HOT TOPICS History

Quiz

1 What 1984 film won four Oscars, including Best Director for Milos Forman?

2 The Black Death, also known simply as the Plague, was caused by what disease?

3 Which is the only Grand Slam singles tournament Maria Sharapova has won twice?

4 Around 75 per cent of Jupiter’s

mass is made up of what element?

5 Rapper Montero Lamar Hill is better known by what stage name? 1865 As the Civil War neared its end, Union forces captured Fort Fisher near Wilmington, North Carolina, depriving the Confederates of their last major seaport.

1892 The original rules of basketball, devised by James Naismith, were published for the first time in Springfield, Massachusetts, where the game originated.

1929 Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta.

1942 Jawaharlal Nehru was named to succeed Mohandas K. Gandhi as head of India’s Congress Party.

1973 President Richard M. Nixon announced the suspension of all U.S. offensive action in North Vietnam, citing progress in peace negotiations.

1974 The situation comedy Happy Days premiered on ABC-TV.

1976 Sara Jane Moore was sentenced to life in prison for her attempt on the life of President Gerald R. Ford in San Francisco. (Moore was released on the last day of 2007.)

1993 A historic disarmament ceremony ended in Paris with the last of 125 countries signing a treaty banning chemical weapons.

2009 US Airways Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger ditched his Airbus 320 in the Hudson River after a flock of birds disabled both engines; all 155 people aboard survived.

2014 A highly critical and bipartisan Senate report declared that the deadly Sept. 2012 assault on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, could have been prevented; the report spread blame among the State Department, the military and U.S. intelligence.

2020 Chinese officials said they couldn’t rule out the possibility that a new coronavirus in central China could spread between humans, though they said the risk of transmission appeared to be low.