History Trivia Questions XIII

Position your cursor over the question mark found beside each question for the answer.


After 14 appearances and $129,000, Columbia history professor Charles Van Doren finally lost on "Twenty-One" when he couldn't answer this. "Who is the King of Belgium?" What was the right answer?

       a. Leopold
       b. Albert
       c. Baudouin
       d. Elvis


In terms of percentage of the popular vote, who was the most successful third-party presidential candidate?

       a. Ross Perot
       b. Theodore Roosevelt
       c. Ralph Nader
       d. George Wallace


What hockey playing presidential candidate strummed his bass for a rock band called the Electras?

       a. Bill Clinton
       b. Al Gore
       c. John Kerry
       d. George W Bush


Just 49 when he became president, what workaholic sliced Mexico in half and died in Nashville, just 103 days after leaving office?

       a. James Polk
       b. Millard Fillmore
       c. Zachary Taylor
       d. John Tyler


Of Iraq, who said this? "There are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know."

       a. George W Bush
       b. Donald Rumsfeld
       c. Condoleeza Rice
       d. Dick Cheney


Despite admitting to having fathered an illegitimate son, I became president anyway, largely because my Republican opponent, Maine's James Blaine, had taken $100,000 in railway bribes. Who am I?

       a. Grover Cleveland
       b. Benjamin Harrison
       c. Ulysses Grant
       d. Rutherford Hayes


The first sitting president to visit Canada may have contracted the food poisoning that later killed him in Vancouver, while en route from Alaska on a whistle-stop tour to salvage his scandal-plagued presidency. Who?

       a. Franklin Roosevelt
       b. John Taylor
       c. Warren Harding
       d. WH Harrison


What future world leader once led a terrorist/freedom fighter group called Irgun Zvai Leumi?

       a. VI Lenin
       b. Jawaharlal Nehru
       c. Menachem Begin
       d. Nelson Mandela


Once a mighty capital, Babylon was on the Euphrates, just 55 miles south of what less mighty modern capital on the Tigris?

       a. Tehran
       b. Istanbul
       c. Baghdad
       d. Jerusalem


Until the 1940s, what Asian nation had gone since the 1270s without being invaded?

       a. Philippines
       b. Thailand
       c. Japan
       d. China


According to tradition, Marinus, a Christian stonecutter, founded the world's oldest republic in AD 301. What is it?

       a. Monaco
       b. Luxembourg
       c. San Marino
       d. Liechtenstein


Which of these was not an NHL star, but was a president of Croatia?

       a. Franjo Tudjman
       b. Pavol Demitra
       c. Milan Hedjuk
       d. Zigmund Palffy


Conspiracy theorists claim that Jesus faked the crucifixion, married Mary Magdalene and was the ancestor of which country's Merovingian kings?

       a. Spain
       b. France
       c. Scotland
       d. Sweden


Talk about marrying well! Who is the only woman to marry men who became kings of both France and England?

       a. Eleanor of Aquitaine
       b. Catherine de Medici
       c. Catherine of Aragon
       d. Mary, Queen of Scots


The rather crazy Russian nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky once vowed to recover which formerly Russian territory, which it sold off in 1867?

       a. Alaska
       b. Finland
       c. Iran
       d. Sakhalin




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