HOT TOPICS

Quiz

1 At the 2020 Olympics, what medal did the US achieve in women’s team gymnastics after Simone Biles pulled out of the event?

2 What is the French word for the

number 10?

3 Boasting seven seasons, what TV show starred Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu?

4 Dusty Hill died recently. He was best known as the impressively bearded bassist of what rock band?

5 On which continent is Timbuktu

found?

History

1752 Britain and the British Empire (including the American colonies) adopt the Gregorian Calendar (an 11-day time difference is resolved by having Sept 14 follow Sept 2).

1812 Napoleon Bonaparte’s troops enter Moscow after the Battle of Borodino to find the city largely abandoned and parts set ablaze.

1814 Francis Scott Key is inspired to write the poem Defence of Fort Mchenry (later The Star-spangled Banner) after seeing the American flag flying over the Maryland fort after a night of British naval bombardment in the War of 1812.

1847 During the Mexican-american War, US forces take control of Mexico City.

1861 In the first naval engagement of the Civil War, USS Colorado sinks a Confederate schooner off Florida.

1901 President William Mckinley dies in Buffalo, New York, of gunshot wounds inflicted by an assassin; vice-president Theodore Roosevelt succeeds him.

1927 Modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan dies in Nice, France, when her scarf gets entangled in a wheel of the sports car she is riding in.

1938 Graf Zeppelin II, the world's largest airship, makes its maiden flight.

1982 Princess Grace of Monaco, formerly film star Grace Kelly, dies at age 52 of injuries from a car crash the day before.

1956 IBM introduces the RAMAC 305, the first commercial computer with a hard drive that uses magnetic disk storage and weighs over a ton.

2012 Fury over an anti-muslim film ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad spreads, with deadly clashes near Western embassies in Tunisia and Sudan, an US fast-food restaurant set ablaze in Lebanon, and peacekeepers attacked in the Sinai.