First on the dollar bill too. Courtesy/Stock.xchng
Coworkers have been riding me all day that my
American history quiz on Monday’s front page was too hard.
At first, I waved it off. The quiz wasn’t supposed to be easy. You’re just whining, I said.
But every Tulsa World reporter can’t be wrong, or as it turned out on the quiz, most of them were most of the time, and that isn't right.
What’s called for is an easier quiz. Towit:
1. There were 13 original colonies. Name two.
2. He was said to be the “first in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen.” He was also said to have chopped down a cherry, although that wasn’t true. Who was he?
3. The shooting in the American Revolution started at Lexington and Concord and ended at Yorktown. What current states of Lexington, Concord and Yorktown in?
4. Who was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence?
5. What is the date at the top of the Declaration of Independence?
6. To Europeans, who was the most famous man in America at the time of the Declaration of Independence? Hint: His name rhymes with Lynn Granklin.
7. British or American: Charles Cornwallis, Nathan Hale, Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, King George III, Lord North, Alexander Hamilton.
The Answers, if you need them:
1. Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Virginia. But not: Florida, Kentucky, Maine, or Vermont.
2. George Washington. It was Henry “Lighthorse Henry” Lee – father of Robert E. Lee – who came up with the “First in war…” bit. Washington biographer Mason Weems is credited with the fiction of the cherry tree.
3. Lexington and Concord are in Massachusetts. Yorktown is in Virginia.
4. Thomas Jefferson is the primary author of the Declaration of Independence.
5. July 4, 1776
6. Ben Franklin was famous in Europe as a scientist, inventor and author.
7. British, American, American, American, British, British, American (although he was born on the island of Nevis in what was then known as the British West Indies).
