Thank you for the detailed and interesting comments. If people would like a sequel then I will have one in the works very soon. For anyone who is curious, this quiz will be on the front page on April 22nd! Keep on quizzing!
Just a little detail for 13. Swedish is an official language in Finland in the same right as Finnish, so the Old NOrse option would technically be valid (maybe change it to "most spoken language" or something of this style). Super cool quiz nontheless!
Fun quiz. Just missed on South Africa. I can still remember when they were out of the Commonwealth of Nations, guess I didn't pay enough attention when they were re-admitted.
What a brilliant quiz idea! Interesting thought the the UK doesn't have an Independence Day, because at some point it DID become independent of the Roman Empire. Maybe the Romans just slunk away so quietly that the UK didn't notice once it started governing itself.
The Western Roman Empire crumbled mostly due to Germanic tribes. These came from around Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, etc, but not from England. Without anyone ruling over them, they were able to form their own government. No one really had a chance to take them over because power was divided among hundreds of feudal kingdoms in Western Europe. Also, there is the part that they were very partially in seclusion due to being on a separate island. The only real power was the Holy Roman empire, who I believe did not capture the area of Europe closest to Great Britain. I'm not quite sure to be honest, but I do know that England did not fight for independence. It was the work of tribes elsewhere.
The English territory was left by the Romans at the beginning of the 5th century, and it was settled by the Angles and the Saxons a bit later. What is called the dark ages is more or less a reality in England, though a naive understanding of history. Anyway, there were several independant countries on Great Britain for a few centuries, including a viking territory.
As for the "independence" of the UK, well, let us not forget, once again, that the UK is not England alone, but basically the union of England and Scotland in 1707, then their union with Ireland in 1801. It's another way of creating a country than taking one's independence...
The Romans also occupied what is now known as Wales as well as parts of what's now Southern Scotland.
Even ignoring the fact that they only occupied a part of the country that's now the UK, it's a bit tricky to declare an independence day when no-one even knows the year they left - the best guess is around 410 but that's what it is.
It just wouldn't make sense for the UK to celebrate independence from the Roman Empire, because the creation of the UK took place more than a millennium after the Romans left Great Britain.
Imagine if, instead of the 13 colonies uniting against the British and declaring a new country, the British had just left. Say that the colonists then fought hundreds of years of wars amongst themselves and against the native Americans, with numerous changes of regime and shifting balances of power, before finally a dominant force emerged and created something with the same territorial control as the modern USA.
You wouldn't celebrate independence day in those circumstances because there would be nothing meaningful to celebrate.
France doesn't have an independence day either. Neither does Germany. I haven't done any research on this, but I'm sure there are plenty of other countries that either don't have one or don't celebrate it.
First past the post electoral systems are those in which to win an election, you just need to get the most votes.
So if there were five candidates running for a seat in parliament then Candidate A could get 13%, Candidate B 24%, Candidate C 19%, Candidate D 29% and Candidate E 15%. In this case Candidate D gets elected, despite getting less than a third of the votes.
By contrast, voting in France happens in two rounds. If the same situation happened as above Candidates D and B would go to the second round. Anyone who voted for Candidate A, C, or E could now choose which of the remaining candidates to vote for this time.
In Australia people allocate preferences in voting. The votes above would just be described as first preferences. If a person's number 1 preference isn't in the top two once first preferences have been counted, their vote is transferred to the candidate they numbered 2 and so on, until one of the top 2 candidates have more than 50%.
Good description. However in Australia, preferential voting has just the candidate with the least first preferences initially eliminated (and their votes redistributed according to 2nd preferences) rather than all but the 2 candidates with the most 1st preferences. The process is thereafter iterative until only two candidates are left and/or one candidate has more than 50%.
No strictly true. In the UK there are roughly 650 constituencies. Whichever party wins 326 of those seats or a majority compared to the other parties then they hold power. This can and has been achieved despite having fewer votes overall. Trump also won the 2016 US election despite losing the popular vote.
The US example though is true with respect to the electoral college, which are awarded by state (with a couple exceptions). It's "first past the post" when it comes to electoral votes. The national popular vote isn't used to determine anything.
Actually, the electoral college is not first past the post. The winner has to get more than 50% of the vote. If a third party candidate actually managed to receive some electoral votes, and therefore no one got to 50%, the election gets thrown to the House of Representatives, with each state getting one vote. They continue to vote until someone winds up with 50+%
Thanks for the explanation, it's what we call "one round majoritarian" in French. I didn't know the expression. Maybe it would be clearer with hyphenations like on the wikipedia page: "first-past-the-post".
I was overthunking the FPTP system part of the USA/UK one, and the whole ridiculous electoral college thing and ended up choosing wine-producing countries. Thinking is often my worst enemy...
I think the current option is more correct than your proposed change, as that is how the quiz is written. Otherwise "Has a monarchy" would be changed to "Have a monarchy" etc. Slightly semantically different.
Good quiz! Not a fan of "politically neutral" for Switzerland and Costa Rica - that's a very imprecise term. In international politics they both actively advocate for their interests. You could change it to "have declared military neutrality"
The answer "Use a first past the post system in elections' would have been much more understandable if it had been punctuated "Use a first-past-the-post system."
As for the "independence" of the UK, well, let us not forget, once again, that the UK is not England alone, but basically the union of England and Scotland in 1707, then their union with Ireland in 1801. It's another way of creating a country than taking one's independence...
Even ignoring the fact that they only occupied a part of the country that's now the UK, it's a bit tricky to declare an independence day when no-one even knows the year they left - the best guess is around 410 but that's what it is.
Imagine if, instead of the 13 colonies uniting against the British and declaring a new country, the British had just left. Say that the colonists then fought hundreds of years of wars amongst themselves and against the native Americans, with numerous changes of regime and shifting balances of power, before finally a dominant force emerged and created something with the same territorial control as the modern USA.
You wouldn't celebrate independence day in those circumstances because there would be nothing meaningful to celebrate.
So if there were five candidates running for a seat in parliament then Candidate A could get 13%, Candidate B 24%, Candidate C 19%, Candidate D 29% and Candidate E 15%. In this case Candidate D gets elected, despite getting less than a third of the votes.
By contrast, voting in France happens in two rounds. If the same situation happened as above Candidates D and B would go to the second round. Anyone who voted for Candidate A, C, or E could now choose which of the remaining candidates to vote for this time.
In Australia people allocate preferences in voting. The votes above would just be described as first preferences. If a person's number 1 preference isn't in the top two once first preferences have been counted, their vote is transferred to the candidate they numbered 2 and so on, until one of the top 2 candidates have more than 50%.
atmultiple female presidents"Superb quiz
I was overthunking the FPTP system part of the USA/UK one, and the whole ridiculous electoral college thing and ended up choosing wine-producing countries. Thinking is often my worst enemy...
-) For me Monaco Japan was misleading, because monaco is also a monarchy.
-) Maybe you could add a coment that a megacity is above 10 million people.
"first past the post" or first-past-the-post