Sunday, February 24, 2008

The Monday Quiz XVI

American History in Photographs

1. Who? Where?



2. What? Where?


3. What is happening?

4. Why are these people so happy?
5. (two photos) What City? When?



Extra Credit

A tough one, but just because I love the photograph: Where?

Submit your answers in the comments.

32 comments:

CPM said...

1. Tricky Dick Nixon in China, 1972?
2. The East and West Railroads meeting up : not sure where.
3. Break up of the Shuttle Columbia over Texas in 2003
4. WWII is over!!!
5. Nagasaki or Hiroshima? or Dresden? . . . clearly US bombers were there previously.

EC. Golden Gate Bridge?? only issue is it seems like the Marin Headlands are missing . . .

Karin said...

1. Nixon at the The Great Wall of China
2. Oh, um, you know, when they finished the Continental Railroad, but where? Ahh...St. Louis? I don't know.
3. The Challenger is exploding?
4. WWII has ended, so kiss a stranger in the street
5. Dresden? WWI
extra: The Golden Gate Bridge, trippy

fingerstothebone said...

1. Richard & Pat Nixon in China, on the Great Wall.
2. Meeting of the railroads...don't know where.
3. Columbia breaking apart on re-entry.
4. WWII was over.
5. ??? Looks like a Victorian era thing...

EC. Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

fingerstothebone said...

1. Richard & Pat Nixon in China, on the Great Wall.
2. Meeting of the railroads...don't know where.
3. Columbia breaking apart on re-entry.
4. WWII was over.
5. ??? Looks like a Victorian era thing...

EC. Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

Anonymous said...

1 -- Richard Nixon, Pat Nixon, four secret service agents, and a party of thirty or so Chinese delegates. On the Great Wall of China.

2 -- A celebration of the connection of the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads, linking together major routes to make cross-country rail travel possible, somewhere in Utah, sometime in the 1800's. This famous event was followed shortly thereafter by a major fight when both parties realized one of them was going to have to back up.

3 -- After the explosion of the Challenger, pieces of the shuttle and the rocket are burning up or returning to Earth.

4 -- They are celebrating the end of WWII.

5 -- Based on the clothes, I'm guessing Chicago in the 1880s.

6 -- I used to commute across the Golden Gate, and there were four lateral members above the road bed. I used to commute across the SF/Oakland Bridge, and there were X-members in each tower. So I'm guessing somewhere on Planet Earth, but not on San Francisco Bay.

Elizabeth said...

1. Nixon in China. A surprisingly enjoyable opera.

2. The completion of the trancontinental railroad, somewhere in Utah. My mother has a faux golden spike around the house somewhere, I think.

3. The Challenger just lost its o-rings.

4. V-E day.

5. You and your ruined buildings. Have you talked to a therapist about this? I was doing JUST FINE until these pictures arrived. Okay, we had the San Francisco fire a while back, so I'm going to go all bovine on you and say this is the Chicago fire of 18-something.

ExC: The bay between Oakland and San Francisco, I think.

d said...

1. tricky dick, et al, great wall of china. i'm gonna say, 1969.
2. the pacific union railroad meets up with the one from the east (i forget the name) in utah.
3.pieces of challenger are falling back to earth
4. world war 2 just ended and that man's really happy 'cause he's gettin' some.
5. man. i d k. san francisco? 1906. that seems too easy though and i'm racking my brain for what else it might be and the only other thing i can come up with is the chicago fire in the late 1800s. yeah. i'm gonna stick with chicago.
6. that is a kick ass photo of the golden gate bridge being built.

Cartophiliac said...

1. Richard Nixon (with wife Pat) is the first US president to visit China. They are at the Great Wall.

2. Here we see the aftermath of the aftermath of the famous steam engine collision of 1896 as depicted on the Utah State Quarter: http://cartophilia.com/blog/uploaded_images/utahquarter.gif
or maybe the ceremony driving the golden spike at the joining of the Union and Pacific Railroads to form the first transcontinental railroad at (Council Bluffs?), Utah, 1869.

3. The broken up bits of the Challenger space shuttle returning to Earth. (or maybe that satellite that was just shot down last week...)

4. The birth control pill has finally been invented... or VJ day...

5. Richmond, Virginia, 1865

EXTRA CREDIT: Mackinaw Bridge, Michigan (second guess would have been Golden Gate)

Anonymous said...

1. Nixons at Great Wall
2. It looks like two rail lines meeting up to make one?
3. Space Shuttle -- um -- Discovery? after it disintegrated while entering atmosphere. February...2003?
4. War is over and love is keen.
5. San Francisco fire aftermath? Or London bombing? Not sure.
6. It looks like the Golden Gate bridge.

Anonymous said...

1. Nixon at the Great Wall
2. Golden Spike, Promantory Utah
3. Challenger going down
4. Times Square, Armistice Day
5. Richmond VA, 1965
6. Tacoma Narrows Bridge

Rebel said...

Dang... just when I'd totally written off doing well on your quizes!

1. Only Nixon could go to China. Pres. & Mrs. Nixon at the great wall.

2. Promentary Point Utah, nailing in the golden spike that joins the east & west by railroad.

3. That would be the challenger exploding =( Saw that one first hand in the fifth grade.

4. They're celebrating the end of WW2, V-E day?

5. That level of distruction looks like it could be Hiroshima or Nagasaki? Except I don't think hoop-skirts were big in Japan. Ummmmm .... San Francisco after the 1912 earthquake?

Extra Credit - oh, but this looks like San Francisco, the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. So I guess I don't know what #5 is afterall. =/

Rebel said...

3. (not so much first-hand as I was in NJ, but on TV as it happened)

Anonymous said...

1. Nixon, China (and Pat and lots of unknown Chinese people)
2. Trans Cont. RR, Promitory Point, Utah. No matter how I spell it, it still looks wrong. Maybe it is...
3. Challenger (?) exploding. I can never keep my space ship names and disasters straight.
4. VJ day. Or is it VE? I can never remember. Lets go with VJ, because who wouldn't be so happy about the bomb.
5. Richmond, VA 1865ish
6. San Francisco

Anonymous said...

1 Why, it's Richard and Pat Nixon touring the Great Wall of China.
2 The Golden Spike connecting the first transcontinental railroad. Some godforsaken corner of Utah.
3 Skylab is falling?
4 We won! We won! World War II is over!
5 We couldn't possibly be back in San Francisco again, after the earthquake. Yet that's what it looks like.
6 I'm going to say the Straits of Mackinac.

Dan Nolan said...

1. Nixon - Great Wall du China
2. ? Tippecanoe and Tyler Too?
3. Space Shuttle blowing up
4. WW2 just ended.
5. Dresden and Warsaw after WW2 bombing

extra credit - Golden Gate Bridge

Kritkrat said...

1. Nixon/Great Wall
2. RR meet up/Nebraska?
3. Columbia re-entry :(
4. WWII over
5. Somewhere in Germany - Dresden? Aachen?
6. Golden Gate?

DrSchnell said...

1. Nixon goes to China. In, um, China. On that Great Wall thingy. Must be Pat Nixon standing next to him.
2. Completion of first transcontinental railroad, Promontory Point, Utah.
3. Debris from Challenger space shuttle explosion
4. End of WWII (VJ Day)
5. I'm going to say San Francisco, post-earthquake, though I think that's probably wrong, since you used it in a recent week's quiz, and the clothes are a little older than that, but I have no better guess.
Extra Credit. The Tacoma Narrows bridge, after some weird wind/harmonic resonance thingy caused it to wobble around like it was made out of Jello. This picture is cool, the video of it happening is pretty surreal...

DrSchnell said...

OK, I'm looking back at that last picture and realize that it's a little too neat to have been a bridge collapse. Oh well.

McGuff said...

1. Nixon, several hours before having tea with the most horrific despot of the 20th century (in China, 1972).
2. Completion of transcontinental railroad, Promontory Point, Utah.
3. Debris from Columbia explosion, much of which landed about 50 miles north of my house.
4. Naval training for romantic re-indoctrination at end of WWII, only this time it's not a drill.
5. Chicago (fire), 1871
6. Tacoma WA (I like this guess, but sadly it is probably wrong).

McGuff said...

Two disclaimers:

Chicago Fire, because of recent discussions of SF, etc., but I don't place the pictures as any I've seen of Chicago fire before.

Tacoma bridge PRE-swaying incident. If not, that's a pretty darm big bridge, but is too small for GG, no cities, hills, mountains; B&W photo and boats place this 1940's or earlier to me....Hmmmm. Will be interesting to see what this is.

Anonymous said...

1. Pat Nixon at the Great Wall of China--I don't know who that dick standing next to her is.
2. The meeting of the rails--not sure which railroad--maybe Union Pacific. This is at Golden Spike, Utah.
3. This is a picture of an exploding space shuttle--I think it's Endurance--maybe--I don't think its the Challenger.
4. Why its V.E. Day!
5. A stop along Sherman's March to the Atlantic--I'm saying this is the ruins of Atlanta. Circa 1864--near the end of the Civil War.
Extrta Credit: San Francisco Bay--the building of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Anonymous said...

1. Nixon in 1978ish (I was in the 4th grade) visiting China for the first time since it became communist. They are on the Great Wall there.

2. P.... Point, Utah. Where the eastbound and westbound train lines met.

3. Hailey's Comet?

4. WWII has ended.

5. Absolutely no clue.

Bonus--The building of the Astoria Bridge?

Anonymous said...

1. Nixon at the Great Wall in China
2. Completion of the transcontinental railroad. Hmm. Cali?
3. Space shuttle coming down with 7 astronauts on board 1/28? I forget the year but I turned 17 that day. I think this is a photo of it. It looks like one of them.
4. End of WWI NYC? Shoot this one is famous and I can't be sure.
5. I want to say SanFran earthquake again but don't think it would be in a quiz again so soon.
Extra Credit: San Fran Golden Gate Bridge. I just saw the movie "The Bridge." It looks similar.

Nice quiz!

mhwitt said...

All right, so I'm late again.

1. Nixon In China (like the opera title.) Oh, and the First Lady... Patricia is it? And perhaps we should not neglect the Chinese with them, though I can't name any shown in this picture.
2. Completion of the trans-continental railroad, USA... Colorado I think.
3. Not sure about this one. Maybe the destruction of the space shuttle, 1986.
4. VE day, I believe. Nazi Germany has surrendered to the Allies in WWII.
5. San Francisco after the 1907earthquake and fire, I believe.
6. I'll say this picture shows the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Could be the Golden Gate bridge of course, but I'm going to guess you won't let question #6 be that easy.

mhwitt said...

I misjudged you on #6, Mr. 5000. I think I'd have aced this damn thing but for me erring in my judgment of your nature and the fact that I have a lousy visual memory for one bridge I lived near and crossed several times, and another I crossed as a pedestrian less than five years ago.

Michael5000 said...

Aaaaand time's up.

Here's the answers:

1. Richard M. "Tricky Dick" Nixon and his wife, Pat, on the Great Wall of China, among many of their hosts.

2. The formal completion of the first transcontinental railroad, as the Union Pacific meets the Central Pacific at Promentary Point, Utah.

3. The Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates over Texas in January, 2003.

4. It's V-J Day, the end of World War II.

5. Richmond, Virginia, the former capital of the Confederate States of America, in 1865. The retreating Confederate army set fires to destroy abandoned military equipment; the fires went out of control and gutted the city.

Extra Credit. That's not the Golden Gate -- it's the Mackinac Bridge between Lower and Upper Michigan, a similar design but nearly three times as long.

Awarding of Exclamation Points will have to wait until tomorrow, as it's late late late. Thanks for playing the Monday Quiz!

Anonymous said...

Nitpicky note -- Columbia disaster was February 1, 2003. Do you like the nitpicky? If not, disregard...

Rebel said...

Oh man! You are a tricksy one... a tricksy one indeed.

Michael5000 said...

Tough judging this week! More than half of the respondants have their shuttle disasters confused, which I was pretty strict on, although I understand the confusion. I did, however, allow partial credit for those who guessed Chicago Fire for Question 5, after I looked up photos of the Chicago fire aftermath and found they looked much like the Richmond fire aftermath.

When the dust clears, we've got this weeks exclamation points going to Cartophiliac, Phineas, and Sandy!

Kudos also to Mrs.5000, Karma, CPM, and fingers. Strong buncha answers this week.

Michael5000 said...


@CPM: Welcome to the Quiz! C'mon back Thursday...

@Karin: I see no reason to restrict this behavior to the end of wars, really.

@Elizabeth: "Nixon in China" is AWESOME!!! Well... the third act drags a little.... but MOSTLY awesome!!! Listen here, if you're so inclined, to my song that samples from the choral overture....

@DrSchnell: You ain't kidding about the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, though. Amazing.

@jenny j: Hi, Jenny! Thanks for playing the quiz!

@boo: If you turned 17 when that picture was taken, you are waaaaay younger than I thought. But I think it means we're almost exactly the same age.

@mhwitt: I'm curious about the "erring in my judgment of your nature" part....

@Kate: Correct! I was looking at the launch date.

@Rebel: Why tricksy this time? It didn't seem like there was any misdirection....

Thanks for playing, everybody!

McGuff said...

Wow.....very lenient on Chicago. When I saw the Richmond answers my goose was cooked, or so I thought.

How 'bout you put me down for a half an exclamation point?

mhwitt said...

Never mind about my "erring in my judgment of your nature" comment. I had it right after all: you are a right tough quiz master.