OK, shamelessly plagiarised from another place but how's yor score in this quiz?
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/quiz/2012/mar/06/history-dates-quiz?fb=native
9/10 here. Some luck but utter ignorance of wars of roses.
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Ha!
I got seven this time, only 5 in t'other place. Mind you, this is a more intelligent forum (but don't tell the others I said that) so I reckon it rubs of.
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5 out of 10 Not to shabby didn't have a clue..;)
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I scored a not too shabby 7/10, but I have to admit that a lot of my answers were sheer random guesswork. My excuse is that I stopped studying History at school in 1953 ~ and that's way back in my own history!
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Better for me this time 9/10.
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Oh well. 10, but that's only because I knew the answers.
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What a rubbish quiz, history's not just about a list of dates.
OK, five.
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9/10. Got the date of the Union of England and that other place, out by 2 years. Not bad for an Irishman:)
Last edited by: NIL on Fri 9 Mar 12 at 09:10
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9 out of 10
But history is not about dates, and Richard III has no relevance to living today. History of the last 100 years though, yes. Treaty of Versailles (which was included) is extremely relevant as it indirectly led to the second war.
Last edited by: Slidingpillar on Fri 9 Mar 12 at 09:38
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8/10
I was caught out by the way history used to happen faster in the past.
I knew the Versailles conference began in 1919, so I guessed it wouldn't actually have been signed until 1920. But no, they met, thrashed out all that business, and then got it signed within a few months.
Likewise the union with Scotland. They talked about it one year, signed it the next. We are going to spend several years just to decide whether to have a referendum or not.
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>> Richard III has no relevance to living today.
>>
I would dispute that. It was the defeat of Richard III that overturned the mediaeval system of constant civil war between rival factions of local barons, and brought in the Tudors who implemented a totally different style of government.
Power became ruthlessly centralised, barons were obliged to attend court rather than make local trouble, and it saw the growth of a powerfull and very efficient civil service and tax-raising bureaucracy.
All too familiar today.
Those dates were all signposts on the way to how we are now. It's a similar picture elsewhere. One clue to the origins of the recent Balkan troubles was the ancient division of the Roman Empire. The boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire foreshadowed the iron curtain. The Mughal invasion of India created the present religious divisions there.
And so on. Those who forget history are indeed condemned to repeat it.
Last edited by: Cliff Pope on Fri 9 Mar 12 at 09:57
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I scored 6 out of a possible 10
Not too shabby
I guessed at least 3 of the answers ;)
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Same 9 as NIL; same error too. Bet Humph knew that one.
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>>Same 9 as NIL; same error too<<
And I.
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8/10 different errors....
:-)
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Same as me (except for the Irishman bit!!)
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>> OK, five
Ditto. A measly 5.
The only consolation is 'er indoors, an esteemed school teacher, she only got 5 as well.
Last edited by: Westpig on Fri 9 Mar 12 at 11:32
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...and before Humph gets there..."and the rest join the police"
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Nooooo perish the very....
:-)
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Of course, recollection of dates is one of the most stupid measures of historical knowledge.
Its not when things happen, is why that matters. Remembering the date WW2 was declared doesnt tell you a darned thing, other than something happened on that day. Context is history, dates are for silly tests.
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10/10 , but only because History was always my favourite subject.
Ask me about most other things and I am a complete duffer, especially about cars.
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>>Of course, recollection of dates is one of the most stupid measures of historical knowledge<<
I take it you didn't do too well then.
:o)
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I partly agree, Stu - but how do you put Magna Carta and the Peasants' Revolt in context if you don't know which happened first?
This probably wasn't Einstein but I've seen it attributed to him:
Time is nature's way of preventing everything from happening at once.
While this probably was Groucho Marx:
Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.
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Im not saying the dates are irrelevent, but they only contribute to the wider context which is far more important - the idea of a history test based just on dates is stupid, its a test on historical dates.
I got 10/10 but thats hardly the point, ive studied history for 15 years, id be ashamed if id got any wrong.
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8/10 - excellent....
Considering that is ..... I last studied history at school to A Level in 1967....
Talking of Cambridge professors - I recommend you watch 'She Wolves' a history of English Queens before Elizabeth 1 , its on BBC Four presented by Dr Helen Castor who was helicopter juniors history professor at Cambridge ...she brings the subject to life.
I met her on a couple of occasions at college dinners - She is quite the best looking Cambridge history professor you will ever meet and a master of her subject matter .
I recommend her book ' Blood and Roses ' also...
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9/10.
History's a thing of the past...but I love it!
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10/10 but again only because I knew all the answers anyway.
This is a very interesting thread, as it's a real passion of mine. I was never that interested in history at school. TBH how relevant to modern life is it to "pretend to be a soldier in the trenches and write home about the mud and rats". Again.
In order to understand England/Britain, and the things you see around you (churches, castles, plays, music, towns, warships, portraits, manuscripts, books - anything that's not popular culture, really) and how they relate to each other, you need to know some dates and understand how the culture of the nation related to the other activities.
I'd love to be a history master, actually. I'd be rubbish at getting pupils through their exams, because I'd find them boring... but I believe they'd find my history lessons interesting and relevant and they'd remember them too.
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Oh yes, and "learning dates is for losers" completely misses the point. Modern youth has been taught for 40 years that what is essential is process, not information. So learning useless information is a waste of time. And this goes all the way through university so that even undergraduates are given formula sheets to save hurting their poor brains.
And then.
You leave the nice cosy world of education, and you join the world of work. And do professional examinations. Which inter alia require you to memorise huge tracts of information, without which you would be unable to do your job at all. Knowing where to find it in a book isn't enough, you need to know it off by heart. And all your years of education are useless as they haven't trained you to do this.
So you have to learn how to do it. Anybody who scoffs at learning things by rote probably should try it.
BTW, helicopter, Dr Castor is not a professor - the clue is in her title. But she's certainly hot.
Edited: www.sid.cam.ac.uk/aboutus/people/person.html?crsid=hrc12 but her own website seems to use a rather younger photograph...
Edited again to say I've now read the article too, and he's promoting exactly what I would want to.
Last edited by: Mapmaker on Fri 9 Mar 12 at 14:02
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>> But she's certainly hot.
>>
>> Edited: www.sid.cam.ac.uk/aboutus/people/person.html?crsid=hrc12 but her own
>> website seems to use a rather younger photograph...
>>
7/10 for me, mostly guesswork... now if I had been taught history by Dr. Castor, I'd expect nothing less than 11/10.
;-)
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One of my favorite subject at school Dutch History.I was never inpressed whith the school history books.To much flannel about blond haired men fighting the Spanish.I used to do some research and read different history books about our history.The teacher wasn't inpressed.
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8/10, but I did take my A level (equivalent) History exam in 1948. Bosworth Field had very great consequences, marking the beginning of socialism, i.e. state control of a nation's economy.
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Only 8, a bit shaming really. Would have been 9 but I confused Trafalgar with Waterloo in my haste. Never did know when the Union was founded.
Couldn't bear history as a child and abandoned it before O level, out of pure idleness. Big mistake, because without a fairly solid grounding in history it's impossible to understand politics or the present shape of the world, and you can end up being 'ashamed' of imperialism in an infantile PC way (for example).
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>>Only 8, a bit shaming really<<
Only, you blimmin pillock! - what's the matter with excellent then pray tell??
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>> In order to understand England/Britain, and the things you see around you (churches, castles, plays,
>> music, towns, warships, portraits, manuscripts, books - anything that's not popular culture, really) and how
>> they relate to each other, you need to know some dates and understand how the
>> culture of the nation related to the other activities.
I agree MM. If you watched the series by Dan Snow when he weaves history together it makes one realise how one small event can affect so much.
In one program recently he relates how Britain had to defend its colonies in the Caribbean in order to protect Britains sugar supplies and how the tax raised from sugar and the invention of income tax helped fund the war effort and the building of war ships which ultimately protected our island from the French and Spanish. All this in turn was possible because some guy came up with the idea of covering ships hulls with copper plating which made them faster and more and manouverable that the enemy's barnacle and seaweed encrusted boats.
Fascinating stuff.
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I was present at the signing but got the date wrong as I slept all the way through it.
Last edited by: madf on Fri 9 Mar 12 at 14:49
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9/10
I have an excellent feel for historical events and their timeline/zone, tho I shamefully got the Battle of Trafalgar wrong.
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Read some Sharpe Zeddo - rip-roaring novels with a sound historical base ! Good way to learn facts in an enjoyable and contextual way !
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7/10 Quite pleased with that.
I have O level history, but we only studied social and economic history of the 18th and 19th centuries, so it was all enclosure and spinning jennies
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Hopefully interesting thread ( slight ) drift to follow...
I went to school in Scotland and to be honest not much more than the basics of English history was taught. Anything I may have picked up since has been from my own efforts / interest. We were taught Scots history in the main. Of course some of it was the same but certainly the medieval and later stuff relating to and up to the 18th century was concentrated on that which particularly pertained to Scotland. Going further back into Roman / Greek etc then I guess it all polarised again.
Appropos of nothing really. Carry on.
:-)
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I got 6 out of 10. I knew the answers for the 6 I got right. The other 4 were guesses, and got all of them wrong.
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10/10. Even surprised meself!
Mostly straightforward stuff but the one that I did have to take an educated guess at was the Act of Union.
I enjoy history, unfortunately had a history teacher at my grammar school who could bore for Britain and put me off learning about it there. Permanently miserable, no sense of humour; standard attire was a brown jacket, beige shirt, dark green knitted tie, brown trousers and brown shoes. Even drove a brown Hillman Imp; got a lift off him once and he was the mimser to end all mimsers, would've been quicker to walk.
Thankfully my interest in railways got me back into the subject.
Last edited by: Harleyman on Fri 9 Mar 12 at 19:42
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>> 10/10. Even surprised meself!
>> Mostly straightforward stuff
Show off ;)
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>> Read some Sharpe Zeddo - rip-roaring novels with a sound historical base ! Good way
>> to learn facts in an enjoyable and contextual way !
For a Naval perspective of the era, including Trafalgar, try an equally rip-roaring series of tales, try reading the "Kydd" series by Julian Stockwin! From a pressed seaman to (presently) a Post Captain and upwards, we are lead to believe!
Last edited by: Roger on Fri 9 Mar 12 at 19:50
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>> Read some Sharpe Zeddo - rip-roaring novels with a sound historical base ! Good way
>> to learn facts in an enjoyable and contextual way !
What gunboat of the line was Sharpe on then?
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None - but the character fought in all major engagements of the Peninsular War - plenty of references to Naval activities....! :-q
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Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series, Hornblower for grown-ups, twenty-odd novels starting with Master and Commander, very classy stuff that I would recommend to Roger especially, but to anyone who hasn't read them.
Never mind the movie with that Kiwi chap playing Aubrey. It was so-so, but the books are about a hundred times better.
You can't fire a real cannon for a movie, let alone a couple of dozen. It wouldn't be allowed. And people would lose toes or even get killed. That's one reason why all such movies are a bit pathetic.
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British/English History - Robin O'Reliant
