Historical Quiz 1 - Dates Part I

[rochvelleth]

100 Historical Things, Number 25I thought that every 25 posts I would do a quiz for people. I was going to do dates right through to the 20th C, but then I discovered there's a limit on the number of elements you can have in a poll, so I stopped around the time when we stop talking about the medieval period and start talking modern history (which

Comments

[denorios]

Ooh, some of these were tough! Some I knew right off, and others are pretty much guesses based on what date something subsequent was or what else was going on at the same time.

[pseudomonas]

Most of mine are guesses aiming at being approximately in the right era...

[cartesiandaemon]

In what year did Christopher Columbus discover the Americas?

Ooh, I know this. There's a rhyme American children learn.In tumpty hundred and tumpy two,
Columbus sailed the ocean blue

Which is a really stupid rhyme, because it tells you the units digit of the year (which is normally the least important), and that it's >100 AD (which is sort of obvious), but DOESN'T tell you the century or decade, which is the thing you might reasonably expect to know :)

And yes, I totally can't do years in general, although obviously someone who knew more history would be a lot closer. I saw a similar quiz which asked people to give a range they were 90% confident of, where most people still guessed too small a range, but somewhat encouraged them to be realistic with what they did know, rather than just thinking "If I can't give the year I'll just ignore the question, and not admit I might be uncertain as to the century.." :)

[jpgr]

Um, it does say F---teen Hundred and ---ty-two

(censored for those who haven't answered)

[cartesiandaemon]

Sorry, I didn't mean the teachers literally told the students to say "tumpty tumpty tumpty", I mean, the rhyme scans just about as well for lots of other years, so it helps a little (just because we remember stuff set to rhyme), but it would help a lot more if the MOST important part of the date rhymed with something (so you couldn't get it wrong) rather than the least :)

[jpgr]

Sorry, misunderstood you. I actually learned it to the tune of "Dixie" and I think it's one of the first dates I ever memorized.

[weebleflip]

"Feel free to complain about the date-centred way of doing history in comments :)"

....yeah. Need I say more?!

I always hated being expected to learn dates. I've got a decent memory, so it wasn't a problem, it just seemed so pointless! School history would look at individual periods in isolation, get you to learn a huge pile of dates in that 4-50 year range, and never really show you how one period leads into another/never gave an overall feel of how we got from the end of the last ice age to here....

[naath]

I was always *awful* at dates. I think it's more useful to know what order things happen in (and when things happen at the same time in different places), less so exactly when they happened.

The only one on this list I recall to within a few years in Stamford Bridge.

[jpgr]

Oh, dates were my thing in school. I remember being asked years on (taking abother college course) by someone studing history and remembered the date Magellen's ship circumnavigated the earth. We know he didn't as he died in the Pacific)

I was also better at naming the Kings & Queens of England than I was US Presidnts. Must be the whole hand-me-down name thing.

[xwingace]

Blahblah never bothered to learn the dates in the first place and all that... As long as I have some sort of ballpark idea what happened before/after what, I could usually do fine. Not that I did much English history at all in school, anyway, and nothing at all after that. At least not until you get to the Napoleonic Wars/Age of Sail, where I've read quite a bit of historical fiction.

I'm aiming for ballpark right century here on most of these, nothing more.

XWA