General Awareness ยท History
Historical Dates and Firsts
2,518 Questions
Historical dates and firsts questions test your memory of significant global milestones in sports, science, technology, and literature. These factual questions appear regularly in SSC, banking, and state PSC general awareness papers. Use these questions to quickly memorize important historical events and their exact years.
Inventions and launchesSports world firstsHistorical prize awardsTechnology milestones
Historical Dates and Firsts Questions
B
Correct answer
Explanation
Haskell is a purely functional programming language named after Haskell Curry, with its first version (Haskell 1.0) released in 1990. It standardized various research in functional programming.
B
Correct answer
Explanation
Lua was developed at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, first released in 1993. It was designed as a lightweight scripting language for embedding in applications. Options 1959, 1972, and 1970 are incorrect as they predate Lua's creation.
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December 1998
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December 2001
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November 1998
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November 2001
D
Correct answer
Explanation
The W3C published the first public Working Draft of the SOAP specification in November 2001. This marked an important step in the standardization of the protocol. The earlier date options (1998) are incorrect as SOAP was developed by Microsoft and other companies in 1998-1999, but the W3C standardization process began later.
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July 2003
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July 2002
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June 2003
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June 2002
B
Correct answer
Explanation
WSDL 1.2 was the first version renamed to WSDL 2.0 during the W3C standardization process. The first working draft of WSDL 1.2 was released by W3C in July 2002. WSDL 2.0 became a W3C Recommendation in 2007.
B
Correct answer
Explanation
Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web and the first web browser, named WorldWideWeb, in 1990 while working at CERN. This browser was also a web editor and ran on the NeXTSTEP operating system. The web as we know it began with this implementation, making 1990 the correct year.
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May 2000
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May 2007
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May 2005
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May 2002
C
Correct answer
Explanation
Wikipedia was officially launched on January 15, 2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. The other options are incorrect; 1995 was the launch year of the first wiki (WikiWikiWeb), while 1999 and 2005 do not correspond to the project's inception.
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Feb 1942
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May 1941
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Feb 1941
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May 1942
B
Correct answer
Explanation
The Zuse Z3, built by Konrad Zuse, became operational in May 1941. It was the first operational digital computer, though it was electromechanical (using relays) rather than electronic. The Z3 was completed and performed its first calculations in May 1941, making this the correct answer over the February dates and 1942 options.
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dateadd(year,1,getdate())
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datediff(year,1,getdate())
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dateadd(year,-1,getdate())
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datediff(year,-1,getdate())
C
Correct answer
Explanation
The DATEADD function in SQL Server adds a specified interval to a date. To get the previous year's date, we need to subtract 1 year using DATEADD(year, -1, GETDATE()). Option A adds 1 year (future), while Option C correctly subtracts 1 year to get the previous year's date. DATEDIFF calculates the difference between dates, it doesn't add or subtract intervals.
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1978
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1998
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Perl hasn't yet been released
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1988
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1980
D
Correct answer
Explanation
Perl was created by Larry Wall and first released to the public in 1987. The option listing 1988 is closest to this date. Perl 1.0 was released in 1987, making 1988 the most accurate choice among the given options.
A
Correct answer
Explanation
The term Web 2.0 achieved mainstream popularity in 2004 due to the O'Reilly Media conference. Years like 1990 and 1994 represent the early days of Web 1.0, while 2008 represents a period after the term had already become thoroughly popularized and standard.
A
Correct answer
Explanation
The term Web 2.0 became widely popular following the first Web 2.0 conference hosted by O'Reilly Media in October 2004. The years 1990 and 1994 precede the Web 2.0 era entirely (Web 1.0 era), and by 2008 the term was already fully established.
A
Correct answer
Explanation
The first browser with JavaScript support was Netscape Navigator 2.0, released in 1995. This was when JavaScript (originally called LiveScript) was first introduced to the web.