Through History With the New Monday Quiz: the 1430s

The 1430s set into motion technological and social changes that would literally change the way you experience the Monday Quiz today!

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1. In the early 1430s, the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund invested substantially in upgrading Bratislava Castle, shown here as it looks today. Of what modern country is Bratislava the capital and largest city?

2. Alarmed by the growing power and influence of Cosimo di Medici, the City of Florence sent him into exile in 1433; he acquiesced in this and proceeded to hang out comfortably in Venice for a year. Florence was soon begging him to return, which he did after a year and a day. Why did Florence decided they wanted Cosimo di Medici around after all?

3. In 1434, Zara Yaqob became Emperor and began healing the divides in the church of his country. Within a few years, he would send delegates to the Council of Florence in 1441 to establish ties with the Papacy. This went well, although the delegates couldn't get the Europeans to stop referring to their king as "Prester John." Of what country was Zara Yaqob the ruler?

4 & 5. If you had to pick a decade when the Western artistic tradition began, with all of the asterisks and qualifications that idea would involve, you could do a lot worse than the 1430s. Can you identify or speculate about two of these three European paintings of the 1430s?

6. In 1435, Zheng He returned from the seventh of his great "treasure voyages," in the course of which he had made China the dominant naval military and trading power of the western Pacific and the Indian Oceans. What happened next?

7. In 1437, at the Sandside Chase, Clan Mackay defeated Clan Gunn of Caithness. It almost certainly didn't feel as picturesque as it sounds, at the time, but we talk about the history of this part of the world in a strange way. Where the Sandside Chase happen?

8. In 1438, Pachacuti became the ninth ruler of the small, mountainous Kingdom of Cusco. He began a program of military expansion and repressive social control that, over the next few generations, would make his little kingdom the center of an enormous land empire. What do we call that empire?

9. In 1439, a very clever German craftsman in Strasbourg landed in some financial difficulty after the failure of an invention that was supposed to capture holy light from religious relics by using highly polished mirrors. Undaunted, he began work on his other idea, possibly with the idea that he could make a killing by streamlining the manufacture of playing cards. Instead, his work would profoundly change the culture, society, and history of Europe and the world. What was his name?

10. We probably don't hear enough about Ulugh Beg, who pushed the frontiers of astronomy and trigonometry, made precise calculations in both areas that would not be bettered for centuries, and during the 1430s, having already built a major madrassa and observatory for Samarkand, he made his city into one of the great world centers of learning. (He was also a political ruler, and that side of his story is not so upbeat.) Where is Samarkand?

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Through History with The New Monday Quiz: the 1420s

1. That's the cathedral in Florence.
2. The submerging of medieval Bulgaria.
3. the eunichs are said to have taken over China.
4. Henry VI was unable to press his advantage in France mostly obviously because he was an infant..
5. After Nanjiang, Beijing was the largest city.
6. On that list, only Hungary was part of the medieval world.
7. Navarre was roughly in the Basque Country of northern Spain.
8. The foreign overlords booted out of Vietnam.
9. Getting rolling with the Aztec Empire, except they didn't like wheels.
10. The celebrity of the age: Joan of Arc.

The 1420s was an especially tough one.  DrSchnell had the most right answers, and thus by convention is awarded the victory.