Match the Historical Figure With the Event

Upon returning to his lab after a vacation, Alexander Fleming discovered a kind of mold growing in a petri dish. This growth sparked the research and development of penicillin and eventually other antibiotics.

On April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee, leader of the Army of Northern Virginia, surrendered to Union General (and future President) Ulysses S. Grant. While fighting continued for many months, this surrender effectively ended the U.S. Civil War.

Although Genghis Khan was the leader of a vast Mongolian Empire, very little is known about the history-shaping warrior-ruler whose life spanned parts of the 12th and 13th centuries.

Known famously as “William the Conqueror,” William I defeated Anglo-Saxon King Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings, effectively ending the Norman Conquest.

While serving as first secretary of the Communist Party from 1953 to 1964, Nikita Khrushchev ultimately communicated on October 28, 1962, to President Kennedy that the Soviet Union would dismantle its Cuba-based missiles.

On October 20, 1803, the Senate ratified Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase with France for $15 million — doubling the size of the United States in the process.

Polish scientist Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1903 and chemistry in 1911.

King Leonidas is the legendary Spartan leader who led around 300 Spartans in this do-or-die battle in 480 BCE.

Delivered at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, this speech against the United States’ monetary gold standard electrified supporters and earned Bryan the Democratic nomination for President.

Gandhi performed many fasts and hunger strikes to oppose British rule and support an independent Indian state.

Both an astronaut and a physicist, Sally Ride was the first U.S. woman — and the third woman overall, following two Soviet cosmonauts — to travel into space.

Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon river in Northern Italy, sparking a civil war against Pompey the Great. It was at this event that Caesar is rumored to have proclaimed, “Let the die be cast.”

On July 28, 1914, a Bosnian Serb named Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. The event is credited as a catalyst to World War I.

On Christmas Day 1776, George Washington and his soldiers snuck across the Delaware River to surprise attack Hessian troops, delivering one of the first major victories for the Continental Army.