HOT TOPICS

Quiz

1 What element makes up roughly 90 per cent of the known universe?

2 Matthew Mcconaughey won his only Academy Award for what film?

3 Which sporting tournament winners’ ceremony takes place in Butler Cabin?

4 On the flag of what country can you find Arabic script that translates as “God is Great“?

5 What type of insect does a

lepidopterologist study?

History

1613 Pocahontas, daughter of Chief Powhatan, is captured by English Captain Samuel Argall in the Virginia Colony. (During a year-long captivity, Pocahontas converts to Christianity and ultimately opts to stay with the English.)

1742 Messiah, the oratorio by George Frideric Handel featuring the Hallelujah chorus, has its first public performance in Dublin, Ireland.

1861 At the start of the Civil War, Fort Sumter in South Carolina falls to Confederate forces.

1943 President Franklin D Roosevelt dedicates the [Thomas] Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC on the 200th anniversary of the third American president’s birth.

1964 Sidney Poitier becomes the first African-american performer in a leading role to win an Academy Award for his performance in Lilies of the Field.

1970 Apollo 13, four-fifths of the way to the Moon, is crippled when a tank containing liquid oxygen bursts. (The astronauts manage to return safely.)

1992 The Great Chicago Flood takes place as the city’s century-old tunnel system and adjacent basements fill with water from the Chicago River.

1997 Tiger Woods becomes the youngest person to win the Masters Tournament and the first player of African heritage to claim a major golf title.

1999 Right-to-die advocate Dr Jack Kevorkian is sentenced in Michigan, to 10 to 25 years in prison for second-degree murder in the lethal injection of a Lou Gehrig’s disease patient. (Kevorkian ends up serving eight years.)

2005 A defiant Eric Rudolph pleads guilty to carrying out the deadly bombing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and three other attacks in back-to-back court appearances in Birmingham, Alabama, and Atlanta.

Birthdays

● Actor Edward Fox is 84.

● Rock musician Jack Casady is 77

● Singer Al Green is 75

● Actor Ron Perlman is 71

● Actor William Sadler (aka Hellboy) is 71

● Chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov is 58