History in Calendar Order Trivia Quiz

On 27 January the Soviet Union's Red Army liberated the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, four months before the end of the war. Regrettably, the majority of prisoners - around 50,000 - had been forced a week beforehand to march for miles to trains that transported them to other concentration camps, with many dying on the way.

Nonetheless, when the Red Army approached, the remaining 7,000 Auschwitz inmates cried in relief, receiving food and medical care. The soldiers were shocked and devastated by the evidence of the million people who had been murdered at the camp.

27 January is now International Holocaust Remembrance Day, so that we remember the horrors of fascism and think about how to avoid them ever repeating.

On March 15, Julius Caesar was killed by his political enemies at a Senate meeting. Leading the Roman Republic in a period of crisis, he had concentrated much power in his own hands and sought to portray himself as a god, descended from Venus. The assassination sparked civil war, with triumph of Octavian/Augustus and the Roman Empire.

Plutarch alleges that Caesar was warned in a prophecy that harm would come to him on that day. Shakespeare depicts the murder in a play that made famous the phrase "Et tu, Brute?" ("You too, Brutus?") to describe betrayal by a friend.

The date is called the Ides of March and it was important before 44 B.C. Ides were the middle of the Roman calendar months and a time for celebrating Jupiter, king of the gods. The feast day of Anna Perenna, originally part of new year festivities, was held on the Ides of March.

From June 5 to 10, 300,000 Palestinians were displaced and 20,000 Arabs were killed in a land grab by Israel that took territories from Egypt, Syria and Jordan. The surprise attack by Israel on Egypt's aircraft gave them dominance over the air space and the one-sided war ended swiftly with Israel achieving its aims.

Jews suffered much violence in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, such as through the pogroms of the Russian Empire or the Dreyfus affair in France. However, it was not until after the Holocaust and Second World War that a large number of Jewish emigrants sought the Middle East as their new home.

Israel was a key part of British foreign policy, with the 1917 Balfour Declaration proclaiming support for a "national home" for Jews "in Palestine". British troops displaced the native Arab population and crushed the Palestinian Uprising of the 1930s. However, troops were diverted during World War II, and afterwards the United States sought to use Israel to exert control over the Middle East. "Temporary" camps in the Gaza Strip and West Bank have seen multiple generations of Palestinians grow up after their displacement in the 1948 Nakba.

On June 28, a police raid of the Stonewall Inn at 1 a.m. triggered six days of riots by the gay community. The Inn was a gay bar in New York City owned by the Mafia, who bribed police. As the police seized alcohol and began arresting people, a growing crowd spontaneously rioted, throwing coins and beer cans.

The word "gay" at the time encompassed a range of sexualities, identities, and cultures. At the time, homosexuality was illegal. Police would arrest people for wearing gender non-conforming clothing, checking a person's genitals - sometimes on the street - if they suspected they did not match their attire (such as a woman wearing pants).

Pride marches began in June the following year to mark the event and continue activism for gay liberation. Figures such as drag queen Marsha P. Johnson became leaders in the Gay Liberation Front that fought for legal rights and social acceptance. Today, June is Pride Month to many.

On July 4, delegates from the Thirteen Colonies ratified a document that declared themselves free from British exploitation and formed the United States of America. American trade had been taxed by Britain but the Americans had no political representation in its Parliament. The American Revolution did not end with the Declaration of Independence: the Brits kept fighting and only acknowledged the nation with the 1783 Treaty of Paris.

The Declaration's claim that "all men are created equal" - even apart from excluding women - deserves a heavy footnote, for the leaders of the new state mostly believed that Native Americans should be dispossessed of their land and that African slaves were essential to the economy. Nonetheless, the Americans were the first to succeed in overthrowing colonial rule under a monarchy and instituted a republic.

Even throughout the rest of the revolution, gun salutes marked July 4 as a day for Americans to celebrate, though the resolution's approval two days earlier led contemporaries to call for July 2 as the celebration date. Coincidentally, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died 50 years to the day after the July 4 ratification. Today the holiday is celebrated with fireworks and barbecues.

On July 21 (UTC, or July 20 in the U.S.), Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to step on the moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission. Armstrong's first words were intended to be "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind", contrasting his individual step with the metaphorical step forwards in human progress. The phrase "a man" was heard as "man" and is often repeated so today, somewhat spoiling the grandiose moment.

In the decades following the moon landing, the 1969 generation's vision for the future has not panned out - there was no tourism on the moon, colonization of other planets or much of the sci-fi gadgets pictured. Nonetheless, the technological innovations drastically changed life on Earth. Space exploration has led to all sorts of advances in communication, geography knowledge, and weather predictions. For example, GPS (Global Positioning System) allows billions of people on the planet to navigate from their current location to any desired location using a handheld electronic device (a phone).

The moon landing itself, however, was largely a way for the United States to claim superiority over the Soviet Union, who had successfully launched the first human into space (Yuri Gagarin) in 1961. The Cold War saw other such indirect competitions, such as many sports. In chess, Bobby Fischer was the lone American who could compete with innumerable greats of the USSR. The tension also manifested in more direct trade sanctions, propaganda campaigns and proxy wars until the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991.

On September 11, in the event now known as 9/11, 19 terrorists crashed planes into the two Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon. They failed in crashing a fourth plane into its intended target, perhaps the Capitol, after passengers fought back. The cockpit voice recorder caught some of the action, but the plane had no survivors. A 20th terrorist was meant to be on board the fourth flight, but failed to reach it.

Many Americans alive at the time recall vividly where they were when they learned of the plane crashes that killed 3,000 people. The group responsible is al-Qaeda, who believed Jews and Christians led by the U.S. were conspiring to destroy Islam, and aimed to bring about a single Islamic Caliphate in the Muslim world. In response President George W. Bush began the War on Terror.

Subsequent wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, alongside the soldiers of many countries. It is difficult to count the indirect deaths - for instance of people deprived of water - or the many millions of families displaced from their homes. Meanwhile, within the U.S., security measures introduced as "temporary" in the following years such as airport security have become permanent fixtures, with citizens divided on how their government should have responded to the 9/11 attacks.

On November 7 (New Style), Bolshevik Red Guards began occupying buildings of the Provisional Government. The Russians used the old Julian calendar at the time, so the Old Style date of 25 October led to the naming of the October Revolution. The Winter Palace's storming - an iconic symbol of the revolution - was almost something of an anticlimax, with Kerensky's government unable to find troops to defend them and almost no deaths as they quietly surrendered.

Both the preceding and following periods were hugely turbulent. In February 1917, International Women's Day brought with it revolution as women textile workers began to strike and gathered support from the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. The Bolsheviks slowly became the dominant faction during the period of dual power in which the people realized that the Provisional Government and its decrepit monarchy could not provide for them while the soviets could. Spontaneous demonstrations in the July Days led to the government killing hundreds of protesters. However, soldiers began to turn on their government.

A few years after the October Revolution, the Soviet Union was established. However, Lenin and Trotsky's initial aims for the revolution to spread around the developed capitalist countries did not come to fruition, with the German Revolution of 1919 failing. Stalin took over the Soviet Union and announced he would pursue "socialism in one country", with the Comintern even instructing workers against revolutions in other countries where it conflicted with the Soviet Union's trade allies and interests.

On 11/11 at 11:00 a.m. (CET), an armistice between the Entente and Germany came into effect. The Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary had already agreed an armistice ending their role in what they knew as the Great War.

Thousands of soldiers died on this day, now known as Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, or Veterans Day, as armies used up their remaining artillery on their opponents and continued warfare up until the clock struck eleven.

The armistice expired after a month and was extended until the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919. With Germany unable to participate in the negotiations, European land changes resulted in political instability and Germany's economy was collapsed under a hyperinflation crisis in 1923. The French leader - Georges Clemenceau - was particularly fervent in believing Germany should be punished, with British leader David Lloyd George comparing him to Napoleon. The Germans believed liberalism had failed them and a plurality turned to fascism in what become perhaps the most depraved and horrific period in human history.

On December 25 (Old Style), Newton was born in England to a widow who soon remarried a member of the upper class. Newton was educated at The King's School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was privileged enough to become a natural philosopher.

Newton developed calculus independently of his contemporary Leibniz, calculus being the study of small changes as a mathematical way to model everything from curves to animal populations. He is credited for the three Laws of Motion that govern classical mechanics, describing how objects' motion change according to force, mass, acceleration and direction. Lesser known are his interest in the now-discredited field of alchemy and his idiosyncratic religious beliefs, which he kept hidden due to the role of the Church in academia. He was also a Whig politician, advocating parliamentary democracy, and worked for the Royal Mint.

Newton himself frequently recounted the story of an apple hitting his head, inspiring his understanding of gravity. Today, Newton is perhaps second only to Einstein in terms of famous scientists and second only to Euler in the number of things named after him in mathematics.