NY Regents Global History II (Grade 10)

Rome, built on seven hills above the Tiber River in central Italy, was the setting on 8 April 1341 when Francesco Petrarch was crowned poet laureate on the Capitoline Hill — the first such ceremony…

Sagres stands on a dramatic rocky promontory at the south-western extremity of Portugal and of the European mainland, where the cliffs of the Algarve coast drop into the open Atlantic. Prince Henry…

Florence lies in the Arno River valley, cradled between the Apennine foothills to the north and the Chianti hills to the south, in the region of Tuscany in central Italy. In September 1434, Cosimo…

Florence's Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore rises from the flat Arno floodplain, its dome dominating the skyline against the Apennine hills to the north. Filippo Brunelleschi's dome, consecrated by…

Mainz sits at the confluence of the Rhine and Main rivers, at the northern edge of the Rhine Gorge where the river cuts between the Taunus hills to the east and the Palatinate hills to the west…

Mainz, at the confluence of the Rhine and Main rivers in western Germany, was where Johannes Gutenberg completed printing of the first major book produced with movable metal type around 1454–1455…

The Cape of Good Hope is a dramatic rocky promontory at the south-western tip of the African continent, where the cold Benguela Current of the South Atlantic meets the warm Agulhas Current sweeping…

On 12 October 1492, Christopher Columbus, sailing under the Spanish crown, made landfall on an island in the Bahamas archipelago — a chain of low coral islands in the western Atlantic Ocean, between…

Santa Maria delle Grazie is a Dominican convent in Milan, which sits in the Po River plain at the foot of the Alps in northern Italy. Leonardo da Vinci completed The Last Supper on the north wall of…

Kozhikode (Calicut) sits on the Malabar Coast of south-western India, where the Arabian Sea washes the foot of the Western Ghats mountain range. On 20 May 1498, Vasco da Gama's fleet arrived there…

Porto Seguro lies on the coast of the Brazilian state of Bahia, where a reef-sheltered bay and a low coastal escarpment meet the South Atlantic. On 22 April 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral's fleet…

Florence, in the Arno River valley of Tuscany, was where Leonardo da Vinci began the Mona Lisa around 1503–1506, likely portraying Lisa Gherardini, wife of a Florentine silk merchant. Leonardo used…

Florence, in the Arno River valley of Tuscany, central Italy, was the setting for Michelangelo's David, completed in 1504 from a single block of Carrara marble quarried in the Apuan Alps near the…

St Peter's Basilica rises on the right (west) bank of the Tiber River in the Vatican, built over the traditional site of the Apostle Peter's tomb and the location of the Emperor Nero's circus. Pope…

The Sistine Chapel stands within the Vatican, the papal enclave on the west bank of the Tiber River in Rome, central Italy. Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling in 1508; the…

New York Bay is a large sheltered harbour on the mid-Atlantic coast of North America, enclosed by Long Island to the north-east, Staten Island to the south-west, and the New Jersey shore, with a…

Hispaniola is a large Caribbean island shared today by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, lying between Cuba to the west and Puerto Rico to the east, in the Caribbean Sea. In 1525, the first ships…

Sekigahara, a small town in present-day Japan's Gifu Prefecture, sits in a strategic mountain pass corridor on Honshu — the main island of the Japanese archipelago, separated from the Korean…

This event unfolded in Edo — today's Tokyo — on Honshu, the main island of Japan, a volcanic archipelago curving along the northwestern edge of the Pacific Ocean, directly east across the Sea of…

This uprising took place on the Shimabara Peninsula in Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's four main islands, where the land juts southward into the sea between the open Pacific and the sheltered…

This battle took place at Senta, a town in modern-day Serbia, positioned on the Tisa River — a major southern tributary of the Danube — on the broad, flat plains that stretch between the Carpathian…

Ouidah, on the Atlantic coast of present-day Benin in West Africa, was one of the largest slave-trading ports in history. It sits on the narrow coastal plain between the Bight of Benin to the south…

Utrecht is a city on the Oude Rijn (Old Rhine) branch of the Rhine-Meuse delta in the central Netherlands. The Treaty of Utrecht (1713), ending the War of the Spanish Succession, was signed there in…

The publication took place in Geneva, the city-state now part of modern Switzerland, tucked between the Alps to the east and the Jura Mountains to the west — exactly the Alpine crossroads the title…

Bristol lies on the Avon River where it meets the Bristol Channel, the tidal estuary separating England from Wales on the Atlantic seaboard. By around 1750, Bristol was one of Britain's leading…

This was the Battle of Plassey, fought in 1757 near the village of Palashi in present-day West Bengal, India — on the low, humid plains where the Ganges and its tributaries fan out toward the Bay of…

Around 1764, weaver and carpenter James Hargreaves, living near Blackburn in Lancashire, England, invented the spinning jenny — a frame allowing one worker to spin eight threads of cotton…

Glasgow, Scotland — where the Scottish engineer James Watt was based when, in 1769, he was granted his landmark patent for a steam engine with a separate condenser. Watt had struck on the idea a few…

On 29 April 1770, Lieutenant James Cook and HMS Endeavour landed at what is now Kurnell, on the southern shore of Botany Bay — the first recorded landing by Europeans on the east coast of Australia…

In 1771, Richard Arkwright opened his water-powered cotton spinning mill at Cromford, a village in Derbyshire, England, where the River Derwent rushes off the southern Pennine hills. The mill used…

London, straddling the Thames in south-eastern England, was the seat of the Court of King's Bench where Lord Chief Justice Mansfield ruled on 22 June 1772 in the Somerset case. James Somerset, an…

The Zong was a Liverpool-based slave ship that committed a notorious massacre in late November 1781 while crossing the Atlantic toward Jamaica, the large Caribbean island south of Cuba. After…

This was London, England — the sprawling capital sitting on the Thames in the southeastern corner of the island of Great Britain, separated from continental Europe by the narrow English Channel. In…

On 26 January 1788, eleven ships of the First Fleet under Captain Arthur Phillip landed at Sydney Cove in Port Jackson, founding the first British penal colony in Australia and the settlement that…

Plymouth is a naval and merchant port on Plymouth Sound, where the Tamar and Plym rivers meet the English Channel on the south-western tip of England. The Brookes was a Liverpool slave ship that was…

London, on the Thames estuary in south-eastern England, was where Olaudah Equiano published The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano in March 1789. Equiano, born in what is now…

This is Paris, the capital of France — sitting in the broad basin of the Seine River, north of the Pyrenees mountain range that separates France from the Iberian Peninsula. In 1789, an angry crowd…

This event unfolded at Versailles, just outside Paris in northern France — the grand palace city set on the flat plains of the Seine basin, roughly twenty kilometres southwest of the French capital…

This uprising unfolded on Saint-Domingue — the western portion of Hispaniola, the large Caribbean island shared today with the Dominican Republic, lying between Cuba to the northwest and Puerto Rico…

This event took place in London, England — the sprawling city straddling the River Thames in the southeast of the island of Great Britain, facing continental Europe across the narrow English Channel…

This event took place in Paris, France — the great city on the Seine River in northwestern Europe, sitting between the English Channel to the north and the Alps to the southeast. On January 21, 1793…

This is Paris, France — the city on the Seine's great bend in the heart of Western Europe, north of the Alps, south of the English Channel, and at the core of the continent's largest Atlantic-facing…

This event unfolded in Paris, France — the city straddling the River Seine in the broad Paris Basin, roughly midway between the English Channel coast and the Alps to the southeast. On November 9…

This event took place in Gonaïves, Haiti — on the western third of Hispaniola, the second-largest island in the Caribbean, nestled between the Atlantic Ocean to the north and the Caribbean Sea to the…

Moscow, Russia — the historic inland city near the headwaters of the Volga, deep in the vast Eurasian plain that stretches unbroken from Central Europe to the Ural Mountains. In June 1812, Napoleon…

This was Vienna, Austria — a city cradled in the Alpine foothills of Central Europe, where the Danube River begins its great eastward sweep toward the Black Sea. In 1815, the major European powers…

This battle took place at the Boyacá Bridge in present-day Colombia, a landlocked Andean crossing deep in the interior of South America — east of the great Pacific cordillera and well north of the…

This event took place at St Peter's Field in Manchester, England — a city sitting in the broad lowland corridor between the Pennine hills to the east and the Irish Sea coast to the west. In 1819…

This is Patras, in what is now Greece — a port city on the northern coast of the Peloponnese peninsula, exactly where the Ionian Sea meets the Gulf of Corinth, deep in the eastern Mediterranean…

This event took place in Stockton-on-Tees, in northeastern England, United Kingdom — exactly where the low-lying coastal plain stretches between the Pennine hills to the west and the North Sea to the…

On 15 September 1830, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened as the world's first inter-city steam passenger railway, connecting the port of Liverpool on the Mersey estuary to the…

This event unfolded in London, the capital of the United Kingdom, sitting on the Thames River in southeastern England — the large island off the northwestern coast of continental Europe, separated…

On 29 August 1833, the British Parliament passed the Factory Act, the first effective piece of legislation limiting child labour in textile mills. It banned children under nine from working in…

In 1834, six agricultural labourers from Tolpuddle, a small village in Dorset in the chalk downlands of southern England, were arrested and sentenced to seven years' transportation to Australia for…

This is Canton — today called Guangzhou — in southern China, sitting at the head of the Pearl River delta where it opens into the South China Sea, exactly the coastal gateway the title clue…

This catastrophe struck Ireland — the large island lying in the North Atlantic directly west of Britain, separated from it by the Irish Sea. Beginning in 1845, a potato blight caused total crop…

On 21 February 1848, The Communist Manifesto — written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels — was published in London, then the largest industrial city in the world and a refuge for European political…

This uprising erupted in Guangzhou, a major port city in southern China, sitting in the Pearl River delta just inland from the South China Sea — exactly the southern interior region where rebel…

Hyde Park, London, in the United Kingdom — sitting on the island of Great Britain, separated from the European continent by the narrow English Channel to the south and the North Sea to the east. In…

Gold was discovered at Ballarat, in the colony of Victoria, in August 1851, triggering one of the great gold rushes of the nineteenth century. Through the 1850s and 1860s hundreds of thousands of…

On 13 August 1856, Henry Bessemer presented his paper 'The Manufacture of Iron without Fuel' to the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Cheltenham, a spa town in the…

This is Meerut, a garrison city on the great Gangetic plain of northern India — sitting exactly where the Himalayan foothills flatten into the wide, river-laced lowlands that stretch toward the Bay…

London, the capital of the United Kingdom, sits on the River Thames in southeastern England — the large island off northwestern Europe's Atlantic coast, separated from France by the English Channel…

Turin, in northwestern Italy near the foot of the Alps, was the capital from which the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861 — the boot-shaped peninsula stretching southward between the Tyrrhenian…

This event unfolded in Vienna, Austria — the Habsburg imperial capital sitting in the Danube basin, where the eastern edge of the Alps opens onto the vast flat plain stretching toward Hungary. In…

This event unfolded in Tokyo, the capital of Japan — an island nation curving along the western Pacific, separated from the Asian continent by the Sea of Japan. In 1868, Emperor Meiji was restored to…

On May 10 1869 the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads met at Promontory Summit Utah completing the first transcontinental railroad in the United States. A ceremonial golden spike was driven…

On 17 November 1869, the Suez Canal officially opened at Port Said, the Mediterranean mouth of the new waterway cut across the narrow isthmus of Suez in Egypt. The canal runs 193 kilometres south to…

This event took place in the Palace of Versailles, just southwest of Paris, France — the grand royal complex sitting on the flat plains of the Île-de-France, between the Seine River and the Loire…

On 7 March 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was granted US Patent No. 174,465 for 'the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically' — the telephone. The experimental…

This event took place in Berlin, the capital of modern Germany — a city sitting on the North European Plain, far from any mountain barrier, with the Rhine flowing to its west and the Baltic Sea coast…

This event unfolded in Ulundi, in what is now KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa — on the southeastern edge of the African continent where interior grasslands slope toward the Indian Ocean. In 1879, British…

Isandlwana is a rocky hill in what is now KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa — sitting inland from the Indian Ocean, between the great Drakensberg mountain escarpment to the west and the coastal lowlands to…

The event took place in Berlin, Germany — a city sitting on the broad North European Plain, roughly midway between the Rhine River to the west and the Oder River to the east, deep in the heart of the…

From 28–31 December 1885, seventy-two delegates met in Bombay (now Mumbai) at the Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College to hold the inaugural session of the Indian National Congress. The gathering was…

This event is anchored in Brussels, the capital of Belgium — a small, low-lying country on northwestern Europe's coast, squeezed between France to the south, Germany to the east, and the North Sea to…

This is Chicago, Illinois, in the United States — a city sitting on the southwestern edge of Lake Michigan, one of the five Great Lakes that stretch across the interior of North America. In 1886, a…

This event took place in Tokyo, Japan — a city on Honshu, the largest island of an archipelago curving along the Pacific edge of East Asia, separated from the Korean Peninsula by the Korea Strait and…

The battle unfolded in the waters near Pyongyang, in what is now North Korea, at the narrow sea corridor separating the Korean peninsula from the Japanese archipelago — the same strait the title clue…

Shimonoseki, Japan — a port city perched at the far southwestern tip of Honshu, exactly where the narrow Kanmon Strait separates Japan's largest island from the island of Kyushu, and where the Korean…

This battle took place at Adwa, in northern Ethiopia — on the high plateau of the Horn of Africa, where the continent's northeastern corner reaches toward the Arabian Peninsula across the Red Sea and…

This battle took place at Omdurman, Sudan, on the west bank of the Nile River in northeastern Africa — exactly where that great river winds through the Saharan desert, thousands of kilometres from…

This standoff took place at Fashoda, a remote outpost in what is now South Sudan, sitting on the west bank of the Nile as it flows northward through the heart of northeast Africa — exactly the arid…

This conflict centred on Pretoria, the administrative capital of what is now South Africa — a city sitting on the highveld plateau in the far south of the African continent, where the Atlantic and…

This event unfolded in Beijing, the capital of China — a city seated on the North China Plain where the Yellow River's basin stretches south and the Mongolian plateau rises to the north. In…

This atrocity unfolded in Okahandja, in what is now Namibia — a vast, arid country on Africa's southwestern Atlantic edge, inland from the cold Namib Desert coast and bordered by the Kalahari to the…

The conflict centered on Manchuria — the broad, flat, river-laced plain in what is now northeastern China, wedged between the Korean peninsula to the south and the Russian Far East to the north, with…

On 16 October 1905, the partition of the Bengal province — dividing it into a Hindu-majority west and a Muslim-majority east — took official effect under Viceroy Lord Curzon. In Calcutta, located in…

On 30 December 1906, the All-India Muslim League was founded at a gathering held at the Shahbag estate in Dacca (now Dhaka), then the capital of the newly created Eastern Bengal and Assam province…

This is Wuhan, China, sitting on the Yangtze River roughly in the geographic center of the country, midway between the Tibetan Plateau to the west and the Pacific coast to the east. In 1911–1912, an…

Between 1912 and 1913, the Balkan nations of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro fought two back-to-back wars that dramatically redrew the map of southeastern Europe. In the First Balkan War…

Bloemfontein (now Mangaung) is the judicial capital of South Africa, sitting on the flat interior plateau of the Free State at approximately 1,400 metres elevation, drained by the Modder River…

This is Sarajevo, the capital of modern Bosnia and Herzegovina — a city nestled in a mountain-ringed valley along the Miljacka River, deep in the Balkan Peninsula where Central Europe grades into the…

This is Ypres, a city in West Flanders, Belgium — sitting on the flat coastal plain of northwestern Europe, just inland from the English Channel that separates it from Britain. During the First World…

This was Verdun, a fortified city on the Meuse River in northeastern France — sitting in the rolling hills of the Western European interior, roughly midway between the Rhine to the east and the…

The Battle of the Somme took place near Albert, in the Somme river valley of northern France — that flat, open farmland sitting between Paris to the south and the English Channel to the north that…

The event took place in London, the capital of the United Kingdom, situated on the River Thames in southeastern England — on the large island off northwestern Europe's Atlantic coast, separated from…

This is Petrograd — now called Saint Petersburg — in Russia, sitting at the eastern tip of the Baltic Sea where the Neva River meets the Gulf of Finland, exactly where Europe's great northern plain…

Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, sits on the Potomac River along the Atlantic coastal plain, east of the Appalachian Mountains — exactly the eastern seaboard setting the clue…

On 28 June 1919 — exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand — Germany and the Allied powers signed the Treaty of Versailles in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of…

Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, sits on the eastern seaboard of North America, wedged between the Atlantic coastal plain and the Appalachian Mountains, roughly midway up the…

On 13 April 1919, Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer ordered troops to open fire on a large, unarmed crowd gathered at Jallianwala Bagh, a walled public garden in the city of Amritsar, Punjab, in what…

This was Geneva, Switzerland — a city nestled at the southwestern corner of Lake Geneva, where the Alps rise to the south and the Jura range curves to the west, placing it at a crossroads of western…

The signing took place in Sèvres, France — a town on the Seine southwest of Paris — where the fate of a sprawling empire straddling Europe and Asia was decided in 1920. The Treaty of Sèvres formally…

This event unfolded in Ankara, the inland capital of modern Turkey — set on the Anatolian plateau, with the Black Sea to the north, the Mediterranean to the south, and the Bosphorus strait linking…

This event unfolded in Gorki, a village within Moscow Oblast, Russia — on the broad European plain west of the Urals, the mountain spine that separates Europe from Asia. On January 21, 1924, Vladimir…

The city is Nanjing, situated on the Yangtze River in eastern China — a country occupying the eastern edge of Asia, flanked by the Pacific to the east and the Himalayas to the southwest. In 1927…

This event took place in Ankara, the capital of Turkey — a city sitting on the high Anatolian plateau, with the Black Sea to the north and the Mediterranean to the south, and the narrow Bosphorus…

This event unfolded in New York City, USA — a vast metropolis on the northeastern Atlantic seaboard, built where the Hudson River meets one of the world's great natural harbours. In October 1929, the…

On 6 April 1930, after a 24-day, 240-mile march from Sabarmati Ashram, Gandhi reached the coastal village of Dandi on the Gulf of Khambhat — an inlet of the Arabian Sea — in what is now Gujarat…

This event unfolded in Mukden — today called Shenyang — in China's northeastern region of Manchuria, exactly where the broad, flat plains stretching toward the Korean Peninsula and the Russian Far…

This catastrophe unfolded across Soviet Ukraine, centred on Kharkiv — a city sitting deep in the flat, fertile steppe east of the Dnieper River, between the Carpathians to the west and the Don River…

On 23 March 1933, the German parliament passed the Enabling Act, transferring full legislative power to Chancellor Adolf Hitler's cabinet. Hitler could now pass any law without parliamentary…

Ruijin, in China's inland Jiangxi province, is where the Long March began in 1934 — a gruelling 6,000-mile fighting retreat westward and northward across some of Asia's most punishing terrain before…

This is Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia — a city sitting high on the East African plateau in the Horn of Africa, exactly where the continent's great highland massif dominates the surrounding…

Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany, sits on the Pegnitz River in the heart of the Franconian uplands. On 15 September 1935, the Nazi regime used its annual party rally there to pass two laws stripping…

This is Jerusalem, today in Israel, sitting at the heart of the land corridor connecting Africa to Asia — the same narrow strip where the Mediterranean world meets the Arabian Peninsula. In 1936…

This is Nanjing, China, situated on the lower Yangtze River as it flows eastward toward the Yellow Sea — the great river-delta city the title clue pointed toward. In late 1937, following the fall of…

Évian-les-Bains is a spa town on the southern (French) shore of Lake Geneva, nestled between the Alps and the lake, directly facing Switzerland across the water. In July 1938, US President Roosevelt…

Munich, Germany — a major city on the Bavarian plateau, tucked between the Main River to the north and the Alps rising sharply to the south — was where this fateful agreement was signed in 1938…

This is Warsaw, the capital of Poland — a city sitting on the Vistula River, on the broad North European Plain that stretches from the Baltic coast south to the Carpathian Mountains. On September 1…

This is London, the capital of the United Kingdom — sitting on the River Thames in southeast England, on the island of Great Britain, separated from continental Europe by the narrow English Channel…

Auschwitz, in southern Poland — a country on the northern edge of the Carpathian Mountains, at the heart of Europe's great northern plain — was the largest and most lethal site in a continent-wide…

Paneriai (Ponary), a forested site on the outskirts of Vilnius, Lithuania, became one of the earliest and largest Einsatzgruppen killing sites. The Einsatzgruppen were mobile SS death squads that…

Babi Yar is a ravine on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, carved into the forested uplands above the western bank of the Dnipro River. On 29–30 September 1941, Einsatzgruppen units of the SS, supported…

This is Pearl Harbor, on the island of Oahu in Hawaii — a volcanic archipelago sitting roughly 2,400 miles from the North American mainland, isolated in the central Pacific Ocean. In December 1941…

Auschwitz-Birkenau was built at Oświęcim in the Upper Silesian plain of southern Poland, at the confluence of the Soła River and the Vistula. The Birkenau extension (Auschwitz II) became the primary…

Warsaw sits on the Vistula River in central Poland, on a broad glacial plain. In April 1943, the Jewish residents of the Nazi-created ghetto — a sealed district of the city — launched an armed…

This is the Normandy coast of France — a stretch of sandy beaches along the English Channel, directly south across a narrow strip of water from southern England, on the northwestern edge of the…

Amsterdam is built on the delta where the Amstel flows into the IJ, itself an arm of the Rhine-Meuse estuary, in the flat polderland of the western Netherlands. On 4 August 1944, German Security…

This meeting took place in Yalta, a resort city on the Crimean Peninsula, where the Black Sea's northern shore curves beneath the Crimean Mountains — exactly the southern edge of the vast Eurasian…

The event took place in San Francisco, on the Pacific coast of the United States — exactly where a famous bay cuts into California's coastline, just south of where North America's western shore bends…

The meeting took place in Potsdam, a city just southwest of Berlin in what is now Germany, sitting on the flat North European Plain between the Elbe and Oder rivers — the same low corridor that has…

This event is anchored in Warsaw, the capital of Poland — a city sitting squarely on the flat North European Plain, bounded to the north by the Baltic Sea and to the south by the arc of the…

This was Nuremberg, a city in southern Germany — sitting precisely between the Rhine River to the west and the Danube to the south, in the dense interior of Central Europe. In 1945 and 1946, the…

As Soviet forces advanced across Poland in January 1945, the SS evacuated concentration and extermination camps and force-marched the surviving prisoners westward toward the German interior. The…

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two major cities on the Japanese archipelago, sit on the western edge of the Pacific Ocean, facing the East China Sea and the Korean Peninsula across narrow straits — exactly…

Tokyo, the capital of Japan — a city on Honshu, the largest island of the Japanese archipelago curving along Asia's Pacific edge — was the site of the International Military Tribunal for the Far…

On March 12 1947 President Harry Truman addressed Congress requesting military and economic aid for Greece and Turkey, both threatened by communist movements. He articulated what became known as the…

New Delhi, the capital of India, sits on the broad plains south of the Himalayas, roughly midway across the subcontinent that juts like a triangle into the Indian Ocean between the Arabian Sea and…

Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, sits on the eastern seaboard of North America — on the Potomac River's banks, between the Appalachian Mountains to the west and the Atlantic coast…

Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa, sits on the Highveld plateau in the far south of the African continent, where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet around the Cape of Good Hope…

This is Berlin, the capital of Germany, sitting on the flat North European Plain roughly halfway between the Rhine River to the west and the Polish border to the east. Beginning in June 1948, the…

Tel Aviv, on the Mediterranean coast of what is now Israel, sits on the narrow strip of land where the Levant's coastal plain meets the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea. On May 14, 1948, David…

This event took place in Paris, France — the French capital straddling the Seine River, roughly midway between the English Channel coast to the northwest and the Alps to the southeast. On December 9…

Tel Aviv stands on the narrow Mediterranean coastal plain of the Levant, between the sea to the west and the Judean Hills to the east. On 14 May 1948, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel…

This event took place in Beijing, the capital of China, situated on the North China Plain where the Yellow River basin's flat heartland pushes up against the highlands leading to the Mongolian…

The site was the Semipalatinsk Test Site in northeastern Kazakhstan — deep in the Eurasian steppe, east of the Urals and north of the Tian Shan mountains, exactly as the clues described. In August…

Washington, D.C., on the eastern seaboard of the United States — sitting between the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay lowlands, exactly where the title clue pointed — was where the North Atlantic…

This was Nairobi, Kenya — sitting on a high plateau in East Africa, inland from the Indian Ocean, just south of the equator and well south of the Horn of Africa. In October 1952, Britain declared a…

Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa, stands on the Highveld plateau north of the Magaliesberg mountain range, drained by the Apies River into the Limpopo system. The Bantu Education…

Điện Biên Phủ is a valley town in northwestern Vietnam, tucked into the rugged highlands where the long, narrow Indochinese Peninsula pushes south from the underbelly of southern China — exactly the…

This is Algiers, the capital of Algeria — a country stretching from the Mediterranean's southern shore deep into the Sahara, directly across the sea from France and Spain. In 1954, the National…

This conflict unfolded across Vietnam, a long, S-shaped country on the eastern edge of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia — flanked by the South China Sea to the east and sharing borders with…

Warsaw, the capital of Poland, sits on the Vistula River in the heart of the North European Plain — exactly the flat, open corridor between the Baltic Sea to the north and the Carpathian Mountains…

This is Alexandria, Egypt — on the Mediterranean's southern edge where northeastern Africa faces Europe across a narrow sea, at the northern mouth of the canal that cuts through the isthmus…

The launch site is Baikonur Cosmodrome, located in what is now Kazakhstan — a vast, flat, semi-arid steppe basin lying between the Caspian Sea to the west and the former Aral Sea to the east, deep in…

This event unfolded across China — the world's most populous country, occupying the eastern portion of Asia between the Himalayas to the southwest, the Gobi Desert to the north, and the Pacific Ocean…

This event took place in Sharpeville, a township in the Transvaal region of what is today South Africa — on the broad, elevated interior plateau that forms the heart of the continent's southern tip…

Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, sits on the eastern seaboard of North America, wedged between the states of Maryland and Virginia along the Potomac River — exactly the…

This event unfolded in Berlin, the historic capital sitting on the North European Plain in what was then divided Germany — a country flanked by the Rhine to the west and the Oder River marking its…

The Bay of Pigs sits on the southern coast of Cuba — the largest island in the Caribbean, lying roughly 150 kilometres south of Florida across the Straits of Florida. In April 1961, around 1,500…

This was Havana, Cuba — the island nation sitting in the Caribbean Sea just 90 miles south of the Florida peninsula, exactly where those reconnaissance flights detected the missiles. In 1962, U.S…

On 12 December 1963, Kenya became independent from British colonial rule, with Jomo Kenyatta becoming its first Prime Minister and later its first President. Kenya had been a British colony since the…

This is Tehran, the capital of Iran — a city sitting on a high plateau south of the Alborz Mountains, roughly midway between the Caspian Sea to the north and the Persian Gulf to the south. In 1963…

Moscow, the capital of Russia (then the Soviet Union), sits on the East European Plain roughly 900 kilometres east of the Baltic Sea, deep inside the largest country on Earth by land area. In 1963…

Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa on the Highveld plateau, was the venue for the Rivonia Trial (1963–64) at the Palace of Justice in Church Square. Nelson Mandela and seven other…

This was Beijing, the capital of China — sitting on the North China Plain, the great flat lowland that stretches between the Yellow River to the south and the mountains ringing the north, at the…

This is Jerusalem, the ancient hilltop city in Israel, sitting at the heart of the narrow land bridge where the African continent meets Asia — exactly where the Mediterranean coast, the Jordan River…

This is Ho Chi Minh City — known as Saigon at the time — in Vietnam, the long, narrow country hugging the eastern edge of the Indochinese Peninsula along the South China Sea, exactly where the Mekong…

Seoul, South Korea — the capital sitting near the northern end of a peninsula that hangs from the Asian mainland between the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan — was the command center for the 1970…

Beijing, the capital of the People's Republic of China, sits on the North China Plain — exactly that broad lowland stretching between the Gobi Desert to the north and the Himalayan plateau to the…

This event unfolded in Munich, the largest city in Bavaria, southern Germany — sitting on the broad plain that stretches north from the Alps toward the Rhine and Danube river systems. During the 1972…

This is Santiago, the capital of Chile — a country famously shaped like a ribbon, pressed between the Andes mountain range to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west, stretching far into the…

This is Santiago, the capital of Chile — a city pressed between the Andes Mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west, in the long, narrow country that runs down South America's…

This is Ho Chi Minh City — formerly Saigon — in southern Vietnam, sitting in the Mekong River delta where that long, narrow Southeast Asian peninsula tapers toward its southern tip between the Gulf…

This is the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, Argentina — a historic square sitting at the edge of the Río de la Plata estuary, where the great rivers draining South America's interior pour into the…

This event unfolded in Beijing, the capital of China — a city sitting on the North China Plain, inland from the Yellow Sea, anchoring the northern heartland of the world's most populous nation…

This was Tehran, the capital of Iran — a high-altitude city sitting on the Iranian Plateau, backed by the snow-capped Alborz Mountains and positioned between the Caspian Sea to the north and the…

In early 1979 months of mass protests, strikes and demonstrations forced Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi to flee Iran, and the exiled cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Tehran to lead a new…

This is Kabul, the high-altitude capital of Afghanistan — a landlocked nation sitting in the heart of Asia, where the Hindu Kush mountains divide Central Asia from the Indian subcontinent, east of…

This event unfolded in Beijing, the capital of the People's Republic of China — the great northern city sitting on the North China Plain, where the Hai River system drains toward the Bohai Sea. In…

Cairo straddles the Nile River at the point where the river spreads into its delta, in the flat alluvial plain of northern Egypt between the Eastern Desert and the Libyan Desert. On 6 October 1981…

Gaza City is the principal city of the Gaza Strip, the narrow coastal plain between the Mediterranean Sea and the Negev desert, bordered by Israel to the north and east and Egypt (Sinai) to the…

This is Berlin, the capital of Germany, sitting in the broad North European Plain between the Rhine basin to the west and the Oder River — the natural boundary with Poland — to the east. On November…

This is Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China — the immense paved plaza at the symbolic centre of the North China Plain, where the ancient imperial capital sits between the Taihang Mountains to the west…

This is Prague, the capital of Czechoslovakia — a landlocked city in the heart of Central Europe, sitting between the Alps to the south and the arc of the Carpathians to the east, drained by the…

Victor Verster Prison (now Drakenstein Correctional Centre) lies in the Berg River valley near Paarl, in the Western Cape of South Africa. The valley is flanked by the granite Drakenstein Mountains…

New Delhi, the capital of India, sits on the broad plains of the Ganges-Indus heartland — flanked by the Himalayas to the north and tapering toward the Indian Ocean to the south, exactly the…

This event took place at CERN, the particle physics laboratory straddling the border between France and Switzerland near Geneva, nestled between the Jura Mountains to the northwest and the Alps to…

This event unfolded in Moscow, Russia — the capital city sitting on the flat East European Plain, roughly equidistant between the Baltic Sea to the northwest and the Caspian Sea to the southeast, at…

This was Rio de Janeiro, Brazil — a city hugged between dramatic granite peaks and a wide South Atlantic bay on South America's southeastern coast, exactly the coastal setting the title clue…

Maastricht, a city in the southern Netherlands — where the Rhine delta country stretches between France and Germany, close to the North Sea coast — was where the treaty came into force on November 1…

Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, sits on the Potomac River along the eastern seaboard of North America — the continent that stretches from the Arctic tundra of Canada in the north…

Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa, sits on the high interior plateau near the continent's southern tip — exactly where Africa narrows between the Indian Ocean to the east and the…

This is Kigali, the capital of Rwanda — a densely hilled, landlocked country sitting on the high plateau between the Congo basin and the East African Rift Valley, almost exactly at the continent's…

This atrocity unfolded in Srebrenica, a town in Bosnia and Herzegovina — tucked into the forested ridges of the Dinaric Alps in the western Balkans, roughly midway between the Adriatic coast and the…

Geneva, Switzerland — a landlocked city tucked between the Alps to the south and the Jura Mountains to the northwest, close to the borders of France and Germany — is where the World Trade…

East London sits on the Eastern Cape coast of South Africa at the mouth of the Buffalo River, where it meets the Indian Ocean. The city is surrounded by the former Ciskei and Transkei homelands. On…

The Roslin Institute sits near Edinburgh, Scotland — on the eastern side of Great Britain, just south of the Firth of Forth where the North Sea cuts into the island's coast. In 1996, scientists there…

This is Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan — a high-altitude city cradled by the Hindu Kush mountain range in Central Asia, landlocked between Iran to the west and Pakistan to the east. In 1996, the…

Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, sits near the head of the Gulf of Thailand on the long Indochinese Peninsula. In July 1997, Thailand's currency, the baht, collapsed after the government could no…

Beijing, the capital of China — sitting on the North China Plain just south of the Great Wall and west of the Bohai Sea — was the seat of power where the Golden Shield Project, widely known as the…

This was Rome, the capital of Italy — sitting on the Tiber River in the middle of the Italian Peninsula, exactly the boot-shaped landmass stretching south into the Mediterranean that the title clue…

Seattle, Washington, in the United States, is the city on Puget Sound — the deep inland sea carved into the Pacific Northwest coast, with the Cascade Range rising sharply to the east. In late 1999…

The target of this 78-day air campaign was Brussels, Belgium — the headquarters of the alliance that ordered the strikes, located in the low-lying heart of Western Europe between the North Sea coast…

This event is anchored in Kano, the largest city in northern Nigeria — a vast country occupying the bulge where West Africa pushes farthest into the Atlantic, with its northern regions edging toward…

This is New York City, on the northeastern coast of the United States, where the Hudson River empties into the Atlantic at one of the world's great natural harbours — exactly the dense island skyline…

The ceremony took place in Doha, the capital of Qatar — a small peninsula projecting northward into the Persian Gulf from the Arabian coast, flanked by Saudi Arabia to the south and Bahrain across…

This is Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan — a city sitting in a high mountain valley of the Hindu Kush, deep in the heart of Central Asia, exactly where those rugged ranges seal the country off from…

The city is The Hague, in the Netherlands — sitting in the flat Rhine-Maas delta where northwestern Europe meets the North Sea, exactly the coastal lowland the title clue described. On July 1, 2002…

This is Baghdad, the capital of Iraq — a city built on the Tigris River in the flat, sun-baked lowlands of Mesopotamia, the ancient land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the Middle East. In…

This is Banda Aceh, the northernmost city of Sumatra, Indonesia — sitting at the very tip of the island where the Indian Ocean and the Andaman Sea converge, exactly where the title clue pointed. On…

The Punggye-ri nuclear test site sits in the mountainous northeast of North Korea — a peninsula jutting southward from the Asian mainland, squeezed between China to the north, Russia at its…

Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, sits on the northeastern seaboard of North America — on the Atlantic coastal plain just east of the Appalachian Mountains, near where the Potomac…

The event unfolded in Sidi Bouzid, a provincial town in central Tunisia — sitting on the high interior plateau of North Africa, roughly halfway between the Sahara Desert to the south and the…

This is Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt — sitting in the Nile Delta where Africa's longest river spreads into the Mediterranean, at the continent's northeastern corner where Africa nearly touches Asia…

Paris, the capital of France, sits along the Seine River in the heart of northwestern Europe — exactly where the broad North European Plain meets the Channel coast facing England. In 2015…