History GCSE 50-facts

Crime and Punishment

  1. Wergild replaced Blood Feud in Saxon punishment
  2. The Murdrum Fine was introduced by the Normans
  3. Poachers could be blinded under the Forest Laws brought in by the Normans
  4. In 1604 James I declared his ‘utter detestation’ for the Catholics
  5. Between 1645 and 1647 there were 250 cases of witchcraft brought before authorities in East Anglia
  6. 1723 the Black Act made poaching a capital offence
  7. It was reckoned that there were 20,000 smugglers in the 18th Century
  8. 250,000 people signed a petition calling for the release of the Tolpuddle Martyrs
  9. 150,000 people were transported between 1787 and 1850
  10. The Metropolitan Police was established by Sir Robert Peel in 1829

Superpower Relations

  1. The Truman Doctrine was begun as a policy of containment in 1947
  2. 275,000 flights were flown during the Berlin Airlift from 1948-49
  3. The USA and USSR both test the first H-Bombs in 1953
  4. 6,000 tanks were sent into Hungary by Khrushchev in response to the Uprising in 1956
  5. The Berlin Wall was constructed in 1961
  6. The Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed in 1963 following the Cuban Missile Crisis the year before
  7. Dubcek met with the Yugoslavian leader, Tito, which alarmed Brezhnev in 1968
  8. 85,000 Soviet troops were sent into Afghanistan to face the threat posed by the Mujahideen
  9. Free trade union, Solidarity, won the first free elections in Eastern Europe in 1989
  10. One million people per day crossed from East to West following the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989

Richard and John

  1. The Church tax of a tithe was 10% of a peasant’s crops
  2. In 1190 mobs attacked Jews in York and destroyed records of debts kept in York Minster
  3. The city of Acre fell to a Crusader siege
  4. Richard I was ransomed for 100,000 marks by Leopold of Austria
  5. Chateau Galliard cost Richard £12,000 to build
  6. Richard regains all of Normandy from Philip by 1199
  7. In 1200 King John agreed to pay King Philip of France 20,000 marks in the Treaty of Le Goulet
  8. John failed to compensate Hugh de Lusignan for taking his fiancée Isabella of Angouleme
  9. John doubled tax demands in 1207 with the introduction of ‘the thirteenth’ tax
  10. Prince Louis of France landed in England in May 1216 to support the Barons against John in the First Barons’ War

Civil Rights

  1. The Brown v. Topeka case over-turned to Plessy v Ferguson ruling of 1896 that had established the idea of ‘separate but equal’
  2. 20,000 people take part in the Bus Boycott
  3. President Eisenhower intervened to over-rule Arkansas State Governor Orval Faubus over Little Rock in 1957
  4. The Freedom Riders bus was firebombed by the KKK in May 1961
  5. President Kennedy sent 320 Federal Marshals to escort James Meredith to the University of Mississippi in 1962
  6. Four civil rights activists were murdered in Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964
  7. President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964
  8. The Black Panther Party was founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale
  9. In 1967 there were race riots in 125 US cities
  10. In 1968 68% of southern black children still attended segregated schools but by the end of Nixon’s time in office in 1974 this had fallen to 8%

Vietnam

  1. Eisenhower chose to get involved in Vietnam following the Geneva Agreement of 1954
  2. Diem’s sister-in-law responded to the protest burning of Buddhist monk Quang Duc in 1963 by saying she hoped for more such ‘barbecues’
  3. In 1964 President Johnson uses the attack on the US ship ‘the Maddox’ in the Gulf of Tonkin as an excuse to order in ground troops to Vietnam
  4. 11% of US deaths were caused by booby traps
  5. The USA dropped more bombs in Operation Rolling Thunder than were used by the Allies in all of World War Two
  6. 347 people were killed by US troops in the My Lai Massacre
  7. The Tet Offensive occurred in 1968
  8. Four students were shot dead in the Kent State shootings in 1970
  9. A poll showed 50% of people supported the invasion of Cambodia in 1970, only 35% were opposed
  10. Between 1964 and 1968 the cost of the war for America rose from $0.5 billion to $26.5 billion