Image: Wikicommons by National Photo Company Collection
About This Quiz
American historian Carl Becker once said, "History is the memory of things said and done." Pretty simple, right? In that case, this quiz will be part of your history a few minutes from now!
We've seen some pretty cool things "said and done" throughout history, haven't we? Even if you haven't been alive very long, you have written records of memorable events you can learn about: The journey to the New World, Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech, man's first steps on the moon, Woodstock, the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. Maybe you remember where you were when you first heard about JFK's assassination, the Challenger disaster, or 9/11. You may even be a history buff who knows all about the building of the Great Pyramids, the Cuban Missile Crisis, or D-Day.
The great thing about history is that there's something interesting for everyone, from Britain's Elizabethan period to America's Progressive Era to the age of information and technology we're experiencing today. Not a fan of Shakespeare? No problem — try Steinbeck! Prohibition doesn't interest you? Read up on the potato famine.
Luckily, in this quiz, we've got enough to pique the interest of history amateurs and aficionados! From the painting of a particularly famous chapel ceiling to the sinking of a rather large ship, see if you can pinpoint these moments in history. Can you identify which era each of the events comes from? Let's see what you've got!
The Industrial Revolution
The Age of Revolution
The Civil War Era
You have the American Civil War to thank, in large part, for both the fight to end slavery in the South and its abolishment by then-President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation declared "all persons held as slaves" to be free.
The Age of Imperialism
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The Edwardian Age
The Civil Rights Era
Martin Luther King Jr. was known for his work throughout the Civil Rights Era, a period that encompassed the mid-1950s to the late-1960s. The speech, which took place during the March on Washington, happened right in the middle — August 1963.
The Renaissance
The Reconstruction Era
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The 1960s
Over a three-day period on a dairy farm in Bethel, New York, more than 400,000 people participated in the Woodstock Music Festival. The event went down in August 1969, a concert dubbed "three days of peace and music."
The 1980s
The 1940s
The 1930s
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The Gilded Age
The American Revolution
The Elizabethan Period
The Progressive Era
The Progressive Era, a time of great political change in the U.S. — from the late 1800s to the early 1900s — ushered in the 19th Amendment, granting women the right to vote. The amendment was passed by Congress in June 1919 and ratified a year later.
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The American Revolution
The Declaration of Independence was a central component of the period of time known as the American Revolution, which included the fledgling country's fight for independence from its British roots. The document was not officially signed until August 2, 1776.
The American Civil War
The Victorian Age
The Civil Rights Era
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The Enlightenment
The Stone Age
The Roaring Twenties
It may have been the Roaring Twenties, but it could've been called the "Dry Twenties" as well. The failed experiment known as Prohibition began in 1920 and continued until 1933 when the 21st Amendment nixed it.
The Cold War
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The 1800s
The year was 1803 when then-President Thomas Jefferson helped broker a deal between the United States and France for a portion of land that would create 13 additional states in the U.S. Historically, it has been called the "greatest land deal ever."
The 1960s
The 1920s
The 1770s
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The Romantic Era
The Middle Ages
The Roaring 20s
The Great Depression
Historians say the stock market crash of 1929 would be the equivalent of losing nearly $400 billion today. No wonder it led to a depression — the Great Depression, that is, an era that lasted until the mid-1930s.
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The Romantic Era
The Protestant Reformation
The Enlightenment
The Renaissance
The Renaissance was a period of time in which the arts flourished. Michelangelo was one of those contributing to the movement. His work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is still enjoyed by tourists from around the world who visit it today.
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The Victorian Age
The Progressive Era
It would've been extremely "progressive" in the period from the 1890s to the 1920s to have built an almost-900-ft.-long ship, but that's what the Titanic was until it struck an iceberg and sank in April 1912.
The Reconstruction Era
The Age of Enlightenment
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The 1940s
Four years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, U.S. troops detonated nuclear weapons over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. A few days later, on August 15, 1945, the Japanese surrendered, effectively marking the end of WWII.
The 1950s
The 1960s
The 1970s
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The Information Age
The Progressive Era
The Reconstruction Era
The first telephone, an invention of Alexander Graham Bell, was developed in 1876 — near the end of the period known as the Reconstruction Era. It was a period of rebuilding following the American Civil War.
The Edwardian Age
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The 2010s
The 1840s
The Great Famine in Ireland, when potato crops failed in the country, led to the deaths of roughly 1 million people and the emigration of another million. This famine, which occurred from 1845 to 1849, was the biggest in Europe during that time period.
The 1940s
The 1740s
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The Edwardian Age
The Victorian Age
The Victorian Age, so named for the period of time when Queen Victoria reigned, encompassed the years from 1837 to 1901 in England. In the midst of that era, the country saw massive growth and expansion.
The Elizabethan Period
The Gilded Age
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The Renaissance
The Iron Age
The Cold War Era
The Age of Revolution
While the Olympics date back as far as 776 BC, the first modern Olympic games were held in Greece during the Age of Revolution (1896, to be specific). The Age of Revolution marked a period of change in countries around the world.
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The 1980s
The 1910s
The 1970s
The 1970s were a period of advancements for women following the "peace and love" era of the 1960s. It was also the decade that brought us the Watergate scandal, a black mark on then-President Richard Nixon's legacy.
The 1880s
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7th Century BC
The building of the 13,170 miles of the Great Wall of China began during the 7th Century BC and continued until almost the early 1900s. The early parts of the wall were built as a means of protection during periods of warring and invasions.
The Age of Enlightenment
The Industrial Revolution
10th Century BC
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The 1980s
The 1970s
The 1950s
The 1960s
Many people who were alive when JFK was killed in November 1963 would tell you today that they remember exactly where they were when they heard the news. President John F. Kennedy was shot while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas.
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World War I
World War II
From 1941 to 1945 — the period of history that included World War II — more than 6 million Jewish men, women and children were killed in concentration camps at the direction of Adolph Hitler's Nazi regime.
The Vietnam War
The Korean War
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The Great Depression
The Civil Rights Movement
The Cold War
The period of history known as the Cold War — which began in the late 1940s — encompassed a lot of history, including the moon landing. Neil Armstrong's few steps on the moon during this historic era prompted this memorable quote.
The Information Age
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The 1970s
The 1990s
The period known as the Cold War effectively ended with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. The wall's demolition started in June 1990 and was completed in November 1991. In June 1987, during a speech in West Berlin, then-President Ronald Reagan famously said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."
The 1950s
The 1980s
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The Renaissance
The Renaissance was a resurgence for arts and culture, which makes it a fitting historical period for the invention of the modern printing press. Gutenberg's press was created in the mid-1400s in Germany.
The Enlightenment
The Age of Discovery
The First World War
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The 1990s
The 1970s
The 1980s
You might have been tempted to say the 2000s (or even the 1990s) but it was the 1980s that gave us one of the world's biggest inventions of all time — the internet. Some of the foundational elements of the internet, however, can be traced back to the 1950s.
The 2000s
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The American Revolution
The Vietnam War
The Cuban Missile Crisis happened in 1962, amid the Vietnam War and while President John F. Kennedy was still in office. The event was marked by the discovery of the Soviet Union's installation of nuclear weapons in Cuba.
World War I
The Korean War
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The 1970s
The 1980s
Millions of people were watching when the Challenger exploded during the live telecast of its liftoff. Seven people, including teacher Christa McAuliffe, were killed just a little over one minute after the space shuttle launched.
The 1990s
The 2010s
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The Age of Imperialism
The Information Age
The Information Age which, some may say still extends into today, could have begun as far back as the 1970s. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, occurred during this period, with millions watching the events unfold as they happened.
The Age of Discovery
The Edwardian Age
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The 1980s
The 1990s
The 2000s
Can you believe it has only been a little more than a decade since the first iPhone was released in 2007? Fast-forward 13 years and we've gone through various iterations of the smartphones and a whole new line of "smart" devices.
The 2010s
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The Enlightenment
The Renaissance
Do you remember the childhood rhyme: "Back in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue ..." This "discovery" occurred during the period known as the Renaissance. Of course, some believe the Americas were discovered much earlier. (Thanks, Leif Erikson!)
The Reformation
The Revolution
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The Roaring Twenties
It was the Roaring Twenties when Fleming made the discovery in a London hospital, something that changed the course of history — and our health — forever. In medical circles, this discovery ushered in the "era of antibiotics."
The Great Depression
The Civil Rights Era
The Cold War
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The Vietnam War
World War I
World War II
D-Day, also known as the Normandy landings, occurred on June 6, 1944, during World War II. On that day, more than 150,000 troops from North America and Europe landed on the coast of France, a turning point that led to the beginning of the end of the war.
The Cold War
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The 1870s
The 1920s
The 1980s
The explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine took place in April 1986. Even today, there remain questions about the severity of its impact on the area surrounding its initial impact.
The 1740s
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The Gilded Age
The American Revolution
The Information Age
The Cold War
The Cold War was a period of time that pitted the United States against the Soviet Union in many areas. One of those was the race to be first in space exploration, an era known as the "Space Race."
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The American Civil War
The American Revolution
The Boston Tea Party, the dumping of tea in the Boston Harbor to protest taxation without representation, occurred in 1773 — three years before the Declaration of Independence was signed during the American Revolution era.
The Industrial Revolution
The Edwardian Age
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The 1980s
The 1990s
The 2010s
The 2010s were a time of growth and change — a piece of the Information Age in which we currently live. In 2015, the United States Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states.
The 2000s
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The Civil Rights Era
The Cold War
The protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 were student-led demonstrations of up to 1 million people lobbying for democracy and freedom of the press, among other things. Chinese troops pushed back against the protesters, killing estimates ranging from several hundred to several thousand people.
World War II
The Industrial Revolution
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