May 19, 2007
Anne Boleyn was the 2nd queen consort of Henry VIII and mother of Elizabeth I. When Anne failed to produce male heirs, she was brought to trial on charges of adultery and incest. Under great pressure, a court headed by her uncle the Duke of Norfolk condemned her, and she was beheaded. Two days before her death, her marriage was declared void by the Church of England. Henry's divorce from his first wife, motivated by his desire to marry Anne, initially drove what historical event?
May 18, 2007
In this case, the US Supreme Court upheld an 1890 Louisiana statute mandating racially segregated railroad carriages, ruling that the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment dealt with political and not social equality. This provided constitutional sanction for the adoption of the Jim Crow laws. Justice Henry Billings Brown wrote the majority opinion, stating that "separate but equal" laws did not imply one race's inferiority to another. What case effectively overturned
Plessy?
May 17, 2007
Sax, the son of an instrument designer, began to make his own instruments at an early age, entering two of his flutes and a clarinet into a competition at the age of 15. His first important achievement was an improvement in the design of the bass clarinet, which he patented at age 20. He invented the instrument for which he is now known, the saxophone, for use in orchestras and concert bands in the 1840s. As a result of his saxophone patents, Sax was driven to bankruptcy twice. How?
May 16, 2007
Joan of Arc was a French military leader and heroine. Inspired and directed by religious visions, she organized the French resistance that forced the English to end their siege of Orléans. The same year, she led an army of 12,000 to Rheims and had the dauphin crowned Charles VII. Captured and sold to the English by the Burgundians, she was later tried for heresy and sorcery and was burned at the stake in Rouen. How old was she when she died?
May 15, 2007
Portrait of Dr. Gachet is a famous painting by Vincent Van Gogh, who painted two versions in June, 1890, shortly before his death. The portraits depict Doctor Gachet, Van Gogh's doctor, with a foxglove plant from which digitalis, used to treat heart conditions, is extracted. In 1990, Japanese businessman Ryoei Saito bought the work for $82.5 million, then a record for the most money paid for a painting. Who owns the second version of the portrait?
May 14, 2007
In November of 1947, the UN voted on a Partition Plan for Palestine, calling for the formation of two states, one Jewish and one Arab, in what had been a British-administered territory. The Arab leadership rejected this plan, arguing that it violated the rights of the 67% of the population who were not Jewish. On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was declared in the territory that the Partition Plan allotted. The next day, 6 Arab states declared war on Israel. How did this war end?
May 13, 2007
Prior to the arrival of the Spaniards, Ecuador was controlled by the Inca empire. Francisco Pizarro's subordinate, Benalcazar, entered the area in 1533. Not finding the wealth of the mythical El Dorado, he and other conquistadors moved restlessly on and the region became a colonial backwater. After an abortive independence movement in 1809, the region remained under Spanish control. It was liberated by Antonio Jose de Sucre and was joined to Greater Colombia by what famous revolutionary?
May 12, 2007
Luna 5 was an unmanned Soviet spacecraft designed to continue investigations of a lunar soft landing. On May 10, the spacecraft began spinning around its main axis due to a problem in a flotation gyroscope in the I-100 guidance system unit. An attempt to fire the main engine failed because of a ground control error, causing
Luna 5 to crash into the moon. It was the second investigatory Soviet spacecraft to "land" on the Moon. What was the first?
May 11, 2007
Thailand's origin is traditionally tied to the short-lived kingdom of Sukhothai founded in 1238. After contact with the west in the 16th century, adroit diplomacy enabled Siam to remain independent of European colonization, the only country in Southeast Asia able to do so. A mostly bloodless revolution established a constitutional monarchy in 1932 known initially as Siam until, under Pibul Songgram's military dictatorship, the name Thailand was adopted. What does the word
thai mean?
May 10, 2007
As FBI director from 1924 until his death in 1972, Hoover built a more efficient crime-fighting agency, establishing a centralized fingerprint file, a crime laboratory, and a training school for police. After WWII, he turned to the perceived threat of Communist subversion with a focus that his many critics considered obsessive. It has been verified that he orchestrated systematic harassment of political dissenters and activists, including what celebrated civil-rights leader?
