Can You Ace This AP U.S. History Quiz?

On December 2, 1823, President James Monroe delivered the Monroe Doctrine as part of his annual message to Congress. The doctrine declared that the Old and New World must remain distinct spheres. Monroe stated that the U.S. would not interfere with existing colonies in the Western Hemisphere and that the hemisphere was closed to more colonization. If any European power tried to control a nation in the Western Hemisphere, it would be viewed as a hostile act against the U.S.

In 1947, during the early years of the Cold War, the U.S. adopted containment, a foreign policy strategy to prevent the spread of communism. Containment took many forms throughout the Cold War, from providing economic aid to countries resisting Soviet influence to military intervention.

In 1898, the USS Maine exploded in Cuba’s Havana Harbor. The U.S. press blamed the destruction on Spain, who had been waging a war against Cuban revolutionaries, provoking tensions with the U.S. The sinking inspired U.S. military intervention in Cuba, beginning the Spanish-American War.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt became President at the height of the Great Depression in 1933, he swiftly began enacting social policies that would deliver what he called a “New Deal” for the American people. This included the Social Security Act of 1935, which provided financial benefits to retired workers over 65 and unemployment insurance.

The Zimmermann Telegram was an encrypted message sent in 1917 by German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann to the Mexican government. He proposed a German-Mexican alliance if the U.S. were to enter World War I. The message was intercepted and decoded by British intelligence, and when it was revealed to the American public, it swayed their opinion in favor of the U.S. entering the war.

“The Federalist Papers” was a series of essays by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. In the essays, which were published anonymously between 1787 and 1788, the three authors urged for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, which was being debated at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. They remain influential in American political theory to this day.

In January 1776, Thomas Paine published “Common Sense,” a pamphlet encouraging American colonists to rebel against the English crown. “Common Sense” quickly became a sensation in the colonies, selling 500,000 copies and rallying widespread popular support for the American Revolution.

The American Civil War began around 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, when Confederate soldiers fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. The Union surrendered 34 hours later, and three days after that, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling on Union state militias to suppress the Southern rebellion.

By the late 19th century, the U.S. economy was dominated by trusts, jointly managed companies that monopolized entire industries and destroyed all competition. In response, President Theodore Roosevelt passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890, which was used to break up many of the most powerful trusts in the U.S. and earned Roosevelt a reputation as a “trust buster.”

Writer Langston Hughes was a significant figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement that flourished between the end of World War I and the beginning of the Great Depression. In addition to Hughes, the Harlem Renaissance included prominent Black artistic figures such as novelist Zora Neale Hurston and jazz musician Duke Ellington.

In June 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court. Before his nomination, Marshall served as an attorney for the NAACP and litigated significant civil rights cases such as Brown v. Board of Education. When the Senate confirmed Marshall in August, he became the first Black person to serve as a Supreme Court justice.

In 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed in the Philadelphia State House, now known as Independence Hall. This historic building was also where George Washington was appointed commander in chief of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, and where the U.S. Constitution was signed. It was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979.

The revolutionary colonists declared independence from England in 1776, defying King George III. The monarch was a persistent and determined enemy: He hired thousands of Hessian mercenaries from Germany to assist the English army, and his refusal to surrender caused the war to drag on for eight years.

In the 19th century, Missouri-born writer Samuel Clemens became famous for his stories under the pen name Mark Twain, including the 1884 novel “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Clemens took his pen name from his time working on a river boat on the Mississippi River — a sailor’s cry of “Mark Twain!” meant that the water was 2 fathoms (12 feet) deep.

On August 9, 1974, President Richard Nixon resigned from office after he was implicated in the Watergate scandal, the White House’s attempt to cover up its involvement in the 1972 break-in of the DNC’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. Nixon was the first — and, so far, only — U.S. President to resign from office.