ROUND 9: History - Synchronize Your Calendars

The bad news is that this round is going to have a very long preamble. 
The good news, at least for those teams that desperately need to catch 
up at this point, is that it's a precision round, so you can score up to 
15 points.  Each question asks for the year of a certain event. Give it 
within the required margin and you get the normal score...but there is a 
bonus point available for giving the exact year.

This time we're allowing the bonus point only on the first answer given, 
whether team or individual.  So if it's your question and you don't think 
you know the exact answer, you have two choices. You can try to answer 
within the required margin for 2 points, or 3 if you're lucky; but if 
you guess wrong, your team can then only try for 1 point.  Alternatively, 
you can pass on your individual answer and ask your team to produce an 
answer; in that case they can score 2 points for getting it exactly, 
or 1 point if they're within the required margin, but they only get one 
try.  (Similarly if there is an empty seat, the team gets one try which 
may be worth 2 or 1.)

We therefore suggest that if your teammates are giving you tactical 
guidance by calling things like "we have a good idea" or "team knows 
for sure", they should mention whether they think they have it exactly.


One more thing: we said that there was a margin allowed on each question 
to get the normal score, but we aren't going to tell you in advance what 
it is.  The rule is that you're right if you come within a margin of 2 
years plus one additional year for each century before the 21st when 
the event took place.  Thus for 19th-century events you have to be 
within 4 years; but for 11th-century events, if there are any, you can 
be 12 years off.  And similarly for other centuries.

Got all that?  Then here we go.

 1. What year did American Commodore Matthew Perry sail to Japan for 
    the first time with a small fleet of steam warships, and begin 
    the negotations that ended some 250 years of Japanese isolationism?

	1853 (for bonus; for no bonus accept 1849 - 1857)

 2. Alexander the Great died at age 33, ending the largest empire the  world 
    had yet known.  In what year?

	323 BC (297-349 BC)
 

 3. In London, the Great Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations was held, 
    in the original Crystal Palace, which had been erected in its original 
    Hyde Park location specifically for that purpose.  In what year?

	1851 (1847-1855)

 4. Four years after posting his 95 Theses at Wittenberg, Martin Luther 
    was called before the Diet of Worms ("vormss", with "orm" as in "form")
    and found himself outlawed as well as excommunicated. When was this?

	1521 (1514-1528)
  
 5. What year did the Panama Canal open?

	1914 (1911-1917)

 6. What year did the original Canadian Pacific Railway main line open 
    completely?  We want the year that railway was opened to the general 
    public for travel over its full length, not the Last Spike ceremony, 
    which was the year before.

	1886 (1882-1890)

 7. When did King John of England sign the Magna Carta, thus conceding
    that his royal power was not unlimited?

	1215 (1205-1225)

 8. When did the US adopt its Constitution in place of the original 
    Articles of Confederation?  We need the year when the Constitution 
    was declared to be effective and the first elections were held under 
    it, although not all states had yet ratified it, while the minimum 
    requisite total of 9 had been reached the year before.

	1789 (1784-1794)

 9. Name the year when the Edict of Milan legalized Christianity in the 
    Roman Empire.  It was sponsored by Constantine, who was not yet the 
    sole Emperor.

	313 (293-333)

10. And finally, to fit the title of the round... name the year when 
    the British Empire skipped 11 days in September, abandoning the 
    Julian calendar in favor of the Gregorian.

	1752 (1747-1757)