The Thursday Quiz XLVIII

The Thursday Quiz!

The Thursday Quiz is an "Is It or Isn't It" game. From the list of twelve items, your job is to determine whether each IS or ISN'T a true example of the week's category.

Remember always the enduring lessons of the past:

No research, Googling, Wikiing, or use of reference books. The Thursday Quiz is a POP quiz. Violators will be doomed to repeat history.

This Week's Category is one of those long, rambling, wordy ones!

Real and Bogus in American History II

Which ones actually happened? And which ones only kind of seem like they might have happened, but really didn't?

1. The Barbary Wars (1801-15): The first overseas military operations of the newly independent United States are against the Berber peoples of northwestern Africa. Several of the Berber rulers promote piracy in and around the western Mediterranean; the American economy, heavily dependent on transatlantic trade, is threatened by this organized threat to shipping. The successful campaign is important in establishing the form and role of the American military.

2. Republic of Texas (1836-1845): In Mexico's Northeasternmost province, immigrants from the American South grow resentful of having to live under Mexican laws, especially the ones against slaveholding, and are disgusted by the overtly corrupt administration of dictator Santa Anna. After a successful war of independence, Texas functions as an independent country for nine years before accepting annexation by the United States.

3. Benjamin Harrison! (1840s): The tenth President is the first Vice-President to assume the office at the death of his predecessor (John Tyler). Constantly at odds with Congress -- he is even expelled from his own party (the Whigs) -- Harrison consequently has a hard time enacting much of a legacy. However, the states of Texas, Florida, and Oklahoma are added to the Union during his tenure.

4. 54'40" or Fight (1840s): As the United States begins to settle the western half of North America, territorial tensions with Great Britain heat up. The British claim to all lands north of the Columbia River would put most of today's Washington state into their Canadian colony. However, the American insistence on a border at 54 degrees, 40 minutes North -- and the threat of military action -- won the day, and that line of latitude forms the modern international boundary.

5. Battle of Borodino (1846): After being humiliated by his inability to penetrate Mexican defenses during the first few months of the Mexican-American war, General Zachary Taylor finally ambushes five divisions attempting to retreat over the Borodino River. The resulting rout effectively puts an end to organized Mexican resistance.

6. Impeachment of Andrew Johnson (1869): Taking the Presidency at the end of the Civil War, Johnson pursued what was considered a "radical" policy of creating social, economic, and political opportunities for the newly freed Southern slaves. Conservative forces in the Senate put a stop to this through the impeachment process. He remains the only American president to ever have been unwillingly forced from office (Richard Nixon having resigned before he could be kicked out).

7. The Spanish-American War (1898): The United States, supporting an independence movement in Cuba and spurred by the mysterious (but likely coincidental) explosion of its biggest warship in Havana Harbor, launches naval attacks on Spanish colonies worldwide. The war lasts four months, and ends with the U.S. holding Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, and with Cuba as a nominally independent client state. By thoroughly defeating a major European country, the United States gains recognition as an ascending world power.

8. Eugene V. Debs runs for President (1900-1920): A former state Representative from Indiana, labor leader Eugene Debs became somewhat against his will the leading political figure of the Socialist movement in the United States. While never a serious contender for the White House, he was nevertheless more than a fringe phenomenon. In 1912, he polled 6% of the popular vote, and in 1920, despite having been jailed for espousing un-American ideas, he still managed to muster 3.4% of the vote from his cell.

9. The Teapot Dome Scandal (1920s): Warren Harding's Secretary of the Interior leases public oil reserves, which are supposed to be an emergency supply for the Navy, to oil industry bigwigs in return for a portfolio of gifts, cash, and no-interest loans. A Congressional inquiry into the matter is harassed, and its members' offices are bugged and ransacked by the pre-FBI Bureau of Investigation. The resulting scandal destroys Harding's reputation and damages American confidence in government.

10. Passage of the 20th Amendment (1930): Even after the horrors of child labor were exposed by the muckrakers of the late 19th Century, it took more than 30 more years before a Constitutional Amendment limiting the practice was finally passed. Opposed by both farming and industrial interests, the 20th Amendment's prohibition of heavy labor for children under thirteen was largely passed through the efforts of women's groups and religious organizations.

11. Passage of the 25th Amendment (1976): After years of political resistance, the so-called "Equal Rights Amendment" finally becomes law after being ratified by the state of Iowa. Requiring equal treatment under the law for men and women, the 25th Amendment creates major changes in government, in law, and in many other aspects of American society throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s.

12. Passage of the 27th Amendment (1992): This simple prohibition on Congress voting itself a pay increase was originally proposed as part of the Bill of Rights in 1789, but was not ratified with the others. Dug up in the late 1970s, it was subsequently approved by thirty additional states; when added to the eight states that had ratified it more than a century earlier, this was enough to reach the 3/4 mark required to pass a Constitutional Amendment.


Submit your answers in the comments.


(The first Thursday Quiz on Famous Poems was TQXX. Missy took the Gold.)