Through History with The New Monday Quiz: the 1200s

OK, time travelers, it's time to get back on that horse, "that horse" being our decade-by-decade tour of the Second Millennium!!  For those of you who haven't been ON that horse, it's time to saddle up!  Remember, it's about intuition as much as it's about erudition!

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1. As part of the Crusade against the Livonians, Bishop Albert of Buxhoeveden occupied the port of Riga in 1201 and began building it into a port city. Of what country is Riga now the capital?

2. In November 1202, the Fourth Crusade besieged and sacked the Catholic city of Zadar, a port held by the Kingdom of Hungary in what is now Croatia. Now, why would they do such a thing?

The Fourth Crusade puts some hurt on Zadar

3. On April 12, 1204 armies of the Fourth Crusade broke through the walls of a major city and "for three days they murdered, raped, looted and destroyed on a scale which even the ancient Vandals and Goths would have found unbelievable." What was the city on which the holy warriors vented their fury?

The Fourth Crusade reaches its exciting climax

4. "By 1206 [he] had managed to unite or subdue the Merkits, Naimans, Mongols, Keraites, Tatars, Uyghurs, and other disparate smaller tribes under his rule." Who was he?

5. In 1206, the Mamluk Dynasty began in the Sunni Sultanate of Dehli. Where would that have been?

6. On April 15, 1208, a fire began in the Song Chinese capital, at that time (and for the entire 13th Century) almost certainly the largest city in the world. Over the next four days, it would destroy 58,097, killing 59 people directly and probably many others from trampling, exposure, and the rigors dislocation. So -- I hate to do this to you, but -- can you name the city? It starts with an "H"!

7. For much of the decade, a young man was driving his dad crazy by giving the stock and proceeds of the family cloth business away to beggers, lepers, and priests. In February 1209, he heard a sermon "about Matthew 10:9, in which Christ tells his followers they should go forth and proclaim that the Kingdom of Heaven was upon them, that they should take no money with them, nor even a walking stick or shoes for the road." He immediately began gathering followers and applying to the Pope to grant him a new monastic order which would be dedicated to doing good works and living in poverty. Who was this religious young man?

8. Construction, which had started in 1176, was completed in 1209. The thing had been so expensive that the king sold building plots to try and make back some of the outlay, which is why it eventually looked like this. What's the structure?

9. In the summer of 1209, about 10,000 crusaders headed south. They arrived at Béziers on July 21, and the next day "the entire population was slaughtered and the city burned to the ground." The Albigensian Crusade was underway! What was the goal of these holy warriors?

It is from the sack of Béziers that we get the phrase
"Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out," uttered there
non-ironically and in Latin.

10. In 1209, a university was founded near Ely, a center of monastic learning in the marshlands of East Anglia. It's still around today, the fourth-oldest university going, and is considered a pretty big deal despite its lack of a football team. What's it called?

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The New Monday Quiz's Map Room

1. pfly being correct in his suspicion that the implicit question for all ten items on this quiz was "Tell what these maps are showing," we started with Population Density in Eygpt.
2. The Provinces of South Africa.  Yes, they really have one called "Free State," which I believe is a nod to the old Orange Free State.
3. Religions in South and Southeast Asia, more or less.
4. Precipitation in the Iberian Penninsula.
5. Native speakers of French in Ontario.  What with Quebec being off to the north and east, you know.
6. Precipitation in South America.  Half marks for vegetation, which after all tends to follow rainfall like rainfall follows the plow.
7. World map of volcanos, baby!
8. Population density of China.
9. Percentage of people who can speak German.
10. Pecentage of people who are Jewish by country.

DrSchnell takes this one with perfect marks, although he did kind of cheat by dedicating his student years and his professional life to the study of cultural geography.

The Very First New Monday Quiz of 2016!

A) Barber of Seville; Kingdom of the Two Sicilies; the Zulu Empire.  1816
B) King John dies. The Albigensian Crusade. The Dominican Order.  1216
C) Civil Rights Act; the transatlantic telegraph cable; the Paraguayan War.  1866
D) Venice and the Ottoman Empire sign a peace treaty. The Limbourg Brothers. The Republic of Ragusa outlaws slavery.  1416
E) Jean-Bédel Bokassa; the Cultural Revolution; the Tashkent earthquake.  1966
F) Hygelac, King of the Geats. Constantinople, largest city in the world. Athalaric, king of the Ostrogoths.  516
G) Galileo Galilei. Shakespeare. The Tokugawa shogunate.  1616
H) Gallipoli Penninsula; the Mexican Revolution; Rasputin.  1916
I) Consulship of Mamercus and Vibulanus. Xerxes I. Aeschylus.  484 bce
J) Æthelred the Unready. Normans enter Italy. The Kingdom of Khazaria is crushed.  1016

Morgan, Susan, and pfly bask in the glory of this one, all three of them having submitted a perfect -- PERFECT!! -- slate of answers.


The Quiz of the New Monday

1. The End of the Affair.
2. The Battle of the Bulge.
3. The Dome of the Rock.
4. The Remains of the Day.
5. The War(s) of the Roses.
6. The Rape of the Lock.
7. The Last of the Mohicans.
8. The Lord of the Rings.
9. The Acts of the Apostoles
10. The Convergence of the Twain.
11. The Ring of the Nibelugen.
12. The Best of the Doors.

This was such a good quiz!!  One of the best I've ever written, and I've written a lot, so it's just a pity that only two people took it.  That being said, they took it awfully well.  DrSchnell and Susan both missed one outright, and Susan loses a half mark for "Fellowship" of the Ring and DrSchnell loses a half point for leaving off all of the "The"s.  IT'S A 10 1/2 - 10 1/2 TIE!!!