Which Year? Trivia Quiz

While the British Empire was vast and worldwide, several British possessions sought their own government. The Dominion of Canada had already been proclaimed in 1867. In 1901, the six colonies of the Australian continent and the island of Tasmania formed a federation and became a single country as the Commonwealth of Australia. This new country still retained the British monarch as the head of state, but the new country elected its own government headed by a Prime Minister.

Other British possessions followed similar paths: The Dominion of New Zealand was proclaimed in 1907 and the Union of South Africa in 1910.

On 28 June 1914 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Gavrilo Princip, a 19-year-old Bosnian Serb nationalist who belonged to a secret society called the Black Hand, shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife Sophie. Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for the attack and issued an ultimatum with harsh conditions.

When Serbia did not agree to all the stipulations, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, one month later, on July 28, 1914. This caused Russia to protect Serbia, its ally.

This, in turn, caused Germany to declare war on France and Russia. After German troops invaded Belgium, Great Britain then entered the war, now called the First World War, then known as "the war to end all wars". It did not end until November 1918.

The 1920s were a period of economic prosperity, especially in the US, where this period was called the Roaring Twenties. Much of this profit was invested in speculative areas, banks were poorly regulated, and manufacturing output and employment were starting to decline by 1929. In October 1929, the stock market crashed, sending unemployment to 25%. People drew all their savings out of the banking system, fearing it would crash too, but this mass withdrawal made some of them crash anyway. Because the US had the largest economy worldwide, other countries had similar sharp knock-on downturns, particularly Germany and Great Britain, which depended on the US for post-WWI loans.

By the mid-thirties, some countries had started to recover, but it was the start of WWII that ended the Great Depression, as it stimulated manufacturing production, provided employment for women, whilst national military institutions recruited large numbers of unemployed men.

When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, he started overturning the conditions imposed upon Germany after WWI by the Treaty of Versailles. He started rebuilding Germany's military capability and promoting Germany's need to assert itself in the world order. By 1938, he had annexed Austria and the Sudetenland (a German-speaking majority of Czechoslovakia) and was threatening to invade Poland, which Germany did indeed do on September 1, 1939, once it had signed a non-aggression pact with Russia. Britain and France consequently declared war on Germany on September 3. WWII had begun.

The United Nations was formed as a direct result of the devastation of WWII. Whilst today, nearly all nations are now members of the UN, the term "United Nations" was coined by US President Roosevelt in the January 1, 1942 Declaration by 26 nations fighting the Axis powers. The organisation evolved from an allied military alliance into a permanent international body. Fifty nations signed up on 26 June, 1945, with five nations - China, France, the Soviet Union, the UK, and the US - forming the permanent members of the Security Council, the highest tier within the organisation. More countries joined the UN over time. When South Sudan became a sovereign country in 2011, it became the 193rd member.

The UN has several agencies in addition to the General Assembly. The UN Charter governs all agencies, a far-reaching set of principles focusing on peace, world security, setting and supporting human rights, delivering humanitarian aid, supporting sustainable development, and upholding international law.

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched its satellite Sputnik 1, which became the first man-made object to orbit the Earth, a huge technological achievement at the time. This created a crisis in the United States, as there was a fear that America was falling behind in scientific and technological power and military strength. In particular, the US realised that the Soviet Union had the capacity to send nuclear weapons across oceans.

The US responded to this perceived threat by creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958. On May 25 1961, US President Kennedy, in an address to Congress (known as the Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs), announced that the US would commit to flying a man to the moon and returning him safely. This was achieved when Neil Armstrong, a US astronaut, was the first man to walk on the moon in July 1969, effectively ending the space race.

Almost as soon as WWII was over, there was ideological disagreement between the Soviet Union and the USA over how a post-WWII world should operate. Germany was partitioned initially into four sectors, then into American and Soviet sectors, as was the capital, Berlin. A Cold War (a state of threats, political rivalry, and tension that stopped short of military combat) between the US and the USSR developed. By 1949, Germany fractured into West and East Germany. Berlin was in East Germany, but the western portion was part of West Germany. As West Berlin was surrounded by East Germany, all supplies had to be flown in over narrow air corridors.

On August 13, 1961, the Berlin Wall was a 155-kilometre (96-mile) wall of barbed wire surrounding West Berlin to stop defections of East Germans fleeing to capitalist West Germany. The barbed wire was soon replaced by a heavily fortified concrete wall with watchtowers and armed guards.

The Berlin Wall was the most visible and powerful symbol of the Cold War and illustrated the ideological divide between the democratic Western world and the Soviet-led communist Eastern Bloc. This divide was called the Iron Curtain by Winston Churchill.

The Vietnam War was controversial for several reasons: it was the first major conflict shown on television. As the war included massive numbers of civilian deaths, graphic images of the war shocked families. Reports of horrific atrocities such as the My Lai Massacre and the use of chemical weapons like Agent Orange questioned the morality of military action. In the US, the draft system was seen to be unfair, as some (mainly college students and wealthy citizens) were given deferments. Over time, public sentiment rejected the Vietnam War as a fight against communism but saw it as a complex civil war where external military forces had no clear objectives and the human cost was unjustifiable.

The Paris Peace Accords were meant to bring an end to the hostilities. They were signed on 27th January 1973. Richard Nixon was elected in 1968 on a platform, in part, to end the Vietnam War. The Peace Accords were designed so the US could withdraw its troops from Vietnam (other countries that supplied troops - Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, and South Korea - had already withdrawn their troops), plus it contained a ceasefire and a plan for a peaceful settlement in Vietnam. The actuality was that it did allow the US to end its military intervention and withdraw its troops (it provided ongoing financial and military aid to the South of Vietnam), but the fighting between the North and South continued. Congress slashed US aid to Vietnam in late 1973.

President Nixon resigned in August 1974, and the new president, Gerald Ford, did not intervene when North Vietnam launched a major offensive in late 1974, capturing Phuoc Long province. North Vietnam then realised the US would not return, so they marched on until Saigon fell on April 30, 1975. A year later, the provisional military government was dissolved as North and South Vietnam merged into a one-party communist form of government as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, with Hanoi as the capital. Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City. There was a mass exodus of former South Vietnamese citizens. About 840,000 people fled to nearby Southeast Asian countries seeking asylum. About 750,000 fled to the US, Australia, Canada, and France seeking permanent resettlement.

On 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell during the Peaceful Revolution. This marked the beginning of the end of the Iron Curtain, and it was the start of the end of communism in Europe. East Germany and West Germany reunited to form a united Germany less than a year later, and other communist countries in Europe transitioned to form democratic republics.

The fall began in August 1989 when there was a slight relaxation in travel restrictions between Australia and Hungary to test the reaction of the USSR and Mikhail Gorbachev to the border opening. When Moscow did not intervene, internal pressure within both East and West Germany through protests demanded easier transit between East and West Berlin. On 6 November, the East German Interior Ministry released a draft of new travel regulations, and a press conference was arranged to explain them. Interior Ministry published a draft of new travel regulations. Günter Schabowski, the leading party spokesman as Secretary for Information, led the Press Conference but had not been fully updated on all the details of the relaxed travel arrangements. He was given a note with new information just before the conference started. When asked when the relaxed travel restrictions would be implemented, Scabowski had no information on this point, so he mistakenly said it would be immediate. This caused thousands of East Germans to gather at the six checkpoints between East and West Berlin, demanding that the gates be opened. The guards, in the absence of orders from above, opened the gates, allowing East Berliners and West Berliners to meet for the first time in 28 years. The removal of the wall started with 'wall peckers" chipping off bits of the wall to keep as souvenirs. The official dismantling of the wall started in June 1990, with German reunification occurring on 3 October 1990. Other communist countries in Eastern Europe followed the German example and overthrew their governments. The Soviet Union (USSR) officially dissolved on December 26, 1991, marking the final collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the end of the Cold War.

Apartheid is an Afrikaans word meaning "separateness". This was a racial segregation policy of South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) that existed between 1948 and 1994. This policy ensured that the country's white minority population dominated South Africa politically, economically and socially. This policy created major opposition domestically and internationally, and the country received many sanctions from other countries. Political violence was common.

In the early 80s, there were some minor reforms of apartheid, but it was not until FW de Klerk assumed the South African presidency that real reform was enacted. He lifted a thirty-year ban on anti-apartheid groups like the African National Congress (ANC). He released Nelson Mandela, a political prisoner, after 27 years in jail, on 11 February 1990. Namibia was granted independence a month later. FW de Klerk led negotiations between the ruling National Party and the ANC to determine a peaceful transition towards majority rule. This culminated in the 1994 general election where the ANC won 63% of the vote and 252/400 lower house seats. This was considered the end date for Apartheid. Mandela was sworn in on 10 May 1994, the country's first black president. FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for their work for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime, and for laying the foundations for a new democratic South Africa".