earlier the praise heard in Congress was for 'this gallant old party', and by 1884 newspapers had cut it to G.O.P.

Founded in 1828, which is the oldest political party still active in the United States?

The Democrats were organised by Martin Van Buren to back Andrew Jackson, who had won the most votes in 1824 yet lost the presidency in the House; four years later the new party swept him in.

Which animal is the traditional mascot of the US Democratic Party?

A donkey became the party's emblem after opponents mocked Andrew Jackson as a 'jackass'; his side embraced the insult, and cartoonists later made the animal stick.

What is the colloquial nickname of the UK Conservative Party?

The Tories take their name from an Irish word for an outlaw, thrown as an insult in 1679 at those who backed the Catholic heir James's right to the throne; the nickname outlived the old Tory party.

Which Scottish ex-miner was Labour's first leader in Parliament?

Keir Hardie, who worked in the mines from boyhood, caused a stir on entering the Commons in 1892 by wearing a tweed suit instead of the customary black coat and silk top hat.

Which Labour leader had Clause IV, the party's common-ownership pledge, rewritten in 1995?

Tony Blair won a special party conference in 1995 to replace the 1918 pledge of common ownership, a symbolic break with the past seen as the defining moment of 'New Labour'.

What Senate majority is needed to convict an impeached US official?

Two-thirds is a bar no presidential impeachment has cleared: Andrew Johnson survived by a single vote in 1868, and every later president put on trial was acquitted too.

Which English king sealed Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215?

John sealed the charter under pressure from rebel barons, but the Pope annulled it about ten weeks later and England slid into civil war.

The hotline set up after the Cuban Missile Crisis linked Washington directly with which other capital?

Moscow and Washington agreed the link in June 1963 because crisis messages had taken hours to arrive and decode; it was a teletype circuit, never the red telephone of popular legend.

What word did Kennedy use instead of 'blockade' for the US naval action around Cuba?

Kennedy announced a 'quarantine' of Cuba on 22 October 1962 because a blockade is an act of war under international law.

Which US missiles in Turkey were secretly traded away to end the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Jupiter missiles were pulled out of Turkey by April 1963 under a side deal that Washington kept secret for more than 25 years.

Who co-wrote The Communist Manifesto with Karl Marx?

Friedrich Engels spent two decades in his family's Manchester cotton business, using a capitalist's income to support the penniless Marx while the pair wrote against capitalism.

Which state's vote completed ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920?

Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify on 18 August 1920, when 24-year-old legislator Harry Burn switched his vote at his mother's urging; the amendment was certified on 26 August.

Which of the UK's four nations voted most strongly to Remain in the 2016 Brexit referendum?

Scotland voted 62 percent Remain, with every one of its council areas backing staying in, yet left the EU with the rest of the UK after Leave won 51.9 percent overall.

Who was UK prime minister when the country formally left the European Union in January 2020?

Boris Johnson replaced Theresa May after MPs repeatedly rejected her exit deal, won a large majority in December 2019 and took the UK out seven weeks later.

Which country is governed by a seven-member council whose presidency rotates?

Switzerland has no single leader: its seven Federal Councillors govern as a group, and the president, a job that passes to a different member each year, is only first among equals.

Which country was suspended from the G8 in 2014, turning the group back into the G7?

Russia was suspended after annexing Crimea: the other seven leaders refused to attend the summit it was due to host in Sochi and met without it instead.

In which city is the African Union Commission based?

Addis Ababa has hosted the body since the Organisation of African Unity was founded there in 1963; China paid for and built the current headquarters complex as a gift, opened in 2012.

Before Jacinda Ardern in 2018, which elected head of government had given birth in office?

Benazir Bhutto had her daughter Bakhtawar in January 1990 while prime minister; she had kept the pregnancy from the public and wrote that she was back at her desk the next day.

What was the first name of Justin Trudeau's father, himself a Canadian prime minister?

Pierre Trudeau was voted out after eleven years as prime minister but was back within a year and governed until 1984; Justin was born during his first spell in office, on Christmas Day 1971.

For which agency did Vladimir Putin work for 16 years before politics?

The KGB posted Putin to Dresden, where he later said he burned huge quantities of intelligence files while crowds stormed the Stasi offices nearby.

Which Chinese leader was freed to rule beyond two terms in 2018?

Xi Jinping had been due to step down in 2023, but the National People's Congress abolished the two-term limit with only two votes against and three abstentions among nearly 3,000 delegates.

What is the address of the Canadian prime minister's official Ottawa residence?

24 Sussex Drive fell into such disrepair that the federal agency in charge began closing it in 2022 on health and safety grounds, leaving prime ministers to live elsewhere.

As of 2025, which Indian prime minister has served longest, with nearly 17 years in office?

Jawaharlal Nehru was jailed repeatedly by the British during the independence struggle, then governed free India from 1947 until he died in office in 1964.

On which island was Nelson Mandela imprisoned from 1964 to 1982?

Robben Island held Mandela for the first 18 years of his life sentence, in a small cell and at hard labour in a lime quarry, before he was moved to Pollsmoor Prison on the mainland.

Which joint monarchs were offered the English throne in 1689 with a declaration later enacted as the Bill of Rights?

William and Mary were offered the throne along with the Declaration of Rights, which outlawed royal suspension of laws and taxation without Parliament's consent.

Which rotten borough, a near-deserted Wiltshire hill, returned two MPs until 1832?

Old Sarum lost its cathedral to nearby Salisbury in the 1220s and emptied out, yet six centuries later the deserted hill was electing two MPs to Parliament.

Which newspaper coined the word 'suffragette' in 1906?

A Daily Mail reporter coined 'suffragette' in January 1906 as a put-down for Emmeline Pankhurst's militants, who adopted the label and later named their own newspaper The Suffragette.

At which 1913 race did suffragette Emily Davison run in front of the king's horse?

Emily Davison stepped in front of George V's horse Anmer at the Epsom Derby on 4 June 1913 and died of her injuries four days later.

The Chartist movement took its name from which 1838 document?

The People's Charter demanded votes for all men, pay for MPs and yearly elections; Parliament rejected the Chartists' mass petitions, yet five of the six demands were law by 1918.

What was the official name of the Marshall Plan?

European Recovery Program aid was offered to the Soviet bloc as well; Czechoslovakia and Poland were ready to take part until Soviet pressure made them pull out.

The Warsaw Pact followed days after which country joined NATO?

West Germany entered NATO in early May 1955; within days the Soviet Union, alarmed at a rearmed Germany in the Western camp, signed up seven allies to a rival pact.

In which Berlin building has Germany's federal parliament met since 1999?

The Reichstag, badly damaged in the 1933 fire that the Nazis used to claim emergency powers, reopened in 1999 with Norman Foster's glass dome above the debating chamber.

Which two leaders signed the 1978 Camp David Accords?

Sadat and Begin signed at the White House after nearly two weeks shut away at Camp David with Jimmy Carter; both won the Nobel Peace Prize, but Sadat was assassinated three years later by opponents of the peace.

The 1998 Good Friday accord in Northern Ireland is also named after which city?

Belfast gave the agreement its formal name; voters on both sides of the border then backed it in referendums, and the Republic gave up its constitutional claim to the North.

Which country adopted a 'semi-presidential' system in 1958, splitting power between a president and a prime minister?

France's 1958 constitution mixed presidential and parliamentary rule; when voters give parliament to the president's opponents, as first happened in 1986, the two must share power in 'cohabitation'.

What was the name of Franklin Roosevelt's presidential aircraft, a Douglas C-54?

Sacred Cow had a built-in lift to raise Roosevelt in his wheelchair, yet it carried him only once, to the Yalta Conference in February 1945.

Which cabinet member ranks highest after the US vice president?

Secretary of State comes first because cabinet posts are ranked in the order their departments were created, and the State Department, set up in 1789, was the earliest.

Which Founding Father ran the Treasury in George Washington's four-man first cabinet?

Alexander Hamilton had the federal government take over the states' war debts; Jefferson and his allies let the plan through only after he agreed to put the capital on the Potomac.

Which president revived delivering the State of the Union in person, in 1913?

Woodrow Wilson broke a tradition of written messages that had lasted more than a century, ever since Thomas Jefferson chose to send his to Congress on paper in 1801.

What is the cabinet member who skips the State of the Union address called?

The designated survivor sits out the speech at an undisclosed secure location, so that someone in the line of succession could take over if disaster struck the Capitol.

Which law, named after a French political scientist, says first-past-the-post voting tends to produce two dominant parties?

Duverger's law, set out by Maurice Duverger in the 1950s, holds because small parties rarely win single-member seats and voters shy away from spending a vote on a likely loser.

In gerrymandering, what is 'packing'?

Concentrating opponents in one district lets them win it by a landslide while wasting their votes everywhere else; its counterpart, cracking, spreads them too thinly to win anywhere.

What is the lower house of India's Parliament called?

Lok Sabha means 'House of the People'; in 1976 the share-out of its seats among the states was frozen so that states which slowed their population growth would not lose representation.

What is the name of the Australian prime minister's primary residence in Canberra?

The Lodge has housed prime ministers since the 1920s, though some, including John Howard, chose to live mainly at Kirribilli House on Sydney Harbour instead.

Emmanuel Macron became the youngest French head of state since which ruler?

Napoleon Bonaparte seized power at 30 in his coup of 1799; Macron was 39 when he won the presidency in 2017, without ever having held elected office before.

Kamala Harris was the first woman elected to which California statewide office, in 2010?

Attorney general was a race so tight that it took three weeks of counting before her Republican rival, Steve Cooley, conceded; Harris won by less than one percentage point.

Which official has the Commons door slammed in their face at the State Opening of Parliament?

Black Rod must then knock three times to be let in, a show of the Commons' independence that is traditionally traced to Charles I's attempt to arrest five MPs in 1642.

Who was the first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany?

Konrad Adenauer was sacked as mayor of Cologne twice, by the Nazis in 1933 and by the British occupiers in 1945, before becoming chancellor at 73 and staying for 14 years.

What is the upper chamber of Japan's National Diet called?

House of Councillors exists because Japanese negotiators insisted on a second chamber: the American occupation's 1946 draft constitution had proposed a single-house Diet.

What does the Irish word 'Taoiseach' literally mean?

Chief or leader is the literal meaning of the Irish word; the 1937 constitution dropped the Free State's President of the Executive Council and gave the head of government the old Gaelic title instead.

What is the official residence of the French president?

Élysée Palace, built in 1722, was a royal favourite's townhouse long before it was a republican seat: Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV, lived there almost a century before any president.

The parliamentary term 'whip' is borrowed from which activity?

The term comes from fox hunting, where the 'whipper-in' keeps the hounds from straying; Parliament applied it to party discipline in the 18th century.

From 1972 to 2020, which state held the first caucus of the US nomination season?

Iowa opened the nomination season from 1972; for 2024 President Biden's party put South Carolina at the front instead, while Republicans kept Iowa's caucuses first in the nation.

Under what pseudonym were the Federalist Papers written?

Hamilton, Madison and Jay signed all 85 essays 'Publius', after Publius Valerius Publicola, a founder of the Roman Republic.

In which state was the Teapot Dome oil reserve at the centre of the 1920s scandal?

Teapot Dome was a naval oil reserve in Natrona County, Wyoming; Interior Secretary Albert Fall leased it secretly in 1922 and became the first cabinet member sent to prison for crimes in office.

What office did John Profumo hold when his 1963 scandal broke?

John Profumo was Secretary of State for War when his affair with Christine Keeler, who also knew a Soviet naval attaché, forced his resignation in June 1963; Macmillan quit that October.

Which amendment, adopted in 1967, addresses presidential disability and succession?

The 25th Amendment lets a president fill a vacant vice presidency; that is how Gerald Ford got the job in 1973, before becoming the only president never elected to either office.

The 12th Amendment followed Thomas Jefferson's 1800 electoral tie with which running mate?

Aaron Burr was meant to be vice president, but electors' two votes were not labelled by office and he tied Jefferson at 73; the House took 36 ballots to choose, and the amendment split the ballots.

What colour is the UK House of Commons chamber?

Green has been the Commons' colour since at least 1663, the first firm record of it; the red of the Lords most likely comes from its use as a royal colour.

Which company publishes the Democracy Index?

The Economist Group's research arm has compiled the index since 2006, sorting countries from 'full democracy' to 'authoritarian regime'; in 2016 it demoted the United States to a 'flawed democracy'.

Which party, dominant in the 1790s, is generally regarded as the first political party in the United States?

The Federalists grew out of George Washington's administration and favoured a strong central government; after losing the presidency in 1800 they never won it back.

As of 2025, who is Japan's longest-serving prime minister?

Shinzo Abe overtook Taro Katsura's century-old record in November 2019, then resigned the next year over the same bowel disease that had ended his first spell as premier in 2007.

Which treatise calls it safer to be feared than loved?

The Prince was written in 1513, months after Machiavelli had been jailed and tortured on suspicion of conspiracy; it circulated in manuscript and was printed only in 1532, five years after his death.

Machiavelli served as secretary to the second chancery of which republic?

Machiavelli was secretary of Florence's second chancery from 1498 to 1512, while the Medici were out of power; their return cost him the post.

Which country appointed the first parliamentary ombudsman, giving English the word?

Sweden created the office in 1809, after its king was deposed, to keep watch on officials on parliament's behalf; 'ombudsman' is Swedish for a representative, from Old Norse.

How is a newly elected UK Commons Speaker traditionally taken to the chair?

Dragged unwillingly to the chair by fellow MPs, a new Speaker acts out a reluctance said to date from when the job meant carrying the Commons' unwelcome messages to the monarch.

Which architect won the competition to design the new Houses of Parliament in London?

Charles Barry won the contest held after fire destroyed the old palace in 1834, a blaze started by stoves stuffed with obsolete wooden tally sticks; Augustus Pugin worked with him on the Gothic design.

Which is the world's smallest sovereign state by both area and population?

Vatican City became a state in 1929, when Mussolini's Italy and the papacy signed the Lateran Treaty, settling a standoff that had run since Italian troops took Rome in 1870.

Which US president received the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize?

Barack Obama said he did not feel he deserved to be in the company of past winners; nominations had closed less than two weeks after he took office.

Which union did Ronald Reagan lead twice before entering politics?

Screen Actors Guild made Reagan its president twice, in 1947 and 1959; as US president in 1981 the former union boss fired more than 11,000 striking air traffic controllers.

In which city did the Chinese Communist Party hold its founding congress in July 1921?

Shanghai was where delegates from China's scattered Marxist groups met two envoys of the Soviet-run Communist International to found the party; Mao Zedong was among them.

The word 'filibuster' ultimately derives from a Dutch term meaning what?

Filibuster traces to the Dutch vrijbuiter, 'freebooter' or pirate, via the Spanish filibustero; English applied it in the 1850s to adventurers like William Walker before it meant legislative obstruction.

In 18th-century London Stock Exchange slang, what was a 'lame duck'?

A broker who defaulted on debts was a 'lame duck', perhaps because he was pictured waddling away from Change Alley; American politics borrowed the phrase in the 1860s.

Which star of the sitcom Servant of the People later won Ukraine's real presidency in a landslide?

Volodymyr Zelenskyy played a history teacher who is elected president after his rant against corruption goes viral. In 2019 he won the real run-off with 73 percent of the vote.

Which presidential power is jokingly granted to a turkey at the White House each Thanksgiving?

A pardon became a permanent part of the turkey ceremony only in 1989. Ronald Reagan had joked about one two years earlier.

Which ancient city-state let voters banish a citizen for ten years by scratching a name on pottery?

Athens called the practice ostracism, after the ostraka, the broken pottery used as ballots. The exile kept his property and could come home after the ten years.

Which action star announced a run for governor on The Tonight Show and won a 2003 recall election?

Arnold Schwarzenegger was one of 135 candidates on the ballot to replace Gray Davis as governor of California.

Which revolutionary left Swiss exile in 1917 on a so-called 'sealed train' across wartime Germany?

Vladimir Lenin's carriage had a chalk line across its corridor dividing the Russians from their German escort. Only the Swiss go-between, Fritz Platten, was allowed to cross it.

Which White House room is the usual home of the Resolute desk, built from a British ship's timbers?

The Oval Office desk was a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880, after the Arctic exploration ship HMS Resolute was broken up.

Since the 2000 election, which colour have US television maps used for states won by Republicans?

Red was not always the Republican colour: NBC's first illuminated map, in 1976, lit Republican states in blue, and the network kept that scheme until 1996.

Which US president left the Navy's submarine service to run his family's peanut farm in Georgia?

Jimmy Carter had hoped to serve aboard Seawolf, one of the first nuclear submarines, until his father's death called him home. The Navy later named a submarine after him.

Which exiled German philosopher, buried in London's Highgate Cemetery, wrote Das Kapital?

Karl Marx wrote it in London after being expelled from Germany, and died there in 1883 as a stateless person.

Which US president spoke for under two minutes at Gettysburg after another orator's two-hour speech?

Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is only ten sentences long. Edward Everett's oration before it, slated as the main speech of the day, ran to more than 13,000 words.

Which US president played saxophone on The Arsenio Hall Show and was impeached in 1998?

Bill Clinton was only the second president ever impeached, and the Senate cleared him on both charges in 1999. The talk-show slot led some conservatives to call him 'the MTV president'.

Which power, Latin for 'I forbid', lets one permanent member sink a UN Security Council resolution?

A veto began in ancient Rome, where a tribune of the plebs could single-handedly block a magistrate's action or a decree of the Senate.

Which unanimous 1954 Supreme Court ruling outlawed racial segregation in America's public schools?

Brown v. Board of Education struck down the 'separate but equal' doctrine. The suit was brought by the Browns and twelve other Black families in Topeka, Kansas.

From which German city did Neville Chamberlain fly home in 1938 promising 'peace for our time'?

Munich was where Germany was granted the Sudetenland. Czechoslovakia, the country losing the territory, was not even invited to the conference.

Whose quotations filled the 'Little Red Book' carried during China's Cultural Revolution?

Mao Zedong once worked as an assistant to the librarian of Peking University. The book's nickname came from the red cover of its most widely printed edition.

Which country's shah fled into exile in 1979, clearing the way for Ayatollah Khomeini to take power?

Iran approved the change to an Islamic republic in a referendum that March. Khomeini, who had himself been exiled in 1964, became supreme leader by the end of the year.

Which building, home of the US Department of Defense, has about 17.5 miles of corridors?

The Pentagon's construction began on 11 September 1941, sixty years to the day before a hijacked airliner was flown into it.

Where in Beijing did student protesters erect a foam Goddess of Democracy statue in 1989?

Tiananmen Square held the 10-metre statue for less than a week before an armoured car rammed it down as troops cleared the protesters.

Which member of the Committee of Five wrote the original draft of the Declaration of Independence?

Thomas Jefferson's draft condemned the slave trade and blamed it on King George III. Congress deleted the passage to appease South Carolina and Georgia.

Which Republican won the 2000 presidential election after carrying Florida by just 537 votes?

George W. Bush lost the nationwide popular vote to Al Gore by more than half a million ballots. Recounts and court fights over Florida took over a month to resolve.

Which everyday object gave its name to the 2014 pro-democracy street occupations in Hong Kong?

An umbrella was the protesters' defence against police pepper spray, and the name took hold within days of first appearing on Twitter.

Which trade union, born in a Gdańsk shipyard in 1980, grew to ten million members by late 1981?

Solidarity was the first independent trade union in a Warsaw Pact country to be recognised by the state. At its peak it enrolled a third of Poland's working-age population.

Which city's Peace Palace houses the International Court of Justice, the UN's top court?

The Hague gives the court a distinction: it is the only principal organ of the UN not located in New York City.

Which prime minister called the Brexit referendum, backed Remain, and resigned when Leave won?

David Cameron had already got his way in two referendums, on the voting system in 2011 and Scottish independence in 2014. Theresa May, his home secretary, succeeded him.

Which Nobel Peace Prize winner spent almost 15 years under house arrest in Myanmar between 1989 and 2010?

Aung San Suu Kyi is the youngest daughter of Aung San, regarded as the father of modern Myanmar. Her two sons accepted the 1991 prize on her behalf.

On which day of the US primaries do the most states vote, with about a third of delegates at stake?

Super Tuesday has carried the name since at least 1976. It falls in February or March, and more convention delegates can be won on it than on any other day.

Which wave of uprisings began in Tunisia in late 2010 and went on to topple Egypt's Hosni Mubarak?

The Arab Spring began after a Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire in protest. Within a month President Ben Ali had fled to Saudi Arabia after 23 years in power.

Which country moved to democracy after Francisco Franco's chosen heir, Juan Carlos, became king?

Spain elected a democratic parliament in 1977 and approved a new constitution by referendum in December 1978. Franco had named Juan Carlos as his successor back in 1969.

Which Wisconsin senator claimed in 1950 to hold a list of Communists in the State Department?

Joseph McCarthy's own figure is disputed to this day: his list held either 205 names or 57. The Senate voted 67–22 to censure him in 1954.

Which first US Treasury secretary was killed in an 1804 duel with Vice President Aaron Burr?

Alexander Hamilton was shot at Weehawken, New Jersey, and died the next day in Manhattan. His eldest son, Philip, had been killed in a duel in 1801.

Which US president, a former Kansas City haberdasher, kept a desk sign reading 'The buck stops here'?

The sign was made in a federal reformatory in Oklahoma after a US marshal friend saw one like it there. Harry S. Truman's copy says 'I'm from Missouri' on the back.

Which country, long officially neutral, has a parliament called the Riksdag and joined NATO in 2024?

Sweden trimmed its single-chamber Riksdag from 350 seats to 349 after the 1973 election left government and opposition tied on 175 each.

Which secretary-general, the first chosen from the UN's own staff, shared the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize?

Kofi Annan, a Ghanaian diplomat, shared the prize with the UN itself. He had joined in 1962 as a budget officer for the World Health Organization.

What name is given to the non-violent fall of communist rule in Czechoslovakia in late 1989?

The Velvet Revolution is the Czech name; Slovaks have called it the Gentle Revolution from the beginning. By the end of December the dissident playwright Václav Havel was president.

To which island did Chiang Kai-shek's defeated Nationalist government retreat in December 1949?

Taiwan also received China's wealth: the fleeing Nationalists stripped the mainland of gold, silver and dollar reserves in a mission Chiang ran largely in secret.

Which philosopher's Leviathan described life without government as 'nasty, brutish, and short'?

Thomas Hobbes wrote it during the English Civil War, arguing that only a strong, undivided government could prevent a 'war of all against all'.

Which Labour leader beat Winston Churchill in the 1945 landslide and oversaw the birth of the NHS?

Clement Attlee had been Churchill's deputy prime minister in the wartime coalition. His win was declared less than three months after victory in Europe.

Which Japanese city gave its name to a 1997 climate treaty that the United States never ratified?

Kyoto hosted the talks in December 1997, but the protocol took more than seven years to enter into force, in February 2005.

Which Chinese leader worked for four years in a tractor factory before launching market reforms?

Deng Xiaoping had been denounced as the party's 'number two capitalist roader' and purged twice. He came back to be paramount leader from 1978 to 1989.

The Schengen Agreement on passport-free travel is named after a village in which small country?

Luxembourg hosted the 1985 signing on a riverboat, the Princesse Marie-Astrid, on the Moselle at the point where its border meets those of two larger neighbours.

Which record of UK parliamentary debates is named after a London printer once jailed for libel?

Hansard is not a word-for-word transcript: it trims repetitions and corrects obvious mistakes. Parliament took over publishing it only in 1909.

Which 1648 settlement, signed in Osnabrück and Münster, ended the Thirty Years' War?

The Peace of Westphalia is often credited with founding the modern system of sovereign states, though some historians argue that reading was added centuries later.

Which country, then a grand duchy under the tsar, became the first in Europe to give women the vote?

Finland went further than the vote in 1906: women could also stand for office, and the next year's election returned 19 of them as the first female members of a parliament.

Who became the first woman on a major US party's ticket as Walter Mondale's running mate in 1984?

Geraldine Ferraro was a former Queens prosecutor who had been in Congress since 1979. She and Mondale lost 49 states to Ronald Reagan.

Which Genevan philosopher's The Social Contract was burned in his home city and banned in Paris?

Rousseau argued that freedom flourishes best in small city-states like his native Geneva. Voltaire mocked the bonfire: to burn a book of argument is to admit you cannot answer it.

Which aristocrat, sent to inspect American prisons in 1831, came home to write Democracy in America?

Alexis de Tocqueville spent nine months touring the country with a friend, and later admitted the prison brief had been a pretext for studying American society.

Which leader took Britain's Gold Coast colony to independence in 1957 under the new name Ghana?

Kwame Nkrumah was deposed in a coup in 1966 and lived out his life in Guinea, where he was named honorary co-president.

Which Cambridge-trained lawyer served as Singapore's first prime minister for 31 years?

Lee Kuan Yew was born Harry Lee Kuan Yew, and as a schoolboy he topped the Senior Cambridge exams across Malaya before reading law in England.

Which Egyptian president nationalised the Suez Canal Company in 1956 to pay for the Aswan Dam?

Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the takeover in a speech in Alexandria. Two years later he merged his country with Syria as the United Arab Republic, a union that lasted until 1961.

Which Victorian prime minister also wrote novels, from Vivian Grey in the 1820s to Endymion in old age?

Benjamin Disraeli published Vivian Grey anonymously in four volumes, and brought out his last completed novel shortly before he died at 76.