Big History Quiz

Barnum Brown is often considered one of the greatest dinosaur hunters of the 19th and 20th centuries. He discovered the first Tyrannosaurus Rex! It is displayed in the American Museum of Natural History.

During Japan’s period of self-imposed isolation, it was illegal to travel beyond the borders of the country, upon pain of death. There was almost no contact with the outside world, except on a tiny island situated in the harbor of the city of Nagasaki. Its name was Deijima, and it was here that a small community of individual were allowed to trade on behalf of the Dutch colonial powers. Here, they taught practices of Western medicine, traded European goods and even kept concubines from the local population. Intrigued? Check out the spellbinding novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacbod De Zoet by David Mitchell to delve into this intriguing historical anomaly.

The sun isn’t merely that far-away ball of gas – it has an atmosphere that extends far beyond Pluto! The northern lights, for example, are the result of the interaction of solar winds with the earth’s magnetic field. In a manner of speaking, we live inside the sun!