Here's An End To All That Trivia Quiz

Answer: Sinking of the Titanic

The story of the Royal Mail Ship Titanic is one of the best known tales of the 20th century. Built for luxury and a fast crossing of the Atlantic, her first, and last, ocean voyage took place in 1912.

Reportedly deemed by some to be "unsinkable" - although not by the shipyard that built her, the RMS Titanic foundered with the loss of 1,516 lives on April 15, 1912, after striking an iceberg several hours earlier. It was one of the greatest peacetime disasters at sea in the 20th century.

The photograph shows the main building at the Titanic Quarter in Belfast, Northern Ireland, close to where the Titanic was built. Looked at the building head on, it is suggestive of a ship steaming full ahead. The "Titanic Experience" is a world-leading visitor attraction, with many artefacts and re-creations of the fateful ship.

Answer: World War Two

The bombing raid on Nagasaki was the second time that an atomic bomb had been dropped in anger. It prompted the complete surrender of the Empire of Japan, thus bringing the Second World War to an end.

Nicknamed "Fat Man", the bomb was dropped at 11.02am local time from an adapted B-29 bomber. The bomb was the equivalent of 22,000 tons of high explosives. Estimates place the number of casualties at between 60,000 and 80,000.

Six days later, on August 15th, the Emperor of Japan made a radio broadcast announcing his nation's surrender. The formal declaration was signed on September 2, 1945.

Answer: Dealey Plaza, Dallas, USA

John F. Kennedy was president of the USA for just 1,036 days when he was shot dead in Dallas, Texas. He was hit by two of three shots fired at him in an open-topped car. The third shot struck and seriously wounded Governor John Connally.

Conspiracy theories continue to abound about the assassination. There are too many to recount here. It has been estimated that 40,000 books have been written about Kennedy's life and death. [Source, "New York Times" October 27, 2013]. The photograph shows Dealey Plaza, where the shooting occurred, and the monument that was built there.

Answer: Fall of the Berlin Wall

After the fall of Nazi Germany in WW2, the capital city of Berlin was divided among the victorious nations, Britain, the USA, France, and the Soviet Union. The city was surrounded by Soviet-held land, with just a narrow corridor to the west.

In August 1961, a wall was built by East Germany to divide communist East Berlin from the west of the city. East Germans could only cross in a limited number of circumstances.

As communism foundered in eastern Europe, the East German authorities in November 1989 announced that unfettered crossing would be allowed. The people of both sides did not wait long and the wall was physically torn down in places.

Answer: Magna Carta

In 13th-century England, like most of Europe, the monarch was supreme: his word was bond and all bowed down to him. Many of his nobles rebelled and King John was forced to put his seal to Magna Carta at Runnymede. In a nutshell, it declared that the king was not above the law.

I should not need to say this to the clued-in people on funtrivia, but "Magna Carta" does not need the definitive word "the" in front of it.

Despite what he had given his seal to, King John largely ignored Magna Carta and the civil war it had been intended to prevent did break out. A more effective document, historically, was the reissued agreement by King Henry III in 1217.

Answer: Diana, Princess of Wales

Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car crash with two others in Paris on that fateful summer day in 1996. She was aged 36.

The divorced wife of Prince Charles, Diana had lived her life in the spotlight of media attention from the time of their engagement and, it has been said, died as a result of that continued spotlight. Diana had a fairy-tale life. While she was a member of the British aristocracy, it was at a low level and she was working as a teaching assistant when her relationship with Prince Charles was revealed in 1981. She was 20, he was 13 years her senior.

Diana's funeral brought an outpouring of grief. She was "the people's princess" and had been credited with bringing some life into the stuffy royal family. In truth, she found that royal family - The Firm as it was known - to be constraining. Whatever Charles and Diana had between them, many doubted there was a great deal of love or romance. She found that after their divorce and had several relationships. She seemed to have found a happier place with Dodi Fayed, with whom she was said to be engaged at the time both died in that crash. The driver of their car also died, allegedly while trying to drive away from pursuing paparazzi.

The memorial fountain at Hyde Park in London was opened in July 2004. Diana was interred on a private island at her family estate at Althorp Park, Northamptonshire.

Answer: Concorde

The Concorde was the fastest and arguably the most beautiful passenger aircraft of its time. The plane was capable of supersonic speeds and was built as a co-production between France and the United Kingdom.

In all, 20 were built, with 14 entering operations with Air France and British Airways, the only airlines to fly them. The development costs - around £1.134 billion - were underwritten by the British and French governments. That amount was never recovered, although Concorde flights were profitable for the operators.

After the disastrous fatal crash of an Air France Concorde in Paris, the Concorde was retired, largely because the costs of upgrading her to prevent future similar crashes was too high.

Answer: In a royal palace

The Great War - the War To End All Wars - was fought in many territories between 1914 and 1918. It is thought that 100 nations fought at some time or other during the conflict.

It has been estimated that 20 million people, combatants and non-combatants, died and 21 million were injured. More civilians, 10m, than soldiers, 9.7m, died. [Source: Centre Européen Robert Schuman.]

The treaty that ended the hostilities was signed at the Palace of Versailles near Paris, in the Hall of Mirrors. The fighting ended with the signing of an armistice on a railway carriage in the Forest of Compiègne the previous November. In 1940, Adolf Hitler insisted the armistice that ended French involvement in WW2 be signed in the carriage at the same spot.

Answer: Space Shuttle

The 'Space Shuttle' was a concept that allowed Nasa to put astronauts into space and return them to earth in a craft that could be used over again. In all six were built, but only five were used for space missions: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour. Enterprise, the sixth shuttle, took part in orbit operations and did not go into space. Challenger and Columbia were lost to accidents during operations, taking the lives of 14 astronauts.

Over the 30 years of the programme, 135 successful missions took place. It is estimated that from development to retirement, the programme cost $209 billion.

Going into the 21st Century, four shuttles were put on public display:
Atlantis - Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, Florida.
Discovery - Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, Virginia.
Endeavour - California Science Center, Los Angeles.
Enterprise - Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, New York City.

Answer: Ford Model T

"Any color you like, as long as it's black" was the quip attributed to Henry Ford, the man who developed the Model T - and the first mass-production system.

Between 1913 and 1927, Ford built 15m Model T cars and variants. The first Model Ts cost buyers $825 each - at a time when other cars were costing $2,000. The mass production meant that by the end each was retailing at $260.

The Model T was famously tagged "The car that changed our world". It brought motoring out of the world of the rich into the hands of the everyman. Indeed, a Model T driver in 1915 could travel on a tank of petrol farther than the total distance of properly laid roads in the USA at the time - 155 miles.