British Monarchs
1. Henry VIII (1491-1547, r. 1509-1547) House of Tudor. The son of Tudor founder Henry VII, he
brought England into both the Renaissance and the Reformation. Henry patronized the philosopher
Erasmus, the painter Hans Holbein the Younger, and the writer Thomas More. Originally a supporter of
the Catholic Church--the Pope had named him "Defender of the Faith"--he named himself head of the
Church of England in 1533 so that he could divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. Henry
executed top ministers who crossed him, including Thomas Cromwell and Thomas More. He married six
times, but only his third wife, Jane Seymour, bore him a son, the sickly Edward VI.A
2. Elizabeth I (1533-1603, r. 1558-1603) House of Tudor. Known as the "Virgin Queen" because she
never married, as Henry VIII's daughter by Anne Boleyn, the Catholic Church considered her illegitimate.
After the death of her Catholic sister Mary I, Elizabeth I tried to restore religious order by declaring
England a Protestant state but naming herself only "Governor" of the Church. She foiled attempts at her
throne by Spanish king Philip II and Mary, Queen of Scots; the latter Elizabeth reluctantly executed in
1587. Her reign saw great expansion of the English navy and the emergence of William Shakespeare, but
when she died, the Crown went to Scottish king James VI, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots.
3. George III (1738-1820, r. 1760-1820) House of Hanover. Though he lost the American colonies in
the Revolutionary War, Britain's economic empire expanded during his reign. While George's ministers
kept their lives, they fell from power frequently, including both William Pitts, Lord Bute, and Lord North.
Popular at home, he suffered from porphyria, causing the "madness" that ultimately led to the Regency
period (1811-1820) of his son George IV.
4. (Alexandrina) Victoria (1819-1901, r. 1837-1901; Empress of India 1876-1901) House of
Hanover. The longest-reigning monarch in British history, she relinquished much of the remaining royal
power, both to her husband Albert and to her favored prime ministers, Lord Melbourne, Robert Peel,
and Benjamin Disraeli. After Albert's death in 1861, Victoria largely went into seclusion, though she
influenced the passage of the Reform Act of 1867, which doubled the number of Britons who could vote.
5. William I (the Conqueror) (1028-1087, r. 1066-1087) House of Normandy. Duke of Normandy
from 1035, he was promised succession to the throne by Edward the Confessor, but when Edward gave
the throne to Harold II in 1066, William invaded England, killing Harold and defeating the Anglo-Saxons
at the Battle of Hastings. An able administrator, he authorized a survey of his kingdom in the 1086
Domesday Book. By that time William had replaced Anglo-Saxon nobles and clergy with Normans and
other continentals.
6. Charles I (1600-1649, r. 1625-1649) House of Stuart. The last absolute English monarch, Charles
ran into trouble almost immediately. His minister, the Duke of Buckingham, asked Parliament for money
to fight costly foreign wars, and when Parliament balked, Charles had to sign the Petition of Right. From
1630 to 1641 he tried to rule solo, but financial troubles forced him to call the Short and Long
Parliaments. His attempt to reform the Scottish Church was the last straw, as Parliament entered into
the English Civil War. They defeated Charles, convicting him of treason and executing him. England
became a Commonwealth with Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector.
7. James I (1566-1625, r. 1603-1625) House of Stuart. At age one James succeeded his mother
Mary as King James VI of Scotland. As the great-great-grandson of Henry VII, he claimed the English
throne upon the death of Elizabeth I. James was the intended target of Catholic fanatic Guy Fawkes'
failed Gunpowder Plot in 1605. A believer in absolutism, James dissolved Parliament from 1611 to 1621,
favoring ministers Robert Cecil and the Duke of Buckingham instead. His rule saw English expansion into
North America, through royal charter in Virginia and Puritan protest in Massachusetts.
8. Richard III (1452-1485, r. 1483-1485) House of York. He was made Duke of Gloucester in 1461
when his brother Edward IV deposed the Lancastrian king Henry VI, as part of the Wars of the Roses.
Upon Edward's death in 1483, Richard served as regent to his nephew Edward V, but likely had the boy
murdered in the Tower of London that year. Two years later, Richard died at the hands of Henry Tudor's
Lancastrian forces at Bosworth Field, ending the Wars of the Roses and beginning the reign of Henry VII.
9. Elizabeth II (1926-present, r. 1952-present) House of Windsor. Representative of the modern
ceremonial monarchy, she and her husband "Prince" Philip Mountbatten have traveled the globe
representing British interests. Marital failures by her sons Charles (the Prince of Wales) and Andrew
have plagued her reign.
10. John Lackland (1167-1216, r. 1199-1216) House of Plantagenet. Though he tried to seize the
crown from his brother Richard while the latter was in Germany, Richard forgave John and made him his
successor. Excommunicated by the Pope for four years for refusing to accept Stephen Langton as
Archbishop of Canterbury, John was also weak as a fighter, as French King Philip II routed him at
Bouvines in 1214. A year later, England's barons forced John to sign the Magna Carta at Runnymede, an
event that marked the beginning of the development of the British constitution.
11. Charles II (1630-1685; r. 1660-1685) House of Stuart. While Cromwell ruled the Commonwealth,
Charles was crowned King of Scotland in 1651. After Cromwell died, Charles used the Declaration of
Breda to restore himself to the English throne. He fought two lackluster wars against the Dutch, and
needed protection from Louis XIV through the Treaty of Dover. His wife Catherine of Braganza produced
no legitimate heirs, but this "Merry Monarch" has as many as 14 illegitimate children. Tolerant of
Catholics, he dissolved Parliament over the issue in 1681 and refused to prevent his brother James from
succeeding him.
12. James II (1633-1701; r. 1685-1688) House of Stuart. The 1678 Popish Plot against Charles II
would have elevated the Roman Catholic James to the throne, had it been real and not fabricated by
Titus Oates. James's three years, however, did feature heavy favoritism toward Catholics, so much so
that Protestants invited James's son-in-law William of Orange to rule England, deposing James in the
bloodless Glorious Revolution. Exiled to Louis XIV's court, he made an attempt to regain his crown in
1690 but was routed at the Battle of the Boyne.
13. Henry II (1133-1189; r. 1154-1189) House of Plantagenet. The son of Geoffrey of Anjou and
Matilda, he married Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152, and invaded England the following year, forcing
Stephen of Blois to acknowledge Henry as his heir. While king he developed the common law and due
process, but fought with Thomas (à) Becket over submission to the Pope; Henry had Becket executed in
1170 but performed penance at Canterbury. Eleanor and his four sons conspired with French king Philip
II against Henry on several occasions.
14. Richard I (the Lion-Hearted) (1157-1199; r. 1189-1199) House of Plantagenet. Third son of
Henry II, he spent only five months of his reign in England. He went on the Third Crusade to Jerusalem,
winning many victories in the Holy Land, but on his way back was captured and ransomed by Holy
Roman Emperor Henry VI. He also fought Philip II in Normandy, and died while defending his
possessions in Aquitaine.
15. Alfred the Great (849-899; r. 871-899) Saxon House. Actually just the King of Wessex in
southwestern England, he expelled the rival Danes from the Mercian town of London in 886, eventually
conquering most of the Danelaw territory. Alfred also kept England from the worst of the Dark Ages by
encouraging his bishops to foster literacy; in addition, he translated Boethius, Augustine, and the
Venerable Bede's works into Anglo-Saxon.
USA Presidents
President
George Washington
John Adams
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
James Monroe
John Quincy Adams
Andrew Jackson
Martin van Buren
William H. Harrison
John Tyler
James K. Polk
Zachary Taylor
Millard Fillmore
Franklin Pierce
James Buchanan
Abraham Lincoln
Andrew Johnson
Ulysses S. Grant
Rutherford Hayes
James Garfield
Chester Arthur
Grover Cleveland
Benjamin Harrison
Grover Cleveland
William McKinley
Theodore Roosevelt
William Taft
Woodrow Wilson
Warren Harding
Calvin Coolidge
Herbert Hoover
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Harry S. Truman
Dwight D.
Eisenhower
John F. Kennedy
Lyndon Johnson
Richard Nixon
Gerald Ford
Jimmy Carter
Party
Federalist
Federalist
Democratic-Republican
Democratic-Republican
Democratic-Republican
Democratic-Republican
Democrat
Democrat
Whig
Whig
Democrat
Whig
Whig
Democrat
Democrat
Republican
Republican
Republican
Republican
Republican
Republican
Democrat
Republican
Democrat
Republican
Republican
Republican
Democrat
Republican
Republican
Republican
Democrat
Democrat
Term
1789-1797
1797-1801
1801-1809
1809-1817
1817-1829
1825-1829
1829-1837
1837-1841
1841
1841-1845
1845-1849
1849-1850
1850-1853
1853-1857
1857-1861
1861-1865
1865-1869
1869-1877
1877-1881
1881
1881-1885
1885-1889
1889-1893
1893-1897
1897-1901
1901-1909
1909-1913
1913-1921
1921-1923
1923-1929
1929-1933
1933-1945
1945-1953
Important Wars or Events
First President
XYZ Affair, quasi-war with France
Louisiana Purchase
War of 1812
Missouri Compromise
Tariff of Abominations
Indian Removal Act
Aroostook War
Died one month after inauguration
Texas Annexation
Mexican-American War
Died of Cholera Morbus
Fugitive Slave Act
"Bleeding Kansas"
Dred Scott Decision; John Brown's Raid
Civil War; Emancipation Proclamation
Vetoed lots of Reconstruction Acts
Transcontinental Railroad, Battle of Little Big Horn
Army Appropriations Bill
The Treaty of Washington
Washington Monument Dedicated
Presidential Succession Act
Pan-American Conference
Served two non-consecutive terms
Spanish-American War
Panama Canal
Sixteenth Amendment ratified
World War I
Teapot Dome Scandal, Charles Forbes Scandal
Sacco-Vanzetti; Kellogg-Briand Pact
Great Depression
New Deal, World War II
Atomic bombs dropped; Cold War begins
Republican
Democrat
Democrat
Republican
Republican
Democrat
1953-1961
1961-1963
1963-1969
1969-1974
1974-1977
1977-1981
Rosenbergs executed; Geneva Convention
Bay of Pigs; Cuban Missile Crisis
Civil Rights Act; Gulf of Tonkin- Vietnam
Watergate Scandal
Pulls final troops out of Vietnam
Camp David Accords
Ronald Reagan
George H. W. Bush
Bill Clinton
George W. Bush
Barack Obama
Republican
Republican
Democrat
Republican
Democrat
1981-1989
1989-1993
1993-2001
2001-2009
2009-
http://millercenter.org/president/obama/key-events
Cold War ends; Iran-Contra Scandal
Exxon Valdez Oil Spill; Persian Gulf War
Battle of Mogadishu; NAFTA
9/11; Operation Enduring Freedom
Current President
Heads of Government
Argentina
Cristina Kirchner
Australia
Kevin Rudd
Canada
Stephen Harper
China
Hu Jintao
Colombia
Alvaro Uribe
Cuba
Raul Castro
Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus
Egypt
Husni Mubarak
France
Nicolas Sarkozy
Georgia
Mikheil Saakashvili
India
Manmohan Singh
Iran
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Iraq
Al-Maliki
Ireland
Mary McAleese
Isreal
Simon Peres / Benjamin Netanyahu
Italy
Silvio Berlusconi
Japan
Fakudo resigned, Foreign Minister Taro Aso predicted to become PM
Libya
Gadafi
Mexico
Felipe Calderon
North Korea
Kim Jong Il
Pakistan
Asif Ail Zardari
Philippines
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
Russia
Dmitry Medvedev
Saudi Arabia
King Abdullah
South Africa
Jacob Juma
South Korea
Lee-Muyng Bak
Spain
PM-Zapatero
Sudan
al-Bashir
Syria
al=Assad
United Kingdom Gordon Brown
Zimbabwe
Mugabe-Tsvangirai
Palestine
Hamas-Mashal, PIO-Abbas
Jordan
King Abudullah II
Brazil
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Amendments
Amendment #1- Freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition
Amendment #2-Right to bear arms
Amendment #3-No one may be forced to house soldiers
Amendment #4-Protects against unreasonable search and seizure
Amendment #5-Rights of the criminally accused (indictment by grand jury, no double jeopardy,
no self-incrimination, due process of the law, eminent domain)
Amendment #6-Rights to a speedy trial by jury (speedy trial, impartial jury, informed of charges, right to
an attorney)
Amendment #7-Rights to a jury trial in civil cases, more than $20-people sue over money/property
Amendment #8-No excessive bail, no cruel and unusual punishment
Amendment #9-People have other basic rights not listed in Constitution
Amendment #10-All powers not given to the federal government are left for the states to take
care of/decide
Amendment #11-Federal courts do not have jurisdiction in cases against a state
Amendment #12-Provides for separate elections for president and vice president
Amendment #13-Abolishes slavery
Amendment #14-Provides equality for all citizens; state governments must follow previously passed
amendments
Amendment #15-All males have the right to vote
Amendment #16-Congress has the power to pass direct taxes, such as income tax
Amendment #17-Senators are to be elected by the voters in their state; governor fills state senator
positions if position opens during a term
Amendment #18-Selling and drinking of alcoholic beverages is made illegal
Amendment #19-Gives women the right to vote
Amendment #20-Beginning of President, VP and Congress terms in office begins in January; presidential
succession can take place before Presidential inauguration
Amendment #21-Selling and drinking of alcoholic beverages is made legal
Amendment #22-Presidents may serve no more than 2 terms or a total of 10 years
Amendment #23-District of Columbia is allowed presidential Electoral College votes
Amendment #24-Eliminates poll tax
Amendment #25-Provides for presidential succession and filling a vacant office of vice president,
if VP dies or his removed from office
Amendment #26-Lowers voting age from 21 to 18
Amendment #27-Congressional compensation increases may not take effect until after that
congressional term is over
Russian Tsars
1. Peter I (1672-1725; ruled 1682-1725) Peter the Great is famous both for his push for
Westernization and for his boisterous personality. His Grand Embassy to Europe enabled him to
learn about Western life (and even to work in a Dutch shipyard); he later invited Western artisans
to come to Russia, required the boyars to shave their beards and wear Western clothing, and even
founded a new capital, St. Petersburg--his "window on the West." He also led his country in the
Great Northern War (in which Charles XII of Sweden was defeated at Poltava), created a Table of
Ranks for the nobility, and reformed the bureaucracy and army. But Peter could also be violent
and cruel: he personally participated in the torture of the streltsy, or musketeers, who rebelled
against him, and had his own son executed.
2. Ivan IV (1530-1584; ruled 1533-1584) Ivan IV is known in the West as "Ivan the Terrible," but
his Russian nickname ("Groznyi") could be more accurately translated as "awe-inspiring" or
"menacing." Ivan was proclaimed Grand Prince of Muscovy 1533 and tsar in 1547. Scholars
differ on whether Ivan was literate and on how auspiciously his reign began. Early in his reign, he
pushed through a series of well-received reforms and called a zemskii sobor (or "assembly of the
land"), but Ivan had an amazingly cruel streak and eventually became unstable: he temporarily
abdicated in 1564, killed his favorite son, created a state-within-the-state called the oprichnina to
wage war on the boyars, and participated in the torture of his enemies. Ivan combined the
absolutist tendencies of his predecessors with his own violent personality, helping to plunge the
country into the subsequent period of civil strife known as the "Time of Troubles."
3. Catherine II (1729-1796; ruled 1762-1796) Catherine the Great wasn't really a Russian at all:
she was born Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst (a minor German principality) and was chosen as the bride
of the future Peter III. She had thoroughly Russianized herself by the time Peter became tsar, and
soon had him deposed: she then dispatched several claimants to the throne and crushed a peasant
uprising led by Emilian Pugachev. She also corresponded with Enlightenment philosophes,
granted charters of rights and obligations to the nobility and the towns, oversaw the partition of
Poland, and expanded the empire. Catherine is well known for her extravagant love life: her 21
acknowledged lovers included Grigorii Potemkin (who constructed the famous Potemkin village
on an imperial inspection tour).
4. Nicholas II (1868-1918; ruled 1894-1917) Nicholas II, the last of the Romanovs, ruled until his
overthrow in the February Revolution of 1917. He is usually seen as both a kind man who loved
his family and an incapable monarch who helped bring about the end of the tsarist state; he led his
country through two disastrous wars, the Russo-Japanese War (which helped spark the
Revolution of 1905), and World War I (which helped cause the 1917 revolutions.) He is best
known for his loving marriage to Alexandra and for allowing the crazed monk Grigorii Rasputin
to influence court politics while treating the hemophilia of Alexei, the heir to the throne. Nicholas
abdicated in 1917 and was shot in 1918.
5. Alexander II (1818-1881; ruled 1855-1881) Alexander II embarked on a program of Great
Reforms soon after taking the throne near the end of the Crimean War. The most famous part of
his program was the serf emancipation of 1861--a reform which occurred almost simultaneously
with the end of American slavery (and whose gradual nature disappointed liberals.) But he also
introduced a system of local governing bodies called zemstvos, tried to increase the rule of law in
the court system, eased censorship, and reorganized the army. Alexander became more
reactionary after an attempted 1866 assassination and was assassinated in 1881.
6. Alexander I (1777-1825; ruled 1801-1825) Alexander I took the throne in 1801 when his
repressive father Paul was assassinated and immediately set out on a more liberal course, but he
left his strongest supporters disappointed. He is best known for his wars with Napoleon (first as
an ally and then as an enemy), and for seeking to establish a Holy Alliance in the years that
followed. Alexander was an eccentric and a religious mystic. Some even say that he didn't really
7.
8.
9.
10.
die in 1825: instead, they argue, he faked his own death, became a hermit, and died in a
monastery in 1864.
Nicholas I (1796-1855; ruled 1825-1855) Nicholas I, who ruled Russia from the failure of the
Decembrist Uprising to the middle of the Crimean War, has traditionally been portrayed as the
embodiment of the Russian autocracy. His government pursued a policy of Official Nationality,
defending a holy trinity of "Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and Nationality," and established a repressive
secret police force known as the Third Section. Contemporaries referred to him as the "Gendarme
of Europe" after he helped the Habsburgs squelch the Hungarian Revolution of 1848.
Alexander III (1845-1894; ruled 1881-1894) Those who hoped that the assassination of
Alexander II would lead to liberalization saw the error of their ways when the new tsar,
Alexander III, launched his program of "counter-reforms." Under him, the state enacted a series
of Temporary Regulations (giving it the power to crack down on terrorism), increased censorship,
tightened controls on Russia's universities, created a position of "land captain" to exert state
control in the countryside, and either encouraged or ignored the first anti-Jewish pogroms.
Boris Godunov (ca. 1551-1605; ruled 1598-1605) Boris Godunov began his career as a boyar in
Ivan the Terrible's oprichnina, and eventually became tsar himself. Boris first cemented his
influence by marrying a daughter of one of Ivan's court favorites and arranging his sister Irina's
marriage to Ivan's son Fyodor; then he became regent under Fyodor, and was elected tsar when
Fyodor died in 1598. But Boris was rumored to have arranged the murder of Fyodor's brother
Dmitrii, and the first of several "False Dmitriis" launched a revolt against him. Boris died in the
midst of growing unrest and is now best known as the subject of a Pushkin play and a
Mussorgsky opera.
Michael (1597-1645; ruled 1613-1645) In 1613, near the end of the Time of Troubles, a zemskii
sobor elected the 16-year-old Michael Romanov as the new tsar. Michael was a grandnephew of
Ivan the Terrible's "good" wife Anastasia and the son of a powerful churchman named Filaret
(who soon became patriarch); as tsar, he has usually been seen as a nonentity dominated by
Filaret and other relatives. Nevertheless, his election marked the return of relative stability and
the succession of the Romanov dynasty.
Programming Languages
1. C++ is a popular, compiled, high-level language developed by Bjarne Stroustrup in 1985 at Bell
Labs. C++ is similar to C, but adds object-oriented features (classes), generic programming
(templates), and exception handling to the language. It is a popular language for developing
business applications and, increasingly, games.
2. Java is a popular high-level language developed by Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s. The
language was originally named OAK and unsuccessfully used for set-top devices, but hit it big
after being renamed in 1995 and introduced to the World Wide Web. It is a relatively pure objectoriented language with syntax similar to C++. Instead of being compiled to object code, it is
compiled to Java bytecode, which is then interpreted or compiled on the fly. This use of machineindependent bytecode gives it its "write once, run everywhere" property. Java is principally used
for client-side web application ("applets") and server-side web application ("servlets") that make
use of J2EE technology. The success of Java inspired Microsoft to introduce its C# language and
.NET framework.
3. BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a high-level language developed
by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz at Dartmouth College in the mid 1960s. It is easy to use but
its relative lack of structure makes maintaining programs difficult. There have been many
versions of BASIC and some more modern ones (TurboBasic, QuickBasic Visual Basic) have
added advanced features. Stereotypical programs like 10 PRINT "HELLO" and 10 GOTO 10
are written in BASIC.
4. C, a compiled successor to the B programming language, was developed by Dennis Ritchie in
1972. It is a high-level and highly standardized language that remains very "close to the
hardware" and allows the programmer to perform useful, fast, and dangerous tricks. It is widely
used for business applications, games, operating systems (particularly UNIX and Linux), and
device drivers.
5. Perl is an interpreted language designed principally to process text. It was written by Larry Wall
and first released in 1988. It is intended to be practical and concise rather than theoretically
elegant and is sometimes lampooned as "write one, read never" because of its heavy use of
symbols and idiom. It is often used for web CGI scripts and parsing log files. "Perl" is an
unofficial retronym for "Practical Extraction Report Language."
6. ALGOL (ALGOrithmic Language) was created in the late 1950s and was the first procedural
language intended for solving mathematical and scientific problems. Formalized in a report titled
ALGOL 58, it progressed through ALGOL 60 and ALGOL 68 before waning in popularity.
ALGOL was sufficiently advanced and respected that most modern procedural languages reflect
its overall structure and design; some, like Pascal, are very closely related.
7. Pascal is a high-level, compiled language built upon ALGOL. It is named after the 17th-century
mathematician Blaise Pascal and was developed by Niklaus Wirth during 1967-71. Pascal is best
known for its emphasis on structured programming techniques and strong typing; because of this,
it was extremely popular as a teaching language in the 1980s and early 1990s, though it was never
popular for business or scientific applications. The object-oriented language Delphi was based on
Pascal.
8. LISP (LISt Processing) is the ancestor of the family of functional languages that emphasize
evaluating expressions rather than executing imperative commands. It was developed in 19501960 by John McCarthy and is used primarily for symbolic manipulations of complicated
structures rather than numerical calculation. It and its descendants (Scheme, CommonLisp, etc.)
continue to be used in academic research, particularly artificial intelligence.
9. Fortran (FORmula TRANslation) is the oldest high-level language. Designed by John Backus
for IBM during the late 1950s, it was once in use on virtually every computer in the world and is
still used today for engineering and scientific applications because of the quality of its compilers
and numerical libraries. The most popular Fortran versions are Fortran IV, 77, and 90. The name
"Fortran" was originally entirely capitalized, but the ANSI Fortran Committee has since declared
the "initial capital" spelling official.
10. COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language) was developed in 1959 by CODASYL
(Conference on Data Systems Languages) under the direction of Rear Admiral Grace Hopper and
is the second-oldest high-level language. It emphasized record-processing and database access
and uses an English-like syntax, all attributes that led to widespread use in business, particularly
the financial sector. It is characterized as especially wordy (just as C and Perl are characterized as
terse). The vast majority of Year 2000 problems involved programs written in COBOL.
Artistic Creations
Rank
Title
Genre
Creator
Date
Freq.
1
Louvre
Building
Pierre Lescot
1546
Francis I of France (patron)
137
2
Parthenon
Building
Ictinus and Callicrates
Pericles (patron)
447 BC
136
3
Notre Dame Cathedral
Building unknown
1160-1345
108
4
Mona Lisa
Painting
1500
104
5
Statue of Liberty
Sculpture Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi 1886
100
6
Guernica
Painting
Pablo Picasso (y Ruiz)
1937
89
7
Westminster Abbey
Building
Henry III of England
(patron)
1245
78
8
Taj Mahal
Building
Ustad Ahmad Lahori
Shah Jahan (patron)
1632
77
9
Sistine Chapel
Building
Giovanni Del Dolci
Pope Sixtus IV (patron)
1473
76
10
The Birth of Venus
Painting
Sandro Botticelli
1480
76
11
Saint Paul's Cathedral
Building Sir Christopher Wren
1708
74
12
Mount Rushmore
Sculpture
(John) Gutzon (de la
Mothe) Borglum
1927-1941
74
13
Nighthawks
Painting
Edward Hopper
1942
70
14
Empire State Building
Building
(Firm of) Shreve, Lamb &
Harmon
1931
68
15
St. Peter's Basilica
Building Donato Bramante et al.
1626
66
16
The Persistence of Memory Painting
1931
65
17
Abraham Lincoln Memorial Building Henry Bacon
1922
64
18
The Thinker
Sculpture
(René-François-)Auguste
Rodin
1900
64
19
The Shooting Company of
Captain Franz Banning
Cocq
Painting
Rembrandt (Harmenszoon
Van Rijn)
1642
64
20
Fallingwater
Building
Frank Lloyd (Lincoln)
Wright
1936
63
21
School of Athens
Painting
Raphael
1509
61
22
Last Supper
Painting
Leonardo da Vinci
1495-1498
60
23
American Gothic
Painting
Grant Wood
1930
60
24
David
Sculpture Donatello
c. 1440
59
Leonardo da Vinci
Salvador (Felipe Jacinto)
Dalí (y Domenech)
Rank
Title
Genre
Creator
Date
Freq.
25
The Arnolfini Wedding
Painting
Jan van Eyck
1434
57
26
The Death of Marat
Painting
Jacques-Louis David
1793
56
27
Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum
Building Frank Lloyd Wright
1959
56
28
Uffizi Palace
Giorgio Vasari
Building Cosimo I de' Medici
(patron)
1560-1581
55
29
The Gates of Hell
Sculpture
(René-François-)Auguste
Rodin
1880
55
30
The Third of May, 1808
Painting
Francisco (José) de Goya
(y Lucientes)
1814
53
31
Chrysler Building
Building William Van Alen
1930
52
32
Starry Night
Painting
Vincent (Willem) Van
Gogh
1889
50
33
Arrangement in Gray and
Black, No. 1: The Artist's
Mother
Painting
James (Abbott) McNeill
Whistler
1871
50
34
Alhambra
Building
Mahomet Ibn Al Ahmar
(patron)
1354
49
35
Gateway Arch
Building Eero Saarinen
1965
49
36
Eiffel Tower
Building (Alexandre-)Gustave Eiffel 1889
49
37
Cathedral of Florence
Building Filippo Brunelleschi
1420
49
38
Temple of Jerusalem
Building Solomon (patron)
10th century BC
49
39
United States Capitol
Wiliam Thornton (original) 1793-1811
Building Benjamin Latrobe, Charles (reconstructed 1815Bullfinch, et al. (revisions) 1826)
40
Las Meninas
Painting
Diego (Rodríguez de Silva
1656
y) Velázquez
49
48
Musical Works
Rank
Title
Genre
Creator
Date Freq.
1
Carmen
Opera
Georges Bizet
1845
147
2
Aida
Opera
Giuseppe Verdi
1871
146
3
The Ring of the Nibelung
Opera
(Wilhelm) Richard Wagner 1876
122
4
Messiah
Oratorio
George Frideric Handel
1741
102
5
Symphony No. 9, "Choral"
Symphony
Ludwig van Beethoven
1823
100
6
Symphony No. 6, "Pastoral"
Symphony
Ludwig van Beethoven
1808
97
7
Symphonie fantastique
Symphony
(Louis-)Hector Berlioz
1830
92
8
The Nutcracker
Ballet
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
1892
91
9
The Rite of Spring
Ballet
Igor (Fyodorovich)
Stravinsky
1913
90
10
Madama Butterfly
Opera
Giacomo Puccini
1904
89
11
Symphony No. 3, "Eroica"
Symphony
Ludwig van Beethoven
1804
86
12
The Barber of Seville
Opera
Gioacchino (Antonio)
Rossini
1816
85
13
The Magic Flute
Opera
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1791
84
14
Appalachian Spring
Ballet
Aaron Copland
1944
83
15
Rigoletto
Opera
Giuseppe Verdi
1851
82
16
Don Giovanni
Opera
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1787
79
17
La Bohème
Opera
Giacomo Puccini
1896
78
18
Fidelio
Opera
Ludwig van Beethoven
1805
77
19
The Four Seasons
Concerto
Antonio Vivaldi
1725
73
20
Rhapsody in Blue
Composition
George Gershwin
1924
72
21
The Marriage of Figaro
Opera
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1784
72
22
West Side Story
Musical
Leonard Bernstein
1957
68
23
Siegfried
Opera
(Wilhelm) Richard Wagner 1876
66
24
Moonlight Sonata
Sonata
Ludwig van Beethoven
1801
63
25
The Planets
Suite
Gustav(us Theodore von)
Holst
1918
61
26
Symphony No. 6, "Pathétique"
Symphony
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
1893
60
27
Porgy and Bess
Opera
George Gershwin
1935
60
28
William Tell
Opera
Gioacchino Rossini
1804
59
29
Peter and the Wolf
Composition
Sergei (Sergeyevich)
Prokofiev
1936
59
Rank
Title
Genre
Creator
Date Freq.
30
The Song of the Earth
Symphony
Gustav Mahler
1909
59
31
Swan Lake
Ballet
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
1877
58
32
The Flying Dutchman
Opera
(Wilhelm) Richard Wagner 1843
58
33
Lohengrin
Opera
(Wilhelm) Richard Wagner 1850
57
34
Boléro
Composition
(Joseph) Maurice Ravel
1928
55
35
The Phantom of the Opera
Musical
Andrew Lloyd Webber
1910
54
36
Tosca
Opera
Giacomo Puccini
1900
54
37
Turandot
Opera
Giacomo Puccini
1762
53
38
La Traviata
Opera
Giuseppe Verdi
1853
53
39
Pictures at an Exhibition
Composition
Modest (Petrovich)
Mussorgsky
1874
53
40
A German Requiem
Sacred Choral
Work
Johannes Brahms
1868
51
41
Symphony No. 94, "Surprise"
Symphony
(Franz) Joseph Haydn
1791
50
42
Symphony No. 41, "Jupiter"
Symphony
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 1788
50
43
Symphony No. 9, "From the New
World"
Symphony
Antonín (Leopold) Dvorák
1893
49
44
The Mikado
Musical
Arthur Sullivan (music)
William S. Gilbert (words)
1885
48
45
My Fair Lady
Musical
Frederick Loewe
1956
47
46
Falstaff
Opera
Giuseppe Verdi
1893
47
47
Boris Godunov
Opera
Modest (Petrovich)
Mussorgsky
1869
47
48
Cats
Musical
Andrew Lloyd Webber
1982
46
49
Enigma Variations
Composition
Edward (William) Elgar
1899
46
50
Salome
Opera
Richard (Georg) Strauss
1905
45
Works of Literature
Rank
Title
Genre
Creator
Date
Freq.
1
Hamlet
Drama
William Shakespeare
1601
292
2
Oedipus Rex
Drama
Sophocles
430 BC
196
3
Macbeth
Drama
William Shakespeare
1606
182
4
King Lear
Drama
William Shakespeare
1605
156
5
Othello
Drama
William Shakespeare
1622
156
6
The Tempest
Drama
William Shakespeare
1611
145
7
Moby-Dick
Novel
Herman Melville
1851
139
8
The Great Gatsby
Novel
F(rancis) Scott (Key) Fitzgerald 1925
138
9
Don Quixote
Novel
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
1605
137
10
Jane Eyre
Novel
Charlotte Brontë
1847
128
11
Iliad
Poem
Homer
8th century
BC
125
12
Pride and Prejudice
Novel
Jane Austen
1813
123
13
1984
Novel
George Orwell
1948
122
14
Ulysses
Novel
James (Augustine Aloysius)
Joyce
1922
121
15
Romeo and Juliet
Drama
William Shakespeare
1594
121
16
The Merchant of Venice
Drama
William Shakespeare
1596
119
17
Paradise Lost
Poem
John Milton
1667
119
18
The Canterbury Tales
Poem
Geoffrey Chaucer
1387
117
19
The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn
Novel
Mark Twain
1884
116
20
The Scarlet Letter
Novel
Nathaniel Hawthorne
1850
115
21
A Streetcar Named Desire
Drama
Tennessee Williams
1947
114
22
Our Town
Drama
Thornton (Niven) Wilder
1938
113
23
The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer
Novel
Mark Twain
1876
111
24
The Divine Comedy
Poem
Dante (Alighieri)
1314
111
25
Crime and Punishment
Novel
Fyodor (Mikhaylovich)
Dostoyevsky
1866
109
26
The Red Badge of Courage
Novel
Stephen Crane
1895
108
27
Candide
Novel
Voltaire
1759
107
28
Billy Budd: Foretopman
Novel
Herman Melville
1891
106
Rank
Title
Genre
Creator
Date
Freq.
29
Les Misérables
Novel
Victor(-Marie) Hugo
1862
105
30
Anna Karenina
Novel
Leo Tolstoy
1877
105
31
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Drama
William Shakespeare
1595
105
32
Pygmalion
Drama
George Bernard Shaw
1912
103
33
Julius Caesar
Drama
William Shakespeare
1599
103
34
War and Peace
Novel
Leo Tolstoy
1865
101
35
The Three Musketeers
Novel
Alexandre Dumas (père)
1844
100
36
A Farewell to Arms
Novel
Ernest (Miller) Hemingway
1929
100
37
Vanity Fair
Novel
William Makepeace Thackeray
1848
100
38
To Kill a Mockingbird
Novel
(Nelle) Harper Lee
1960
99
39
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Novel
Ernest (Miller) Hemingway
1940
99
40
The Grapes of Wrath
Novel
John (Ernst) Steinbeck
1939
98
41
Lolita
Novel
Vladimir Nabokov
1955
98
42
A Tale of Two Cities
Novel
Charles (John Huffam) Dickens 1859
98
43
Little Women
Novel
Louisa May Alcott
1868
97
44
As You Like It
Drama
William Shakespeare
1599
97
45
The Waste Land
Poem
T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
1922
95
46
Aeneid
Poem
Virgil
19 BC
95
47
Odyssey
Poem
Homer
8th century
BC
94
48
Heart of Darkness
Novella
Joseph Conrad
1902
94
49
Pilgrim's Progress
Novel
John Bunyan
1678
94
50
David Copperfield
Novel
Charles (John Huffam) Dickens 1850
94
51
One Hundred Years of
Solitude
Novel
Gabriel García Márquez
1967
93
52
Antigone
Drama
Sophocles
441 BC
92
53
Faust
Poem
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1808
92
54
The Count of Monte Cristo
Novel
Alexandre Dumas (père)
1845
91
55
A Doll's House
Drama
Henrik (Johan) Ibsen
1879
90
56
Robinson Crusoe
Novel
Daniel Defoe
1719
88
57
Animal Farm
Novel
George Orwell
1945
87
58
The Call of the Wild
Novel
Jack London
1903
87
59
Much Ado about Nothing
Drama
William Shakespeare
1598
87
60
The Glass Menagerie
Drama
Tennessee Williams
1945
86
Rank
Title
Genre
Creator
Date
Freq.
61
The Crucible
Drama
Arthur Miller
1953
86
62
Brave New World
Novel
Aldous (Leonard) Huxley
1932
85
63
Beowulf
Poem
unknown
8th century
85
64
The Sun Also Rises
Novel
Ernest (Miller) Hemingway
1926
83
65
The Jungle
Novel
Upton (Beall) Sinclair
1906
83
66
Twelfth Night
Drama
William Shakespeare
1623
83
67
Great Expectations
Novel
Charles (John Huffam) Dickens 1861
82
68
The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner
Poem
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
1797
82
69
Oliver Twist
Novel
Charles (John Huffam) Dickens 1838
81
70
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Novel
Harriet Beecher Stowe
1852
81
71
Rip van Winkle
Short
Story
Washington Irving
1818
79
72
The Catcher in the Rye
Novel
J(erome) D(avid) Salinger
1951
77
73
Waiting for Godot
Drama
Samuel (Barclay) Beckett
1952
77
74
Death of a Salesman
Drama
Arthur Miller
1949
77
75
Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland
Children's Lewis Carroll
1865
76
76
Long Day's Journey Into
Night
Drama
Eugene (Gladstone) O'Neill
1956
75
77
All the King's Men
Novel
Robert Penn Warren
1946
75
78
Things Fall Apart
Novel
(Albert) Chinua(lumogu)
Achebe
1958
75
79
Slaughterhouse Five
Novel
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
1969
75
80
The Charge of the Light
Brigade
Poem
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
1854
74
81
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Drama
William Shakespeare
1600
74
82
The Importance of Being
Earnest
Drama
Oscar (Fingal O'Flahertie Wills)
1895
Wilde
73
83
The Magic Mountain
Novel
(Paul) Thomas Mann
1924
73
84
Invisible Man
Novel
Ralph (Waldo) Ellison
1952
72
85
The Taming of the Shrew
Drama
William Shakespeare
1593
72
86
Eugene Onegin
Poem
Aleksandr (Sergeyevich)
Pushkin
1833
72
87
Sense and Sensibility
Novel
Jane Austen
1811
72
88
The Brothers Karamazov
Novel
Fyodor (Mikhaylovich)
1880
72
Rank
Title
Genre
Creator
Date
Freq.
Dostoyevsky
89
Inferno
Poem
Dante (Alighieri)
c. 13101314
71
90
The Stranger
Novel
Albert Camus
1946
71
91
Catch-22
Novel
Joseph Heller
1961
70
92
A Raisin in the Sun
Drama
Lorraine Hansberry
1959
70
93
Wuthering Heights
Novel
Emily Brontë
1847
69
94
The Sound and the Fury
Novel
William (Cuthbert) Faulkner
1929
69
95
Oresteia
Series
Aeschylus
c. 458 BC
69
96
Decameron
Poem
Giovanni Boccaccio
1353
69
97
The Raven
Poem
Edgar Allan Poe
1845
69
98
Ivanhoe
Novel
Sir Walter Scott
1820
68
99
The House of the Seven
Gables
Novel
Nathaniel Hawthorne
1851
68
Novel
Willa (Sibert) Cather
1918
68
100 My Ántonia
Chinese Dynasties
Shang-skilled at bronze-working, 1st ruling family to leave written records, burned Confucian books,
Shang di, capital was Anyang
Qin-Legalist philosophies, Great Wall of China, Emperor Shi Huangdi, built 4,000 miles of roads,
Terracotta Warriors, centralized China with uniform writing, laws, currency, weights and measures
Han-Confucian philosophies, 18 ranks of civil service jobs, encouraged assimilation of conquered
territories, ruled 400 years, split in 2 periods, Emperor Wudi, established bureaucracy, Emperor Liu
Bang, invented paper, double-bladed plow, monopolies on salt, iron, coined money, alcohol, and silk
Zhou-established feudalism in China, introduced coined money, justified overthrowing Shang with
Mandate of Heaven, developed iron tools
Romanov Dynasty
Ivan the Terrible-Russian time of troubles
Mikail-Didn't do anything radical. Stable, calm. Traditional.
Alexi Mikailovich (Raskol)-Made changes, very influencced by religious tension, launches reform on the
Orthodox Church. Old Believers reject him but he prosecutes them and the rest flee.
Feodor- Dies young, Mikailovich's son. Has 2 sons with two different wives so the 2 families fight. Older
son is mentally handicapped. Bloody.
Ivan- Feodor's older son. Mentally handicapped, doesn't last.
Peter I- GREAT. Mikailovich's second son. Dedicated Westernizer. Spends a lot of time on the Navy.
Expands a lot. Organization and efficiency, Table of Ranks. Improves the tax system b/c he organizes
Russia into provinces with their own governor. Make the church more efficient so he takes out the
patriarch, like England. Builds a new capital city in St. Petersburg, western and a port city on the Baltic.
Scraps the Russian culture: government is in French, education is in German, looks and acts Western. His
son says he's going to change everything when he becomes czar but then Peter killed him.
Catherine I-Peter the Great's wife
Peter II- Peter's grandson
Ann-Peter the Great's niece
Elizabeth-Peter's daughter. comes up and economy sucks. She obsessively tries to find a great male heir.
Completely failed in one way but had complete success in another way. Failure- focused on her nephew,
Peter III. Bad choice. He grew up in German, is completely German. Does not want to be czar. But he
doesn't have a choice and hates everything about it. Elizabeth brings Peter to Russia with Catherine for
him to marry.
Peter III-Everyone hates him. Adult and all he does is lays in bed and plays with toy soldiers and drink.
Beats his wife. Hates his job. Assassinated after 5 months.
Catherine II-GREAT. German. She learned Russian, dressed like a Russian, never a single negative word
about her husband. Everyone loved and respected her. Had a son. #1 achievement was that Russia was
now a major player in Europe. Enlightened ruler. Legal reforms. Colleges for women. Religious tolerance.
Military improvement. Failed with making serfs' lives better. Worried about her relationship with the
nobles. Vulnerabilities: has a son, German, and a woman. Pugachev riots. Had loads of lovers = slut. She
was a terrible mother to her son, Paul, ignored him. Paul wasn't the son of Peter. Paul never knew Peter
wasn't his dad and when he found out, he hated her.
Paul-Cat's bastard son. Undid everything Catherine did. And then 5 years, assassinated. "Petty tyrant"
Alex I-defeated Napoleon. Congress of Vienna, the liberal Decemberist revolt. He completely reoriented
Russia. Called him a Sphinx. He loved his father and saw him as a strong leader. Had a great relationship
with his grandmother.
Nicholas I-the Decemberists tried to kill him on the day of his coronation. Very repressive. Official
nationalism, focused on the russian identity. Isolation from the west. ended with the Crimean war
(everyone against Russia). Completely disconnected from russia. Seriously broken.
Alex II-a major reformer.. Sets up a commission to see what Russia would be like without serfs. Nothing
happens because the commission doesn't do anything. Emancipation Manifesto: 1) grants personal and
legal freedom to all serfs 2) if you worked the land, you were given land. Limitations- 1) they don't have
any rights, not equal 2) The land they're granted is infertile and not free, they have to take it and you
have to pay the previous owner back within 44 years 3) Serfs, although free, cannot leave their
communities (Mir) without permission, Legal Reforms- opens Russian law schools. Trial by Jury.
Educational reforms- focus on primary education. Wants everyone to be literate, Zemstvo- community
councils elected by the people of the community and they decided how to spend government funds.
Super successful.assassinated by people who don't think he's radical enough.
Alex III-isolated, not public, launches on Russification. Policy of censorship, repression, control. He
pushes industrialization. Russia complete the Trans-Siberian railway, Vladavostok to Moscow. Populates
places with potential.
Nick II-last tsar. He does not want to be tsar and he's set on absolute monarchy. The 1917 revolution
puts him out.
Anthropologists
1. Franz Boas (1858–1942) Often called the founder of modern anthropology, this first professor of
anthropology at Columbia University trained Mead, Benedict, Alfred Kroeber, author Zora Neale
Hurston, and many others. He conducted fieldwork on the Inuits of Baffin Island and the
Kwakiutl (now referred to as Kwakwaka’wakw) on Vancouver Island. His publications include
1911’s The Mind of Primitive Man, which describes a gift-giving ceremony known as the
“potlatch.”
2. Margaret Mead (1901–1978) For her best-known work, Coming of Age in Samoa, Mead
interviewed young girls on the island of Ta’u, which led her to conclude that adolescence in
Samoan society was much less stressful than in the United States; in The Fateful Hoaxing of
Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman claimed that she was lied to in those interviews. She also studied
three tribes in New Guinea — the Arapesh, Mundugumor, and Tchambuli — for her book on Sex
and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies.
3. Ruth Benedict (1887–1948) A colleague and friend of Mead, Benedict studied the Zuni, Dobu,
and Kwakiutl cultures in Patterns of Culture, using them to illustrate the idea of a society’s
culture as “personality writ large.” She also described Japanese culture in The Chrysanthemum
and the Sword, a work written during World War II at the request of the U.S. government.
4. Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942) The Polish-born Malinowski, whose name is pronounced
[BRAH-nuss-waf mah-lih-NAWF-skee], studied at the London School of Economics, where he
would later spend most of his career. He described the “kula ring” gift exchanges found in the
Trobriand Islands in Argonauts of the Western Pacific, and the use of magic in agriculture in
Coral Gardens and Their Magic. He also argued, in opposition to Sigmund Freud, that the
Oedipus complex was not a universal element of human culture in his book on Sex and
Repression in Savage Society.
5. Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) In the 1930s, Lévi-Strauss did fieldwork with the
Nambikwara people of Brazil, which formed the basis for his thesis on “The Elementary
Structures of Kinship.” He held the chair in social anthropology at the Collèege de France from
1959 to 1982, during which time he published such books as The Savage Mind and a tetralogy
about world mythology whose volumes include The Raw and the Cooked. He pioneered in
applying the structuralist methods of Ferdinand de Saussure to anthropology, which led him to
study cultures as sets of binary oppositions.
6. Clifford Geertz (1926–2006) Geertz is best known for his work in symbolic anthropology, a
view that he expounded in his book The Interpretation of Cultures. In that book, he introduced
the term “thick description” to describe his method of analyzing behavior within its social
context. One such “thick description” appears in his essay “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese
Cockfight,” in which Geertz discusses cockfighting as a symbolic display of a certain kind of
masculinity.
7. Alfred Radcliffe-Brown (1881–1955) Radcliffe-Brown is considered the founder of a school of
anthropology known as structural functionalism, which focuses on identifying the groups within a
society and the rules and customs that define the relationships between people. His own early
fieldwork was conducted in the Andaman Islands and Western Australia, where he studied the
social organization of Australian tribes. After teaching in Australia, South Africa, and at the
University of Chicago, he returned to England, where he founded the Institute of Social and
Cultural Anthropology at Oxford.
8. James Frazer (1854–1941) Frazer was a Scottish anthropologist who primarily studied
mythology and comparative religion. His magnum opus, The Golden Bough, analyzed a wide
range of myths that center on the death and rebirth of a solar deity; the original publication
controversially discussed the crucifixion of Jesus as one such myth. The work’s title refers to a
gift given to Persephone by Aeneas so that he could enter the underworld in the Aeneid.
9. Thor Heyerdahl (1914–2002) In 1947, Heyerdahl and five companions sailed across the Pacific
Ocean — going from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands — on a balsa-wood raft named Kon-Tiki, after
the Incan sun god Kon-Tiki Viracocha. He later built two boats from papyrus (Ra, which failed in
1969, and Ra II, which succeeded in 1970) to sail across the Atlantic Ocean. These voyages
demonstrated the possibility that ancient people could have migrated around the globe using only
primitive rafts.
10. Jane Goodall (born 1934) Goodall is a British primatologist who is best known for her work
with chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. Her first research was carried out
with Louis Leakey at Olduvai Gorge. In her pioneering work with primates, which is detailed in
such books as In the Shadow of Man, she discovered that chimpanzees have the ability to use
tools, such as inserting grass into termite holes to “fish” for termites.
Mathematicians
 The work of Isaac Newton (1643-1727, English) in pure math includes generalizing the binomial
theorem to non-integer exponents, doing the first rigorous manipulation with power series, and creating
"Newton's method" for the finding roots. He is best known, however, for a lengthy feud between British
and Continental mathematicians over whether he or Gottfried Leibniz invented calculus (whose
differential aspect Newton called "the method of fluxions"). It is now generally accepted that they both
did, independently.
 Euclid (c. 300 BC, Alexandrian Greek) is principally known for the Elements, a textbook on geometry
and number theory, that was used for over 2,000 years and which grounds essentially all of what is taught
in modern high school geometry classes. Euclid is known for his five postulates that define Euclidean
(i.e., "normal") space, especially the fifth (the "parallel postulate") which can be broken to create
spherical and hyperbolic geometries. He also proved the infinitude of prime numbers.
 Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855, German) is considered the "Prince of Mathematicians" for his
extraordinary contributions to every major branch of mathematics. His Disquisitiones Arithmeticae
systematized number theory and stated the fundamental theorem of arithmetic. He also proved the
fundamental theorem of algebra, the law of quadratic reciprocity, and the prime number theorem. Gauss
may be most famous for the (possibly apocryphal) story of intuiting the formula for the summation of an
arithmetic series when given the busywork task of adding the first 100 positive integers by his primary
school teacher.
 Archimedes (287-212 BC, Syracusan Greek) is best known for his "Eureka moment" of using density
considerations to determine the purity of a gold crown; nonetheless, he was the preeminent mathematician
of ancient Greece. He found the ratios between the surface areas and volumes of a sphere and a
circumscribed cylinder, accurately estimated pi, and presaged the summation of infinite series with his
"method of exhaustion."
 Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716, German) is known for his independent invention of calculus and the
ensuing priority dispute with Isaac Newton. Most modern calculus notation, including the integral sign
and the use of d to indicate a differential, originated with Leibniz. He also invented binary numbers and
did fundamental work in establishing boolean algebra and symbolic logic.
 Pierre de Fermat (1601-1665, French) is remembered for his contributions to number theory including
his "little theorem" that ap - a will be divisible by p if p is prime. He also studied Fermat primes (those of
the form 22n+1) and stated his "Last Theorem" that xn + yn = zn has no solutions if x, y, and z are positive
integers and n is a positive integer greater than 2. He and Blaise Pascal founded probability theory. In
addition, he discovered methods for finding the maxima and minima of functions and the areas under
polynomials that anticipated calculus and inspired Isaac Newton.
 Leonhard Euler (1707-1783, Swiss) is known for his prolific output and the fact that he continued to
produce seminal results even after going blind. He invented graph theory with the Seven Bridges of
Königsberg problem and introduced the modern notation for e, the square root of -1 (i), and trigonometric
functions. Richard Feynman called his proof that eiπ = -1 "the most beautiful equation in mathematics"
because it linked four of math's most important constants.
 Kurt Gödel (1906-1978, Austrian) was a logician best known for his two incompleteness theorems
proving that every formal system that was powerful enough to express ordinary arithmetic must
necessarily contain statements that were true, but which could not be proved within the system itself.
 Andrew Wiles (1953-present, British) is best known for proving the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture that
all rational semi-stable elliptic curves are modular. This would normally be too abstruse to occur
frequently in quiz bowl, but a corollary of that result established Fermat's Last Theorem.
 William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865, Irish) is known for extending the notion of complex numbers
to four dimensions by inventing the quaternions, a non-commutative field with six square roots of -1: ±i,
±j, and ±k with the property that ij = k, jk = i, and ki = j.
Psychologists
1. Sigmund Freud (Austrian, 1856-1939) Sigmund Freud founded the extremely influential
discipline of psychoanalysis, which used the technique of "free association" to identify fears and
repressed memories. He argued that many problems were caused by mental states rather than
by biochemical dysfunction--a purely materialist viewpoint then in vogue. He separated the
psyche into the id (illogical passion), ego (rational thought), and superego (moral and social
conscience). His best known works are The Interpretation of Dreams and The Psychopathology
of Everyday Life, though many others come up frequently in quiz bowl.
2. Carl Jung (Austrian, 1875-1961) Carl Jung was a close associate of Freud's who split with him
over the degree to which neuroses had a sexual basis. He went on to create the movement of
"analytic psychology" and introduced the controversial notion of the "collective unconscious"--a
socially shared area of the mind. Quiz bowlers should be familiar with "anima," "animus,"
"introversion," "extroversion," and "archetypes," all terms that occur frequently in questions on
Jung.
3. Alfred Adler (Austrian, 1870-1937) Alfred Adler was another close associate of Freud who split
with him over Freud's insistence that sexual issues were at the root of neuroses and most
psychological problems. Adler argued in The Neurotic Constitution that neuroses resulted from
people's inability to achieve self-realization; in failing to achieve this sense of completeness,
they developed "inferiority complexes" that inhibited their relations with successful people and
dominated their relations with fellow unsuccessful people, a theory given the general name of
"individual psychology."
4. Ivan Pavlov (Russian 1849-1936) Ivan Pavlov was more of a physiologist than a psychologist, but
questions about him are more often classified as "psychology" than "biology" by question
writers. He is largely remembered for his idea of the "conditioned reflex," for example, the
salivation of a dog at the sound of the bell that presages dinner, even though the bell itself is
inedible and has no intrinsic connection with food. He won the Nobel Prize in 1904 for
Physiology or Medicine for unrelated work on digestive secretions.
5. John B. Watson (American, 1878-1958) John Watson was the first prominent exponent of
behaviorism; he codified its tenets in Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology,
arguing that psychology could be completely grounded in objective measurements of events
and physical human reactions. His most famous experiment involved conditioning an elevenmonth-old boy to be apprehensive of all furry objects by striking a loud bell whenever a furry
object was placed in his lap.
6. B. F. Skinner (American, 1904-1990) B. F. Skinner was one of the leading proponents of
behaviorism in works like Walden II and Beyond Freedom and Dignity. He argued that all human
actions could be understood in terms of physical stimuli and learned responses and that there
was no need to study--or even believe in--internal mental states or motivations; in fact, doing so
could be harmful. Guided by his ideas, he trained animals to perform complicated tasks
including teaching pigeons to play table tennis.
7. Jean Piaget (Swiss, 1896-1980) Jean Piaget is generally considered the greatest figure of 20thcentury developmental psychology; he was the first to perform rigorous studies of the way in
which children learn and come to understand and respond to the world around them. He is
most famous for his theory of four stages of development: sensorimotor, preoperational,
concrete operational, and formal operational. His most famous works are The Language and
Thought of a Child and The Origins of Intelligence in Children.
8. Erik Erikson (German-born American, 1902-1994) Erik Erikson is best known for his theories on
how social institutions reflect the universal features of psychosocial development; in particular,
how different societies create different traditions and ideas to accommodate the same
biological needs. He created a notable eight-stage development process and wrote several
"psychohistories" explaining how people like Martin Luther and Mahatma Gandhi were able to
think and act the way they did.
9. Abraham Maslow (American, 1908-1970) Abraham Maslow is principally known for two works,
Motivation and Personality and Toward a Psychology of Being, that introduced his theory of the
"hierarchy of needs" (food, shelter, love, esteem, etc.) and its pinnacle, the need for "selfactualization." Self-actualized people are those who understand their individual needs and
abilities and who have families, friends, and colleagues that support them and allow them to
accomplish things on which they place value. The lowest unmet need on the hierarchy tends to
dominate conscious thought.
10. Stanley Milgram (American, 1933-1984) Though he did the work that created the idea of "six
degrees of separation" and the "lost-letter" technique, he is mainly remembered for his
experiments on "obedience to authority" that he performed at Yale in 1961-1962. Milgram
found that two-thirds of his subjects were willing to administer terrible electric shocks to
innocent, protesting human beings simply because a researcher told them the experimental
protocol demanded it.
Battles of the Ancient World
1. One of the earliest battles in recorded history, the Battle of Kadesh (1274 BC) was fought near
the Orontes River in modern-day Syria between Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II and the Hittite king
Muwatalli II. Although Ramses proclaimed a great victory for himself, he was lucky to achieve a
stalemate after being ambushed by Hittite chariots. Kadesh was probably the largest chariot
battle in history, with over 5,000 chariots engaged. The Egyptian chariots were smaller and
faster than those used by the Hittites, which gave the Egyptians an advantage.
2. Persian King Darius I’s invasion of mainland Greece ended with a decisive victory for Miltiades
and the Athenians at Marathon (490 BC). The defeated Persian commanders were Datis and
Artaphernes. Among the few Athenian dead of the battle were archon Callimachus and the
general Stesilaos. Legend has it that the Greek messenger Pheidippides ran to Athens with news
of the victory, but collapsed upon arrival. This is the inspiration for the modern race known as
the “marathon.”
3. Thermopylae (480 BC) was the first battle of the second Persian invasion of Greece. Although
the Persians under Xerxes I and his general Mardonius defeated the Spartans, King Leonidas and
his Spartan troops put up a heroic defense of the pass at Thermopylae (the “hot gates”). The
Greeks were betrayed by Ephialtes, who told the Persians about a path that led behind the
Spartans. The battle was part of Themistocles’ plan to halt the advance of the Persians. The
other part of his plan was to block the Persian navy at Artemisium, and a battle occurred there
simultaneously.
4. The naval battle at Salamis (480 BC) was a major turning point in the Greco-Persian Wars, as it
signaled the beginning of the end of Persian attempts to conquer Greece. The battle is named
after an island in the Saronic Gulf near Athens. Xerxes was so confident in victory that he
watched the battle from a throne on the slopes of Mount Aegaleus. The Athenian general
Themistocles devised a plan to lure the large, slow Persian ships into the narrow straits where
the Greek ships were able to outmaneuver and destroy much of the Persian fleet. The Persian
admiral Ariabignes was killed in hand-to-hand combat, and the Queen of Halicarnassus,
Artemisia, had to sink some of her allies’ ships to escape.
5. The Battle of Aegospotami (405 BC) on the Hellespont (Dardanelles) ended the Peloponnesian
War and the Athenian Empire. After a setback at the Battle of Arginusae in 406 BC, the Spartans
reinstated Lysander as the commander of their fleet. The result was a complete victory for
Sparta; only a fraction of the Athenian fleet survived, including the general Conon, and the ship
Paralus, which brought the news of defeat to Athens. Following the battle, the Spartans
besieged Athens and forced its surrender.
6. After the Battle of Granicus, Issus (333 BC) was the second major battle between Alexander the
Great and the Persian Empire, and the first to feature Darius III. The battle was fought along the
Pinarus River near present day Iskenderun in Turkey’s Hatay province. Before the battle, Darius
was able to surprise Alexander and cut him off from the main force of Macedonians. However,
the battle ended with Darius fleeing the field and the capture of his tent and family. The battle
was the subject of a 1528 painting by Albrecht Altdorfer, the leader of the Danube School.
7. The largest battle of the Second Punic War, Cannae (216 BC) represented one of the worst
defeats in Roman history. The Carthaginians were led by Hannibal, while the Romans were led
by the consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro. Hannibal employed a doubleenvelopment tactic, surrounded the Roman army, and destroyed it. Although a total disaster for
the Romans, it resulted in their adopting of the Fabian strategy, in which battles are avoided in
favor of a war of attrition. This eventually wore down Hannibal’s army, and the Carthaginians
had to leave Italy.
8. The final battle of the Second Punic War, Zama (202 BC) was fought near Carthage in modernday Tunisia. Scipio Africanus’s victory at the Battle of the Great Plains in 203 BC forced Hannibal
to leave Italy and return to North Africa for the final showdown. Prior to the battle, the
Numidian king Masinissa switched sides, and brought his considerable cavalry force to join the
Romans. This, coupled with Scipio’s strategy of opening up his lines to allow Carthaginian
elephants through without harming his troops, led to a complete Roman victory.
9. At Alesia (52 BC), Julius Caesar defeated the Celtic peoples of Gaul, establishing Roman rule of
the lands beyond the Alps. The battle began when Caesar besieged Vercingetorix in the town of
Alesia, shortly after the Roman defeat at Gergovia. The Romans built a wall to surround the city
(a “circumvallation”) and a second wall around that (a “contravallation”) to protect themselves
from the Gaulish relief army under Commius. When Commius launched a massive attack on the
Romans, Caesar was able to defeat him and force the surrender of Vercingetorix. Although the
Romans were outnumbered by as much as four to one, they proved victorious in what was the
turning point of the Gallic Wars.
10. At Actium (31 BC), the fleet of Octavian defeated the combined forces of Cleopatra and Mark
Antony at this battle near modern-day Preveza in the Ambracian Gulf of Greece. Marcus Agrippa
commanded Octavian’s fleet, which consisted of small, nimble Liburnian ships. Antony’s fleet
consisted of massive Quinqueremes, which were less mobile. Following his victory in the battle,
Octavian titled himself Princeps, and later Augustus. To some, Actium signals the end of the
Roman Republic.
11. The Battle of the Milvian Bridge (AD 312) was part of the civil war that ensued when Maxentius
usurped the throne of the western half of the Roman Empire from Constantine. Prior to the
battle, Constantine supposedly had a vision of God promising victory to his forces if he painted
his shields with the Chi-Rho, a Christian symbol. Constantine was indeed victorious, and
Maxentius drowned in the Tiber River during the battle. Eventually, Constantine was able to
abolish the Tetrarchy, become the sole ruler of the Roman Empire, and end persecution of the
Christians.
12. Taking place near modern Edirne, Turkey, the Battle of Adrianople (AD 378) signalled the
beginning of the spread of Germanic peoples into the Western Roman Empire. The Romans
were led by the eastern emperor Valens, while the Goths were led by Fritigern. Eager for glory,
Valens decided not to wait on reinforcements from the western emperor Gratian, and instead
attacked the Goths. In the battle, over two-thirds of the Roman army was killed, including
Valens. The battle was chronicled by Ammianus Marcellinus, who thought it so important that
he ended his history of the Roman Empire with the battle.
13. The Battle of Chalons (or Catalaunian Fields) (AD 451) was an epic battle between the Romans
and the Huns fought in what is now France. The Roman army was commanded by Flavius Aetius
and included Visigoths under Theodoric I, who was killed by an Ostrogoth during the battle. The
Hunnic army was led by Attila, who was rampaging through Gaul. The battle ended with a
victory for the Roman-Visigothic alliance, which stopped the Huns’ advance into Gaul. The next
year, Attila invaded Italy; however, in 453, Attila died and his empire broke up shortly after.
Moons
Earth’s moon: The moon, also called Luna, is the fifth largest satellite in the solar system, the largest
relative to the size of the planet it orbits, and the second densest. The USSR’s Luna unmanned
spacecraft first reached the moon in 1959, and Apollo 8 became the first manned mission to orbit the
moon, in 1968. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty guarantees the rights of all nations to explore the moon for
peaceful purposes.The flat dark lunar plains are called maria (singular: mare) and are mainly
concentrated on the near side of the moon. The most famous one is Mare Tranquillitatis, the Sea of
Tranquility, where Apollo 11 first landed on the moon in 1969. The Apollo program landed on the moon
five more times.
Phobos: Both Phobos (“fear”) and Mars’ smaller moon Deimos (“dread”) were discovered by Asaph
Hall III in 1877. At just 3700 miles above the Martian surface, Phobos orbits more closely to its planet
than any other moon in the Solar System. Because it orbits Mars faster than Mars rotates, each day it
appears (from the Martian surface) to set twice in the east each day. Geological features on Phobos,
including the Stickney Crater, are primarily named for either astronomers (Stickney was the maiden
name of Asaph Hall’s wife) or characters from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. In 1971 the US’s
Mariner IX became the first spacecraft to provide close-up photos of Phobos.
Deimos: One seventh the mass of Phobos and further away from the Martian surface, Deimos was
found by Asaph Hall at the US Naval Observatory six days before he discovered Phobos. Its largest and
only named craters are Swift and Voltaire; Deimos’s surface doesn’t appear as rough as Phobos’s
because regolith has filled in some of the craters. A still-controversial and unproven hypothesis holds
that Deimos (and possibly Phobos as well) were asteroids perturbed out of their orbit by Jupiter and
then captured by the gravity of Mars.
Io is the innermost of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter (the moons discovered by Galileo), the
fourth-largest moon in the solar system, the densest moon, and the most geologically active body in the
solar system due to its more than 400 volcanoes. Io’s features are named for characters from the Io
story in Greek mythology; fire, volcano, and thunder deities from other mythologies; and characters
from Dante’s Inferno. Io plays a significant role in shaping Jupiter’s magnetosphere. Pioneer 10 first
passed by Io in December 1973.
Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system and the only one known to have its own
magnetosphere. The third of the Galilean satellites, Ganymede was also first photographed close-up by
Pioneer 10 in 1973. Galileo made six flybys of Ganymede between 1996 and 2000. Based on a
suggestion from Simon Marius, Ganymede (along with many of the Jovian satellites) is named for one of
Jupiter’s lovers in Roman mythology; Ganymede is the only such moon named for a male figure. Many
of Ganymede’s features, including the Enki Catena, are given names from Egyptian and Babylonian
mythology, although its largest dark plain is Galileo Regio. Ganymede is scheduled to be orbited by the
European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE), currently slated for a 2022 launch.
Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and the second largest in the solar system. Until Voyager 1 visited
in 1980, it was thought to be larger than Ganymede. It is the only known satellite with a dense
atmosphere—so dense that it makes observation of surface features nearly impossible except from
close up—and also the only known satellite for which there is evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid.
Discovered in 1655 by Christiaan Huygens, it was visited by the Cassini-Huygens mission in 2004. Titan’s
albedo features, such as the highly reflective area Xanadu, are named for sacred or enchanted places
from world literature and mythology. Because of its nitrogen-rich atmosphere and the presence of
surface liquid, Titan is often thought to be the most likely place in the solar system for microbial life to
exist outside of Earth.
Iapetus [“eye”-AA-pih-tuss] is Saturn’s third-largest moon after Titan and Rhea and, like them, was
discovered by Giovanni Cassini in 1671. It was named based upon a suggestion from John Herschel (son
of the discoverer of Uranus, William Herschel) for the Titans of Greek mythology, the brothers and
sisters of Cronos (Saturn). Iapetus has a distinctive two-tone coloration; part of it is red-brown, while
part is bright gray. Features on Iapetus are named for people and places from the French Song of
Roland, including Charlemagne Crater and the bright northern region Roncevaux Terra. In 2004 the
Cassini orbiter found an equatorial ridge running over 800 miles long and 10 miles wide that gives
Iapetus some of the highest peaks in the solar system; its existence has not yet been explained.
Titania and Oberon: Uranus’s largest moons, Titania and Oberon, are named for characters from
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (Other Uranian moons are named for characters from
either Shakespeare or Alexander Pope.) They were discovered on the same day in 1787 by William
Herschel, who also discovered Uranus itself in 1781. In 1986 Voyager 2 became the only spacecraft to
date to visit the Uranian moons. Because Uranus orbits the sun almost on its side and Titania and
Oberon orbit Uranus in the same plane as its equator, the moons have extreme seasons: Titania’s poles
spend over 42 years in nonstop sunlight followed by 42 years of darkness. Most of Titania’s features are
named for settings or female characters from Shakespeare—its largest crater is Gertrude Crater, after
Hamlet’s mother—while most of Oberon’s are named after settings or male characters from
Shakespeare. However, Oberon’s largest feature is Mommur Chasma, which is named from a French
epic poem.
Triton: The largest moon of Neptune and the only large moon with a retrograde orbit (that is, an orbit
opposite to the rotation of its planet), Triton is the seventh-largest moon in the solar system and is
thought to have been captured from the Kuiper Belt. For over 100 years after its 1846 discovery, Triton
was thought to be Neptune’s only moon; Nereid wasn’t discovered until 1949 (there are 13 known
satellites now). Triton is geologically active and has geysers that are assumed to erupt nitrogen. Because
of the activity, impact craters on Triton are relatively scarce; most of the larger craters were formed by
volcanic activity. Triton orbits around Neptune in almost a perfect circle. Voyager 2 visited Triton in 1989
and is the only space probe to have done so (and none are currently planned). Much of Triton’s western
hemisphere consists of an unexplained series of fissures and depressions sometimes called “cantaloupe
terrain.” Triton’s features are named after various water spirits, monsters, or sacred waters from
mythology.
Charon: The largest satellite of the dwarf planet Pluto, Charon wasn’t discovered until 1978. (As of
2013, Pluto has five known moons, the last two discovered in 2011 and 2012.) Unlike Pluto, which is
covered with nitrogen and methane ices, Charon appears to be covered in water ice and may also have
active cryo-geysers. Because the center of mass of the Pluto-Charon system lies outside of either one,
Charon doesn’t truly orbit Pluto; when Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006, an argument was
made (but not accepted) to classify Pluto-Charon as a binary system. The IAU still considers Charon,
which is roughly half the size but has only 11% the mass of Pluto, to be a satellite. The New Horizons
mission is scheduled to visit Charon and Pluto in 2015.
British Prime Ministers
Clement Attlee-Prime Minister 1945-1951, Labour Party, Welfare State and NHS
Winston Churchill-Prime Minister 1951-1955, Conservative, Negotiating nuclear peace between USA and
USSR
Anthony Eden-Prime Minister 1955-1957, Conservative Party, Suez Crisis
Harold Macmillian-Prime Minister 1957-1963, Conservative Party, Profumo Affair (1961)
Alec Douglas-Hume-Prime Minister 1963-1964, Conservative Party, Renounced his peerage to serv as
Prime Minister for 363 days
Harold Wilson-Prime Minister 1964-1970, Labour Party, Defeated by the Conservatives at the 1974
election
Edward Heath-Prime Minister 1970-1974, Conservative Party, Suez Crisis ( 29 October - 7 November
1956)
Harold Wilson (second term)-Prime Minister 1974-1976, Labour Party, Retired five days after his 60th
birthday
James Callaghan-Prime Minister 1976-1979, Labour Party, Resigned after the Winter of Discontent
(1979)
Margaret Thatcher-Prime Minster 1979-1990, Conservative Party, Miners Strikes and Falklands War
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