Frederick the Great reigned over the Kingdom of Prussia from 1740 to 1786 and, along with Catherine the Great, is most commonly remembered as an “enlightened despot”; Catherine, for her own part, reigned as Tsarina of Russia from 1762 to 1796; William Pitt the Younger served as British Prime Minister at various times throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; and Louis XIV reigned over France for an astonishing seventy-two years from 1643 until his death in 1715. Of the presented answer choices, only King Charles II of England did not rule in the eighteenth century. Charles II reigned over England, Ireland, and Scotland at a time of great upheaval in British history. Depending on who you ask, his reign even began in 1649, following the execution of his father at the climax of the English Civil War, or, more practically, in 1660, following the death of Oliver Cromwell.

German unification was achieved largely as a result of the territorial and political ambitions of its “iron chancellor,” Otto von Bismarck. German nationalism had long existed as a tenuous and optimistic ideal, but the fragmented nature of the Holy Roman Empire and the German principalities made such a unification very difficult. It was not until the ascension of Prussia as one of the preeminent powers in Europe that German national unification was anything more than a pipe dream. Bismarck governed Prussia effectively and realized the way to engender German nationalism was to create a common enemy—France and Austria. A series of wars with both these countries created support for a unified Germany.

Hammurabi is the most famous of the Babylonian Kings who ruled vast areas of Ancient Mesopotamia from about 1850 B.C.E. until the Sack of Babylon in 1531 B.C.E. He is mostly remembered for the introduction of Hammurabi’s Code of Laws - one of the earliest known established legal codes in world history. 

Queen Victoria reigned over Britain from 1837-1901; Andrew Jackson was President of the United States from 1829-1837; Pedro II reigned over the nation of Brazil for the majority of the Nineteenth Century; Napoleon Bonaparte was Emperor of France from 1804-1814. Of these options only Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, was not in power in the Nineteenth Century. Frederick reigned over Prussia from 1740-1786. 

Pedro II was the most famous King of the Brazilian monarchy and his reign lasted for much of the Nineteenth Century. However, he was not king at the turn of the century. Roosevelt was an American President during the Great Depression and World War Two; Pol Pot was a Cambodian ruler in the mid-twentieth century who is most often remembered for the terrible atrocities and genocide committed under his direction; Josef Stalin was the leader of the Socialist Party of the Soviet Union in the decades immediately before, during, and after World War Two; Nikita Khrushchev succeeded Josef Stalin in the 1950s. 

Hatshepsut reigned over Ancient Egypt from 1508-1458 B.C.E. She is both one of the most successful pharaohs of Egyptian history and one of the earliest known female rulers with which history is familiar. 

The Boxer Rebellion occurred between 1898 and 1900. It was a Chinese peasantry revolt against the spread of Christianity and Western influence in China, and it was was put down by a combined effort of the Western imperial powers. The Boxer Rebellion helped to entrench growing Chinese nationalism, as it provided a context of “us versus them.” The growth of nationalism was particularly felt in Northern and Eastern China.

These types of questions are designed to test whether you can contextualize various important events within the larger scope of human history. Let us tackle this problem by putting all these various events in the order they occurred. Julius Caesar was stabbed to death in the Roman Senate in 44 BCE; the Plague of Justinian was an outbreak of bubonic plague that occurred in the early years of the Eastern Roman Empire, under Emperor Justinian I, in 541 CE; the death of Charlemagne (the first Emperor of Western Europe after the Fall of Rome) occurred in 814; the Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history and occurred in Europe from about 1346 to 1353 CE; the Voyage of Columbus to the New World occurred in 1492; and the Glorious Revolution in Britain occurred in 1688.

These types of questions are designed to test whether you can contextualize various important events within the larger scope of human history. Let us tackle this problem by putting all these various events in the order they occurred. The Collapse of the Mayan Empire occurred between the 8^th and 9^th Centuries C.E., although the Mayan people continue to live in Mesoamerica to this day; The Norman Conquest of Britain took place in 1066 when William the Conqueror invaded Southern England and eliminated the existing Saxon and Viking centers of power; Saladin is perhaps the most famous of the Medieval Era Arab rulers and he famously re-captured the city of Jerusalem in 1187; The University of Cambridge was founded in 1209 and is, by most accounts, the third longest enduring university in the world; The Printing Press was not invented in Europe until 1450, by Johannes Guttenberg; The Voyage of Columbus, as almost all Americans know, occurred in 1492. 

These types of questions are designed to test whether you can contextualize various important events within the larger scope of human history. Let us tackle this problem by putting all these various events in the order they occurred. The Norman Conquest of England, when William the Conqueror came over from Northern France and defeated the existing Saxon and Viking institutions of power, occurred in 1066 C.E.; Chaucer wrote his famous Canterbury Tales towards the end of the Fourteenth Century (lack of printing and publishing makes the exact date hard to ascertain); The Fall of Constantinople occurred in 1453, it marked the end of the thousand year existence of the Eastern Roman Empire, as well as the rise of the Ottoman Empire under Mehmed II; The Voyage of Columbus occurred in 1492; Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa between 1503-1506, at the height of the Italian Renaissance; The Fall of the Incan Empire took place from the arrival of Pizarro and the Spanish Conquistadors, in 1526, until the capture of the last Incan stronghold in 1572.