HOT TOPICS History

Quiz

1 What band is best known for their

1980s hit Down Under?

2 In Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels, the people of what land are giants?

3 What Friends actress starred in the

1999 comedy film Office Space?

4 What is Canada's tallest mountain? 5 The assassination of what Archduke led to the beginning of World War I? 1778 English navigator Captain James Cook reaches the presentday Hawaiian Islands, which he named the ‘Sandwich Islands’.

1911 The first landing of an aircraft on a ship takes place as pilot Eugene B Ely brought his Curtiss biplane in for a safe landing on the deck of the armoured cruiser USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Harbour.

1943 During World War II, Jewish insurgents in the Warsaw Ghetto launch their initial armed resistance against Nazi troops, who eventually succeed in crushing the rebellion.

1943 The Soviets announce they have broken through the long Nazi siege of Leningrad (it’s another year before the siege was fully lifted).

1943 A US ban on the sale of presliced bread — aimed at reducing bakeries' demand for metal replacement parts — goes into effect.

1957 A trio of B-52s complete the first non-stop, round-the-world flight by jet planes, landing at March Air Force Base in California after more than 45 hours aloft.

1967 Albert Desalvo, who claims to be the ‘Boston Strangler’, is convicted of armed robbery, assault and sex offences. (Sentenced to life, Desalvo is killed in prison in 1973.)

1990 A jury in Los Angeles acquits former preschool operators Raymond Buckey and his mother Peggy Mcmartin Buckey of 52 child molestation charges.

1993 The Martin Luther King Jr holiday is observed in all 50 American states for the first time. 1998 The motion picture Titanic wins four Golden Globes, including best drama and best director for James Cameron.

2005 The world's largest commercial jet, the Airbus A380 ‘superjumbo’ capable of flying up to 800 passengers, is unveiled in Toulouse, France.

2019 Jason Van Dyke, the white Chicago police officer who gunned down Black teen Laquan Mcdonald in 2014, is sentenced to nearly seven years in prison.