The World That Was: 1916 Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Centre Block

Although the fire was later determined to have been accidental -- a carelessly discarded cigar set fire to newspapers, wood paneling, and the recently varnished floor in the Reading Room -- many feared that it might have been a covert attack by German agents. The House of Commons was in session at the time the fire was noticed (8:37 p.m.); the members were all evacuated, though some spectators apparently died trying to retrieve their coats. Shortly after midnight, the large bell in the clock tower -- which had valiantly tolled the hour all evening -- finally fell. In the end, the Library of Parliament, which had huge iron fire doors, was the only part of the building to survive.

With the war on, the Canadian government could waste no time getting back on its feet: the cornerstone of the new Centre Block was laid less than seven months later. The houses of Parliament would meet in the Victoria Memorial Museum until their new quarters were ready in 1920.

Answer: Pancho Villa

The Mexican Revolution began in 1910 as a revolt against Porfirio Díaz, who had ruled Mexico as a dictator for thirty-four years. There was a brief pause in 1911, when Francisco Madero defeated Porfirio Díaz and was elected president -- but Madero's half-hearted reforms led his co-revolutionaries to rebel, and soon Mexico was embroiled in a messy civil war with multiple sides.

The U.S. claimed neutrality in this war, but was actually deeply involved. The U.S. ambassador helped overthrow Madero in 1913 (against the wishes of his president) and General Pancho Villa had the tacit support of American arms dealers -- until a dispute over money and quality. Villa and hundreds of his soldiers took revenge by raiding Columbus, New Mexico, killing eight U.S. soldiers and ten civilians (about 80 of Villa's men died). In response to this attack, and to later raids into Texas, U.S. General John Pershing led an expedition into Mexico to capture Villa. In 11 months, they did not find their man, but did help undermine him as a contender. All-out war between the U.S. and Mexico was only narrowly avoided.

Answer: Yuan Shikai

Yuan Shikai (1859-1916) is a fascinating figure. He had always been interested in government, but he kept failing the civil-service exams - so he obtained a position as an officer in the army. He rose in the army through a combination of skill and luck, allegedly backed the right side in a coup by the Dowager Empress, and soon started to collect important political appointments. By the time of the successful Wuchang Uprising in 1911, Yuan had a loyal army and was able to barter with Sun Yat-sen's revolutionaries: Yuan got the child emperor to resign, and Yuan got to be the Provisional President of the Republic of China.

As time went on, though, Yuan grew less and less satisfied with this. He didn't like the Kuomintang revolutionaries, and began concerted efforts to suppress them. He announced that democracy was inefficient and that China really needed an autocratic ruler anyway. It was a short step from there to graciously accept the title of Emperor when some of his friends "independently" asked him to restore the monarchy. But this was a bridge too far for Yuan's supporters: even many officers in his army deserted him, protests roiled the nation, and governors began to openly rebel on December 25, 1915. Three months later, on March 22, 1916, Yuan's dream ended and he renounced his claim to empire. It was only his death from natural causes on June 5 that saved him from having to resign as President, too. He left behind a thoroughly divided country where provincial governors competed with each other as warlords, setting the stage for several bloody, troubled decades in China.

Answer: The General Post Office

World War I presented an opportunity to Ireland's revolutionaries, who hoped that a distracted Britain would loosen its grip on their island. (They also planned to get help from Britain's adversaries, but the secret German arms shipment was intercepted.) On Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, hundreds of men forcibly occupied strategic sites around Dublin. From their headquarters at the General Post Office, they proclaimed an independent Irish Republic, in the biggest Irish insurrection for more than a hundred years.

But the Easter Rising was doomed. The rebels weren't prepared for bombardment, nor did they have the support of the populace -- in fact, a significant part of the Irish independence movement didn't support them either. The rebellion lasted only six days before the rebels surrendered, after hundreds of deaths -- most of them civilians, who were slain by both sides. Sixteen ringleaders were soon tried and executed. In a sense, it was not their movement but their martyrdom that renewed their dream of independence, and six years later the Irish Free State was a reality.

Answer: The North Sea

Jutland is the Danish peninsula, reaching up towards Norway at the eastern end of the North Sea. Germany's High Seas Fleet, commanded by Vice-Admiral Reinhard Scheer, was locked out of the Atlantic Ocean by the Royal Navy's blockade. Scheer knew that Admiral Sir John Jellicoe's Grand Fleet was too large to take on at once, so he laid plans to lure small elements of the British fleet into action so that they could be destroyed piecemeal.

Unbeknownst to Scheer, however, the British had cracked Germany's naval codes and they knew something was coming. Jellicoe and his whole fleet sailed to meet Scheer too early, before the German U-boats had assembled their picket line. The result was two horrific naval encounters -- one between battleship groups and one between the two main fleets -- before the Germans escaped to port. Total German losses were some 62,000 tons of shipping, 2,551 killed, and 507 wounded, to 113,000 tons, 6,094 killed and 674 wounded on the British side.

Both combatants had some claim to victory. The Germans had destroyed a part of the British fleet while losing less of their own. The British had driven the High Seas Fleet to port, and the Fleet was not a significant factor in the rest of the war: German naval strategy after Jutland would rely on unrestricted submarine warfare. The age of the battleship was drawing to a close.

Answer: The Somme

Friedrich Steinbrecher, who served as a German officer at the Somme, summed up the battle thus: "Somme. The whole history of the world cannot contain a more ghastly word." The numbers involved are hard to grasp. There were more than a million casualties including more than 300,000 deaths. The British and French gained ground, true, but it's hard to say it was worth it; British gains came at an incredible cost of two soldiers, killed or wounded, per centimeter gained.

The Somme was so very bloody because the fight consisted mainly of infantry charges on fixed, entrenched positions - and British commanders liked ordering multiple small attacks rather than large and overwhelming ones. Artillery attacks on the German lines did not soften them as much as had been expected, and may even have made the barbed wire harder to cross. At one point the British Army introduced tanks, in their first-ever combat appearance, but these early war machines were hampered by unreliability and by the fact that no one had much tactical experience with them.

Answer: A munitions depot

The depot was located on Black Tom Island, on the New Jersey side; the island was connected to the mainland by fill from railroad construction. The Germans feared (with cause) that the munitions were destined for their enemies in continental Europe, and so -- possibly with some inside help -- they destroyed the stash at night.

The resulting explosion killed at least seven people, including an infant, and rang church bells as far away as Philadelphia. Every window in the Statue of Liberty's pedestal shattered, and shrapnel damaged the statue's upraised arm; the arm was permanently closed to the public later that year. Though mostly forgotten now, the Black Tom explosion was a tremendous shock to the U.S., and it laid the groundwork for later panics about possible infiltration by foreign agents.

Answer: Ethiopia

Zewditu (1876-1930) was born into a proud royal family that claimed direct descent from King Solomon of Israel and the Queen of Sheba (named Makeda in Ethiopian tradition). She had three brief and unhappy political marriages (starting when she was ten years old!) before happily wedding a military commander and distant relative, Gugsa Welle. In the meantime, though, her father died and her nephew Iyasu proved erratic and unpopular as emperor, alienating the nobles and the church. It took only three years for them to depose Iyasu and place Zewditu on the throne.

Zewditu wielded some power but not much; since she was a woman, her cousin Tafari Makonnen - the future Emperor Haile Selassie - served as her regent. He was keen on political reform and modernization, but she - a pious and conservative Ethiopian Orthodox Christian - blocked many of his efforts. In 1930, after palace intrigue, attempted coups in both directions, and a failed rebellion by Zewditu's husband, Zewditu died of natural causes and her regent rose to the Ethiopian Imperium.

Answer: U.S. women did not yet have a constitutionally guaranteed right to vote.

Although women in many western states (including Montana since 1914) did have the right to vote, most American women did not; this right was not guaranteed nationwide until the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1920. Rankin (1880-1973), a Republican and a pacifist, served only two Congressional terms (1917-1919 and 1941-1943), and voted against U.S. entry into a World War in each term. Each time, it killed her re-election chances, but she remained a lifelong advocate for pacifism, health care, and civil liberties.

Answer: Grigori Rasputin

Rasputin (ca. 1867-1916) was a controversial mystic and faith healer whose teachings diverged from mainstream Russian Orthodoxy. The Tsar's only son, Alexei, suffered from the serious blood clotting disorder of hemophilia, and Rasputin's apparent success in healing the boy gave him great influence over the royal family. Yet this very influence undermined them: Rasputin famously preached "salvation through sin" and accepted bribes for access, activities that didn't look good when the royal family was demanding absolute trust during an unpopular war.

In December 1916, Felix Yusupov, a Russian noble, formed a conspiracy to solve the problem by murdering Rasputin. The murderers tried poisoning him, shooting him, and drowning him in a river, though Rasputin probably wasn't as hard to kill as later legends claimed. Revolution nonetheless came to Russia in February and November of the next year (by the Gregorian calendar).