Before you rocket off to eat hot dogs and watch fireworks, take a minute to see if you'd pass the citizenship test given to immigrants who want to become citizens.
Here's the test.
I'm mortified to admit I missed one of the questions.
Monday, July 04, 2016
Happy 4th of July!
Before you rocket off to eat hot dogs and watch fireworks, take a minute to see if you'd pass the citizenship test given to immigrants who want to become citizens.
Here's the test.
I'm mortified to admit I missed one of the questions.
28 comments:
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Which one did you miss?
ReplyDeleteThere were two questions with correct answers of "all of the above". I got those two wrong, and I suspect Her Sharkness missed out on one of those.
ReplyDeleteTricksy, them questions.
(otherwise, 18/20. That's a pass.)
They must use different questions every time, none of mine were all of the above. I did miserably. 13/20
ReplyDeleteHappy 4th of July. Stay safe!
I got 17/20. Not bad for an Australian! I guess it must be all that West Wing I used to watch.
ReplyDeleteHave a fun day, yanks.
I got 3 wrong - but not too bad for another Aussie (although some were guesses).
ReplyDeleteHappy 4th July to everyone in the US.
19/20-95% and while I would argue my choice in a classroom, I see after one cup of coffee where I would have answered differently post-coffee. Lesson learned. Coffee first.
ReplyDeleteHubby and I watched our 4th of July weekend movies - Jaws (in honor of Shark Week as well) and Independence Day. Today we will watch 1776. If you haven't watched it, I highly recommend it. If you have, watch it again.
If we don't wuss out from the unrelenting heat and lack of parking, we will be at Winter Park, Florida's Olde Fashioned Independence Day Celebration (9 am to 1 pm if you're in the neighborhood). Free hot dogs, water, watermelon, red-white-and-blue necklaces, classic old cars, horse-drawn wagon rides, and vendors selling barbecue, sweet tea, lemonade, cotton candy and just about anything else. The orchestra plays patriotic songs and the anthems of all the services and asks veterans to stand during their anthem. For a few minutes this airman will stand at attention in the scorching heat (albeit in Bermuda shorts, flip flops, and a polo shirt instead of Air Force blues) sing "Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder" (not its official name, but what we called it) in my heart and give thanks that we made it to celebrate freedom for another year. We will spot others both older and younger out of the corner of our eye standing during thier anthems and afterward we will exchange handshakes and maybe years of service, squadron/platoon/command info with those next to us. We will say thank you to those older than we are, those who held the doors of freedom open long enough for us to slip through and thank the younger ones who picked up where we left off. We will look in each other's eyes, nod, probably swallow hard and we may even blink back tears.
Freedom isn't free, y'all. It comes at a very high price. But it's always worth fighting for.
Happy 4th to freedom lovers everywhere.
Moscow On the Hudson (1984) is my favorite Robin Williams movie. It’s a poignant comedy about life in the old USSR and how Soviets secretly yearned to come to the US to be free. This was before the Iron Curtain fell five years later. Williams played the part of a saxophonist in a circus band which was allowed to come to NYC to perform, under very strict supervision of course. On an impulse, he defects in Bloomingdales on the day he arrived. He becomes disillusioned about life in America, until the best ‘rendition’ of The Declaration of Independence in a NYC diner helps him to appreciate his new home.
ReplyDeleteI waited years for this movie to come out on DVD, and it finally did a couple of years ago.
[My score was 19/20.]
I'm Canadian. I got 90%, but I had to guess for a couple. One of the questions I got wrong was tricky though.
ReplyDeleteKitty, I love Moscow on the Hudson. My favorite movie to celebrate the Fourth is 1776. I can't get enough of singing and dancing founding fathers. And earlier today I paused to listen to NPR's annual reading of the Declaration of Independence. Such gorgeous language.
ReplyDeleteI got an 18/20. I also noticed if you listen to Hamilton you can probably get 25% of the answers right even if you're horrible at history.
ReplyDeleteI got three wrong. I blame my schooling (well, one of them is because I clicked hastily as I was reading, so the phantom "OOH, I KNOW"...wait).
ReplyDeleteFunny (?) civics related conversation that happened on Saturday at work: one of my coworkers mentioned a thing Joseph Biden had or hadn't done in conjunction with something Clarence Thomas related, and I finished with the patron I was helping, turned to said coworkers, and said in what they believed to be all seriousness, disappointment/shock/heartbreak "The English Muffin man?" Both stared at me slack jawed, and then I ruined it by laughing.
Have a safe and happy 4th, everybody, stateside and otherwise! We're in International Waters here, maybe we should check out other July 4th celebrations....oh, it was today in 1187 that Guy de Lusignon was defeated in the Crusades (he was kind of a bad guy in the movie Kingdom of Heaven, which was not historically accurate, I don't think, but was a movie I enjoyed). The Louisiana Purchase was announced, Leaves of Grass was published (I'm getting this from Wikipedia, apologies if anything is wrong. It's just fun to see what happened on an individual day), Knoebels Amusement Resort opened in Elysburg Pennsylvania (that's adjacent to where my father's side of the family is from),
I'm Canadian and I also only got three wrong. I, too, blame The West Wing. I learned more from that show than I did actually living in the US for nearly ten years.
ReplyDeleteIt turns out I don't know how long the terms for senators and representatives are, or anything about the Federalist Papers.
These are practice questions, and at the end, it says you can do another practice round. Which is cool, and explains why it seems people have received different questions (they have!)
ReplyDeleteI got 18/20. The two questions I missed were on the Constitution, which is okay, I guess, considering I'm Canadian...
Happy 4th, my American friends!
I missed one, so I guess I can stay...? :D
ReplyDeleteWhen I had my citizenship interview, the guy who conducted it was good. He was very matter of fact, asked questions, said or did nothing to lead me on or indicate how well I was doing. In preparation for the "civics" questions, I had a book of over 100 possible questions they could ask me (very much like the ones in this test). In the actual interview, he didn't say, "Okay, and now for the civics questions." He just threw them in as part of the conversation. But they weren't difficult. I think he asked what the three branches of government are, who was president during the Civil War, and one other of a similar difficulty. And he then casually followed that with, "If England and the United States went to war, who would you fight for?" :)
100% (But I test very well.)
ReplyDeleteIf I had to GUESS on Janet's miss, it was number of amendments to the Constitution, assuming we all saw the same questions.
Woohoo, 100%!
ReplyDeleteThough there were a couple I had to think about for a moment.
I'm also very curious what Janet missed.
Nailed it! 100%
ReplyDeleteMy grandfather, of blessed and eternal memory, who came here from Greece, would be so proud. He had to take a test with similar questions to be an American. He carried his papers in his wallet until the day he died - which is where we found them, with heavy creases from all the times he had unfolded and re-folded them. He was so proud to be an American and to live in this great country.
Darned Federalist papers. Read the question. Thought John Jay! And then he wasn't one of the options. Otherwise, I was good and get to stay.
ReplyDeleteColin, that last question you had on your citizenship interview pushed my mind directly to the internment camps of WWII. Internment, of course, being a euphemism for incarceration. More than half of those Japanese Americans were US citizens at the time.
I'm not educated enough on the topic, but it strikes me that the same wasn't done for Italian Americans or German Americans. Now I feel like getting more educated. Again.
18/20, but I can explain my mistakes, really! One was the kind of error Jennifer described, where I thought WAIT-- just as I clicked incorrectly. The other was just very badly written, and as a professional writer of multiple-choice questions I know what I'm talking about. If I had that question on a test, and a student argued that the answer I wanted couldn't actually be correct for syntactic reasons, I'd have to agree. So I guess I'll stay, at least until after the election. After that, maybe not.
ReplyDelete18 out of 20. Not bad for a Canadian. I didn't know the number of amendments and didn't know who signed the Federalist Papers.
ReplyDelete19 out of 20. Actually I got 20 out of 20 but my finger slipped, no really, the dog ate my homework.
ReplyDeleteGot them all. I was nervous, though, and actually had a little adrenaline going there. My finger hovered on a couple, too.
ReplyDeleteColin - if you're still on here - that last sentence on your comment made me pause. That would be a very difficult question to answer (even though the 'right' one is obvious). I've never thought about it before, and didn't know we asked new citizens that.
Have an awesome July 4, everyone.
Derrr! I got 4 wrong.
ReplyDeleteI'm feeling a tad embarrassed after seeing everyone else's scores. Special kudos to internationals who did so well...ah well history is not my thing.
Lennon: I did answer "correctly" but I don't think this was a "scripted" question. The impression I got was that he just threw it in. And it's a good one. Caught me off guard. It's certainly worth considering before you change nationality. :)
ReplyDeleteColin- yes, I thought it was a great question. Very thought provoking!
ReplyDeleteName one war fought by the United States in the 1900s.
ReplyDeleteA: War of 1812
That's some bar you're setting there.
Feel very good about yourselves.
ReplyDeleteJohn Frain, Lincoln also suspended Habeas Corpus during the Civil War. 13,000 citizens were imprisoned without charges or trial, including the grandson of Francis Scott Key who was ironically imprisoned in in Ft. McHenry, which was the fort being bombarded by the British when he grandfather penned the Star Spangled Banner. Frank Key Howard was imprisoned for writing a newspaper editorial critical of Lincoln for suspending habeas corpus when he had mprisoned without charge George William Brown, the mayor of Baltimore, sitting U.S. Congressman Henry May, all the police commissioners of Baltimore, and the entire city council. It was declared unconstitutional by Supreme court justice Taney, but Lincoln ignored the court's ruling.
Howard was in prison for fourteen months.
No way! 20/20 and I'm South African! Happy 4th of July America :)
ReplyDelete