American politics
Five real newspaper headlines about american politics, printed between 1920 and 2008, with their dates removed. Read each one and guess the year it was published. No multiple choice and no trivia questions, just the headline as it was printed.
Headlines publishes a new five-headline history quiz every day, and every round here is drawn from that archive.
Headline one
Chicago Tribune
1920
The Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, prohibiting the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors, came into effect on 17 January 1920. The Volstead Act provided enforcement mechanisms for the ban. Prohibition lasted until 1933 and gave rise to widespread bootlegging, speakeasies, and the growth of organised crime figures such as Al Capone.
Headline two
Chicago Tribune
1948
Harry S. Truman won re-election as US President, defeating Republican Thomas Dewey in a stunning upset that contradicted almost all opinion polls and media predictions. The Chicago Tribune infamously went to press with the headline 'Dewey Defeats Truman,' producing one of the most famous erroneous headlines in newspaper history. Truman's come-from-behind victory is still cited as the great cautionary tale of overconfident polling.
Headline three
The Washington Post
1972
Five men were arrested on 17 June 1972 for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington DC. The subsequent investigation by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, aided by the anonymous source known as Deep Throat, revealed the involvement of President Nixon's re-election committee. The scandal ultimately led to Nixon's resignation on 9 August 1974.
Headline four
The Washington Post
1976
In November 1976, former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter defeated incumbent President Gerald Ford in a closely contested US presidential election. Carter, a relatively unknown peanut farmer and one-term state governor, tapped into public disillusionment following the Watergate scandal and Ford's controversial pardon of Richard Nixon. Carter's victory ended eight years of Republican control of the White House.
Headline five
The Washington Post
2008
Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States on 4 November 2008, becoming the first African American to hold the office. He defeated Republican Senator John McCain with 365 electoral votes and won the popular vote by more than seven percentage points. Obama's victory speech in Chicago's Grant Park was watched by hundreds of millions of people around the world.
Answer the five above to see your score.
Scoring works as it does in the daily game. Each headline is worth up to 100 points, and you lose two points for every year you are out. Being a decade wrong still earns you 80. A perfect round is 500.
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