Historic Bridges Trivia Quiz

Answer: Constantine defeated Maxentius in battle

The Milvian Bridge is on the northern outskirts of Rome. Here, Emperors Constantine and Maxentius fought for control of the western portion of the Roman Empire. Legendarily, Constantine had a vision of the cross emblazoned against the sun before the battle.

In the following year, Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, legitimating Christianity and creating a turning point in world history. The meeting of Pope Leo I and Attila, a diplomatic engagement rather than a battle, took place in 452. Hannibal, on the other hand, had been dead for almost 500 years as of AD 312.

The bridge is not known as a site of martyrdom.

Answer: It was rebuilt after being dynamited by the Germans in World War II

The Ponte Vecchio was, in fact, the only bridge across the Arno left intact by the Germans in their retreat from Florence in August 1944. The bridge, which replaced an earlier one destroyed by flood in 1333, is indeed lined with shops and carries a passageway above, known as the Vasari Corridor, after Giorgio Vasari, who designed it in 1564.

Answer: Mostar, Bosnia

The bridge, a graceful stone arch, was destroyed in fighting between Croat and Muslim forces. A rebuilt span was dedicated in 2004. Mostar, Baghdad, Cairo, and Istanbul were all, at one time or another, part of the Ottoman Empire.

Answer: Coalbrookdale, England

Designed initially by Thomas Pritchard, the single-arch bridge was completed by Abraham Darby III, a local ironmaster. Shrewsbury is a nearby town on the Severn River, while Annapolis and Fort Severn are located on Severn Rivers in North America.

Answer: Westminster Bridge

The full title of the poem is "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802," the first half of which reads:
"Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky."

While Wordsworth potentially could have found his inspiration on the London Bridge, he would not have known the Chelsea and Tower Bridges, which were later 19th-century constructions.

Answer: Concord River

Each of these rivers had a role in the American Revolution, but the following line of the opening stanza, "...And fired the shot heard round the world," tells all. Emerson's "Concord Hymn" commemorated the stand taken by the so-called Minutemen at the North Bridge on April 19, 1775.

Answer: Ambrose Burnside

An entire Union corps, commanded by Burnside, was prevented for hours from crossing Antietam Creek by a few hundred Georgia sharpshooters perched on the heights above. George McClellan was commander of the Union army. Hooker and Mansfield were corps commanders both wounded early in the battle, Mansfield mortally.

Answer: John Augustus Roebling

Roebling had already designed suspension bridges in Pittsburgh, Niagara Falls, and Cincinnati before taking on the challenge of spanning the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Unfortunately, Roebling died in 1869 from tetanus incurred in an accident before construction had begun. The project was taken over by his son Washington Roebling. Eads, Meigs, and Brunel were each multi-talented engineers in their own right, who, among other accomplishments, designed bridges in the United States (Eads and Meigs) and Britain (Brunel).

Answer: High winds

Heavy winds triggered oscillations that violently twisted the roadbed, causing a collapse that became an important case study in structural engineering. A brief video clip of the event can be seen at http://www.enm.bris.ac.uk/research/nonlinear/tacoma/tacnarr.mpg

Answer: George Washington Bridge

The George Washington Bridge between New Jersey and New York City was opened in 1931. A little red lighthouse really does exist beneath the bridge, as New Yorkers are aware. Those unfamiliar with Swift's tale should still be able to infer an answer: the Golden Gate is not gray, and the Verrazano Narrows and Newport (Claiborne Pell) bridges were not built until the 1960s.

Answer: Remagen

Elements of the American 9th Armored Division captured the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen on March 7, 1945. The bridge, weakened by previous unsuccesful attempts by the Germans to demolish it, collapsed ten days later, killing 28 American soldiers. Bridges at Cologne, Bonn, Mainz, and many other locations along the Rhine were blown up by the retreating Germans before Allied troops could cross them.

Answer: Alabama River

On March 7, 1965, several hundred voters' rights activists began what was to be a fifty-mile march from Selma, Alabama to the capital in Montgomery. They were confronted and attacked by state troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, an event that came to be known as "Bloody Sunday." A much larger contingent, given federal court protection, successfully completed the march two weeks later. None of the other rivers listed is in Alabama.

Answer: Silver Bridge over the Ohio River

On December 15, 1967, the Silver Bridge, connecting Point Pleasant, West Virginia and Kanauga, Ohio, suddenly collapsed, killing 46 people. The cause of the disaster was traced to corrosion in the "eyebar" suspension chains. The Sunshine Skyway, which was struck by a freighter in 1980 and the Mianus River bridge in Greenwich, Connecticut, which lost a 100-foot section of roadway in 1983, were also sites of disasters, but neither involved a suspension bridge.

The Sunshine Skyway has since been replaced by a spectacular cable-stay suspension bridge.

The Eads Bridge at St. Louis, also not a suspension bridge, has remained intact in its 130-year existence.

Answer: Lake Havasu City, Arizona

In 1962, when it was determined that the old London Bridge, overburdened by traffic was, in fact, in danger of falling down, the British government decided to sell it to the highest bidder. Robert McCulloch, developer of Lake Havasu City, purchased the bridge for $2,460,000 and had it shipped, piece-by-piece to Long Beach, California, from where it was trucked to Arizona.

The relocated bridge was dedicated in 1971.

Answer: San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge

On October 17, 1989, a 6.9 magnitude temblor (now known as the Loma Prieta earthquake) shook the San Francisco Bay area, stopping a World Series game before it began and wreaking its most deadly destruction on the double-deck Nimitz Freeway in Oakland. A section of the upper deck of the Bay Bridge collapsed, killing one driver. The nearby Golden Gate and Richmond-San Rafael Bridges escaped serious damage. The Vincent Thomas Bridge, crossing the main channel of Los Angeles Harbor at San Pedro, was not affected by the earthquake.