The History – Geography Quiz 2017

PrelimsJanuary 2016 – January 2017

Question 1This is a screenshot of Askia of the Songhai Empire taken from Civilization V. What is burning in the background?

AnswerThe Great Mosque of Djenne

Question 2Delhi had one. The Bahamani kingdom, Berar, Bidar, Bijapur, Golconda and Ahmednagar had none. In the former kingdom of Touggourt (now part of Algeria), there was one. Aceh, in Indonesia had five. What am I talking about?

Answer 3Sultana

Question 3This is ophthalmologist Mustafa Iqbal conducting an iris test. On whose behest was this test conducted (which group / organisation)?

Answer 3National Geographic Magazine

The test was to verify that Sharbat Gula (the lady being tested) was the Afghan Girl from the June 1985 cover

Question 4This is a quartz-sandstone mountain in Zhangjiajie National Forest in Hunan Province, China and was previously called the Southern Sky Column. The mountain was renamed in 2010 to capitalise on a wildly popular pop-culture phenomenon, a part of which it inspired. What is the new name?

Answer 4Avatar Hallelujah Mountain

Question 5We all know where Great Britain is. How do we know the lands referred to as 'Little' or 'Lesser Britain'?

Answer 5Brittany

Question 6This US state is the only part of the US that was acquired voluntarily by the US, with the consent of its (then) government and by a plebiscite by all of its citizens (who were eligible to vote). One consequence of this is that this state did not automatically surrender its public lands to the federal government - the federal government only owns land which it has subsequently purchased. The state in question has used the subsequent windfall in natural resource revenues from these lands to fund two university systems, one of which has the largest endowment of any public university in the US. Which state?

Answer 6

Question 7This is the Richat Structure, in West-Central Mauritania. Initially interpreted as an asteroid impact structure because of its high degree of circularity, it is now argued to be a highly symmetrical and deeply eroded geologic dome. What is it's more colloquial nickname?

Answer 7The Eye of the Sahara

Question 8XY (one word) is a conflagration which attains such intensity that it creates and sustains its own wind system. The phenomenon's determining characteristic is a X with its own Y-force winds from every point of the compass. Examples include: Black Saturday, Great Peshtigo, Dresden, Hiroshima.

ID XY.

Answer 8Firestorm

Question 9 This geographical feature is, depending on who you ask, part of Shansha city in Heinan province, part of Sabah state, part of Palawan province, part of Kaohsiung municipality, or part of Khánh Hòa province. The feature is named after a 19th Century whaling captain who visited the area in 1843. Name the feature.

Answer 9 The Spratly Islands

Question 10“The Society for the Prevention of Calling Sleeping Car Porters _________" was founded as a joke by a lumber baron named Dulany. He formed it in mock-protest against the practise in the early part of the 20th Century of calling the porters of the Pullman company (who were predominantly black) by the given name of the Pullman company's founder. The president of this society was Spanish-American War hero Admiral Dewey, and its membership was supposed to include the King of England, Babe Ruth, and French Prime Minister Clemenceau. Although not actually formed to combat racism in any way, the Society succeeded in getting Pullman to provide name cards informing passengers of the name of their porter. FITB.

Answer 10George

Question 11Katherine McIntosh told CNN that the fame, starting in 1936, had made the family feel both ashamed and determined never to be as poor again. Her brother Troy Owens said that more than 2,000 letters received along with donations for his mother's medical fund led to a re-appraisal of the cause of the fame: "For Mama and us, it had always been a bit of curse. After all those letters came in, I think it gave us a sense of pride." What are the siblings talking about?

Answer 11The picture titled Migrant Mother

Question 12In a 1813 battle near Leipzig, coalition armies of Russia, Prussia, Austria and Sweden defeated Napoleon's army which contained French, Polish, German and Italian troops. The battle was the culmination of the 1813 German campaign and involved nearly 600,000 soldiers, making it the largest battle in Europe prior to World War I. Being decisively defeated for the first time in battle, Napoleon was compelled to return to France while the Coalition invaded France early the next year. Napoleon was forced to abdicate and was exiled to Elba in May 1814. What was this massive battle (that involved nearly every European ethnicity) called?

Answer 12The Battle of Nations

Question 13Connect: 1. King Aventinus 2. Caelius Vibenna, an Estrucan Noble 3. Citalde/Capital/Skull 4. Aesculi (Italian Oaks)/'Out-towners' 5. Palace 6. Quirinus, a God 7. Viminal

Answer 13The Seven Hills of Rome

Question 14This group of Indo-Scythian rulers in a region that now covers Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan were contemporaneous with the Satvahana empire and the Kushans, who may have been their overlords. The name by which they are known to modern scholars comes from their location in ancient India, and their title, which was a corruption of an ancient Persian title. What were these rulers called?

Answer 14Western Satraps

Question 15In June 1916, the British warship HMS Hampshire struck a naval mine close to the Orkney Islands and sank with massive loss of life. The British author Lord Alfred Douglas created scandal by alleging that then former First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, had conspired to sink the Hampshire. Churchill’s motivation was supposed to be a convoluted scheme to cause a crash in the price of British stocks, which would allow Churchill’s financier friends to buy them cheaply. Churchill sued Douglas in 1923, in what would be the last successful use of the law of criminal libel. Douglas went to jail for 6 months. Why was the sinking of the HMS Hampshire so important?

Answer 15Lord Kitchener was travelling to Russia on the HMS Hampshire, and was killed when she sank

Question 16The ______ _______ Trail is sometimes associated with Western backpackers who use Lonely Planet travel guides. The Trail is not a fixed route, but includes popular destinations for backpackers, including Goa and Manali in India; Krabi and Phuket in Thailand, Siem Reap in Cambodia (location of Angkor Wat) and Bali in Indonesia. The idea is that areas frequented by backpackers begin to cater to them, and serve them what they might consider comfort foods, even though these foods are otherwise unknown to the region. FITB

Answer 16The Banana Pancake Trail

Question 17It is an Arabic word literally meaning, as a noun, "tremor", "shivering", "shuddering", as a dog might shrug off water, or as one might shake off sleep, or dirt from one's sandals. Two of these have taken place, one between December 1987 to 1993 and the other from late September 2000 to around 2005.What am I talking about?

Answer 17

Question 18The German warship SMS Emden was one of the only factors in the First World War that touched the lives of civilian Indians in a major city when it shelled Madras in September 1914. Similarly, the SS Fort Stikine was one of the only times the Second World War directly touched the lives of civilians in Bombay. What happened with the Fort Stikine in 1944 that did this?

Answer 18The Fort Stikine, loaded with war munitions, exploded in Bombay Harbour on 14 April 1944, killing up to 1300 people.

Bonus Fact: India’s National Fire Safety Week is observed in April each year in memory of the 66 firemen who died in this incident.

Question 19The state religion of a civilization awaited the fulfilment of an ancient prophecy: that the wandering tribes would find the destined site for a great city whose location would be signalled by an Eagle eating a snake while perched atop a cactus. The tribe found such a site, founded a city and later, an empire that lasted 100 years until it was destroyed in 1521. What modern city is on this site?

Answer 19Mexico City / Mexico DF

Question 20Connect the darker shaded areas:(Not a Lexical Connect, Not Exhaustive)

Question 20

Question 20

Answer 20Smaller regions within countries after which the whole country is namedGreater PolandFinland ProperNorth Holland and South HollandKingdom of Italy

Question 21Belize: Mahogany, Lebanon: Cedar, Equatorial Guinea: Silk Cotton, Haiti: Palm, Fiji: Coconut.

What are we talking about?

Answer 21Trees on Flags

Question 22Balaji Avaji Chitnis was a minister in the court of Chatrapati Shivaji. While at the Mughal court with his King, he observed that court proceedings were recorded in the Shikasta Nastaliq modes of writing Persian, instead of the classical Nastaliq, due to the higher speed of transcription. Inspired by this, it is said that he adopted something that had been invented by Hemadpant, a minister in the court of the Yadava kings of the 13th Century. Balaji Avaji’s innovation continued to be used widely, until the Bombay Presidency decided to do away with it for the sake of conformity and administrative convenience. What did Balaji Avaji bring into popular use?

Answer 22The Modi script

Question 23The words "grassy _____" to describe this area were first used by reporter Albert Smith, in his second dispatch from the press car: "Some of the Secret Service agents thought the gunfire was from an automatic weapon fired to the right rear of the president's car, probably from a grassy ____ to which police rushed.”Thus the term "grassy ____" has come to also be a modern slang expression indicating suspicion, conspiracy, or a cover-up. The blank itself means a small rounded hillock separated from a larger range.FITB.

Answer 23Knoll

Question 24The name given to this region derives from the ethnonym of the people living here, and is not related to the Spanish for ‘little fly’.What is this name, which is shared by a 1986 Harrison Ford movie?

Answer 24Mosquito Coast (from the Miskito people)

Question 25While it originates in Christianity, the characteristic shift of the centre is early modern, first described in the Danish Koffardiflaget regulation for ships, 11 June 1748. It specified the shift as "the two first fields must be square in form and the two outer fields must be 6/4 lengths of those". The Danish design was later adopted and altered by other countries via politics and otherwise.What is this design?

Answer 25The Scandinavian / Nordic Cross