The “sick man of Europe” was a term first applied to the Ottoman Empire in the middle of the nineteenth century. At the time, the Ottoman Empire was suffering from extreme economic stagnation and had been, for some time, hemorrhaging territory to other empires in a series of disastrous wars. The term has since been used liberally to describe several failing European states and empires.

Much of British foreign policy in the latter decades of the nineteenth century was intended to combat Russian desires for territorial expansion. The British initially opposed the Russians in the Crimean War and then turned their attentions to bolstering the weakened Ottoman Empire against Russian occupation. The British were very fearful of the consequences to British hegemony if Russia was able to capture Istanbul, or any other important Ottoman city on the Mediterranean.

Janissaries were elite troops in the Ottoman army from the middle of the fourteenth century until the early nineteenth century. They were Christian boys kidnapped from the Balkans and Central Europe and raised to be members of a highly organized fighting force.

Afghanistan was conquered by the British in the nineteenth century, but due to its mountainous terrain and established history of guerrilla warfare against invading people, the British found it very difficult to hold the territory. It was an experience and challenge that would be repeated by the Russians and the Americans in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The Ottoman Empire was the dominant empire of the Middle East and North Africa for much of the Early Modern and Enlightenment period, but by the middle of the ninteenth century the influence of the Ottoman Empire had declined significantly. Many of the Balkan countries declared independence in the last few decades of the century, including Greece, and the Ottoman Empire was being propped up by the French and the British, who wanted to use the declining force as a buffer against Russian expansionist goals.

The "Auspicious Incident" occurred in the Ottoman Empire in 1826. It involved the rebellion of certain members of the Ottoman military called Janissaries. The rebellion was put down brutally, and the Ottoman Empire disbanded all of the Janissaries, replacing them with more modern regiments. It is likely you did not know this answer, but you should have been able to guess based on a knowledge of what "Janissaries" were within the Ottoman Empire. Janissaries were young Christian boys, often kidnapped during Ottoman wars, and trained to serve their lives in the Ottoman military. The Ottomans employed Janissaries in many battles throughout this time period.

The Dutch were the first to found colonies in the Hudson River Valley, the area comprising most of modern-day New York. They founded the colony of New Amsterdam, which would become New York City, in the early seventeenth century. 

The Vikings, led by the famous Leif Erikson, are believed to have arrived in what is modern-day Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in the eleventh century, four centuries before the arrival of the Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish.

The first European colonies in the New World were established in Hispaniola on the initial voyages of Columbus in 1492 and 1493. The island of Hispaniola is now shared by the modern-day countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

The Monroe Doctrine was issued in 1823 following the independence of several South American countries. It stated that if the European powers tried to reestablish colonial control over South or Central America then the United States would intervene.