TRIVIA BITS

Abolitionist John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry was inspired by a slave rebellion led by Toussaint Louverture that helped establish what nation?

A) Angola

B) Haiti

C) Jamaica

D) Vietnam

The highest individual military award for valor against an enemy force is the Medal of Honor, not the “Congressional” Medal of Honor. In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the Congressional Medal of Honor Society to encourage friendships among Medal of Honor recipients. The society is now headquartered at Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum in Mount Pleasant, S.C. Thank you to reader Steven Branting and to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society for this clarification.

There are only about 300 wolverines living in the “lower 48” of the United States, none of them in Michigan. Despite the fact that Michigan is nicknamed the Wolverine State — and the University of Michigan mascot is the wolverine — wolverines never have been native to Michigan. Those vicious, voracious members of the weasel family prefer colder climates, such as northern Canada and Alaska. Their Michigan connection might have come from 18thcentury fur traders who sold wolverine pelts there.

Laura Bassi was the second woman to receive a degree from a European university and the first woman to receive a professorship, joining the faculty of the University of Bologna in Italy in 1732 at age 21. Her primary area of study was Newtonian experimental physics, which she taught for 28 years at the university. So formidable was her intellect, she was invited to join the faculty of the elite Bologna Academy of Sciences. Her husband, Giuseppe Veratti, was her lab assistant.

Answer: In the late 18th century, Toussaint Louverture led a slave rebellion that helped establish Haiti as a nation.