Daily History Challenge · No. 105 · Sunday 11 October 2026 · Gauntlet
Puzzle No. 105: Gauntlet
The Sunday Gauntlet: three before or after calls, four events to order and a final When? on The Peloponnesian War.
Act 1: Chain, against Fall of Tenochtitlan and conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519 CE)
Before Fall of Tenochtitlan and conquest of the Aztec Empire
After Fall of Tenochtitlan and conquest of the Aztec Empire
After Fall of Tenochtitlan and conquest of the Aztec Empire
Act 2: Order, earliest first
Act 3: When?
From 431 to 404 BCE the Greek world was convulsed by the Peloponnesian War, a struggle for hegemony between the Athenian-led Delian League and the Spartan-led Peloponnesian League. Mounting fear of Athenian naval power and imperial expansion brought decades of rising tension to open conflict. The opening Archidamian phase saw repeated Spartan invasions of Attica and an Athenian strategy of withdrawing behind its walls and relying on its fleet, while a devastating plague struck crowded Athens and killed Pericles. After an inconclusive peace, Athens overreached with the catastrophic Sicilian Expedition (415 to 413 BCE), losing an entire army and fleet. In the final phase Sparta, financed by Persian gold, built a navy that challenged Athens at sea; the decisive defeat at Aegospotami in 405 BCE cut Athens' grain supply, and a besieged, starving Athens surrendered in 404 BCE. Its empire was dissolved, its walls dismantled and an oligarchy briefly imposed. Chronicled in the analytical history of Thucydides, the war exhausted the Greek city-states, ended Athens' golden age of power, and ushered in a period of shifting hegemonies that left the Greek world vulnerable to the later rise of Macedon.