46 questions with answers · tap one to see its answer

General Knowledge Questions

General knowledge questions mix every subject, so nobody can specialize their way to a win: history and science sit next to language, inventions, space, the arts and everyday life. These 46 questions run from ones most people get to a few that will split the room, and each answer comes with a line explaining it. They make a good opening round for any quiz night, and for ten new ones every day there is Quizette.

Every answer was checked against two independent sources on November 9, 2026.

Swiss engineer George de Mestral invented which fastener after noticing burrs stuck to his dog's fur?
Answer: Velcro (hook and loop)
The name blends the French words velours, meaning velvet, and crochet, meaning hook.
Checked against Wikipedia and lemelson.mit.edu
Which Italian physicist built the voltaic pile, an early electric battery, around 1800?
Answer: Alessandro Volta
The unit of electrical potential, the volt, is named in his honor.
Checked against Wikipedia and nationalmaglab.org
What is the name of the & symbol, which stands for the word and?
Answer: Ampersand
The name comes from schoolchildren reciting and per se and at the end of the alphabet, when & was taught as a letter.
Checked against Wikipedia and oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com
Lizzie Magie's 1904 board game The Landlord's Game was the forerunner of which famous game?
Answer: Monopoly
Magie designed it to show how renting land could make landlords rich and tenants poor.
Checked against Wikipedia and museumofplay.org
What did Mary Anderson patent in 1903 to help drivers see in rain and snow?
Answer: The windshield wiper
Her hand-operated design used a lever inside the car to swing a rubber blade across the glass.
Checked against Wikipedia and invent.org
Which letter of the alphabet does not appear in the name of any US state?
Answer: Q
Even the rare letters turn up somewhere: J in New Jersey, X in Texas and New Mexico, and Z in Arizona.
Checked against usa.gov and census.gov
Which planet spins the fastest, completing one full day in just under 10 hours?
Answer: Jupiter
Despite being the largest planet, Jupiter turns once about every 9.9 hours, which makes it bulge at the equator.
Checked against NASA and Wikipedia
What is the name of the plant tissue that carries water from the roots up to the leaves?
Answer: Xylem
Its partner tissue, phloem, carries the sugars made in the leaves to the rest of the plant.
Checked against Wikipedia and ebsco.com
Big Ben is the nickname of the great bell inside which London clock tower?
Answer: Elizabeth Tower
Long known simply as the Clock Tower, it was renamed in 2012 to mark Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee.
Checked against Wikipedia and rnz.co.nz
In 1969, Apollo 11 touched down on which dark lunar plain?
Answer: Sea of Tranquility
The Moon's so-called seas are really vast plains of hardened volcanic lava, with no water in them.
Checked against NASA, Wikipedia and NASA
What is the name of the small plastic or metal tube at the end of a shoelace?
Answer: Aglet
Aglets keep the lace from fraying and make it easier to thread through the eyelets.
Checked against Wikipedia and Dictionary.com
What is the name of the traditional lateen-rigged sailing vessel that Arab and Indian merchants used to trade across the Indian Ocean?
Answer: Dhow
Dhows carried goods among Arabia, East Africa and India, riding the seasonal monsoon winds.
Checked against Wikipedia, exploration.marinersmuseum.org and dailymaverick.co.za
The name Sahara comes from the Arabic word for what?
Answer: Desert
So calling it the Sahara Desert technically says desert twice.
Checked against Wikipedia and Dictionary.com
What mythical creature is the national animal of Scotland?
Answer: The unicorn
A unicorn supports the Scottish royal coat of arms, and appears beside the English lion on the UK's royal arms.
Checked against nts.org.uk and Wikipedia
What color does blue litmus paper turn when dipped in an acid?
Answer: Red
Litmus is a dye extracted from lichens, and it turns blue again in alkaline solutions.
Checked against Wikipedia and Dictionary.com
Which shiny mineral is nicknamed fool's gold?
Answer: Pyrite
Pyrite is iron sulfide, and its name comes from the Greek word for fire because it sparks when struck against steel.
Checked against Wikipedia, Dictionary.com and geology.com
Which planet takes longer to spin once on its axis than its whole year lasts?
Answer: Venus
Venus takes about 243 Earth days to spin once but only about 225 days to orbit the Sun.
Checked against NASA and Wikipedia
Which ruler of the Mali Empire made a famously lavish pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324?
Answer: Mansa Musa
Accounts say he gave away so much gold in Cairo that the metal's value there fell for years.
Checked against Wikipedia and bu.edu
What is the Japanese art of arranging flowers called?
Answer: Ikebana
Ikebana values line, balance and empty space as much as the flowers themselves.
Checked against japan.travel and Wikipedia
The Hudson's Bay Company, founded in 1670, built its fortune trading which goods?
Answer: Furs
Beaver pelts were especially prized because they could be made into felt for fashionable hats.
Checked against Wikipedia and The Canadian Encyclopedia
What is the oldest university in the English-speaking world?
Answer: University of Oxford
Teaching at Oxford existed by 1096, and the University of Cambridge was founded by scholars who left Oxford in 1209.
Checked against Wikipedia, timeshighereducation.com and cam.ac.uk
What is the most abundant chemical element in Earth's crust by mass?
Answer: Oxygen
Most of it is locked up in rocks as silicates and other oxides; silicon comes second.
Checked against Wikipedia and Royal Society of Chemistry
What is the name of the small plastic tripod placed in the middle of a pizza box?
Answer: Pizza saver (or pizza table)
Carmela Vitale of New York patented her version, which she called a package saver, in 1985 to keep the lid from sagging onto the pizza.
Checked against Wikipedia and patents.google.com
Which fastening device did American inventor Walter Hunt patent in 1849, then sell the rights for $400?
Answer: The safety pin
His design used a single piece of wire with a coil at one end and a clasp at the other to cover the point.
Checked against Wikipedia and lemelson.mit.edu
Josephine Cochrane patented which household appliance in 1886?
Answer: The dishwasher
Her business eventually became part of KitchenAid.
Checked against Wikipedia and lemelson.mit.edu
Which planet has a giant six-sided storm pattern swirling around its north pole?
Answer: Saturn
The hexagon was first spotted by the Voyager probes and later studied in detail by the Cassini spacecraft.
Checked against NASA and Wikipedia
Which pair of space probes, launched in 1977, each carry a golden record of sounds and images from Earth?
Answer: Voyager 1 and 2
The records include greetings in 55 languages, music from around the world and natural sounds such as surf, wind and thunder.
Checked against NASA and Wikipedia
Which Scottish inventor gave the first public demonstration of a working television in 1926?
Answer: John Logie Baird
His system was mechanical, and fully electronic television later replaced it.
Checked against Wikipedia and BBC
Hungarian journalist László Bíró patented which everyday writing tool in 1938?
Answer: The ballpoint pen
He later moved to Argentina, and in Britain and elsewhere a ballpoint is still often called a biro.
Checked against Wikipedia, treccani.it and Dictionary.com
In Grant Wood's painting American Gothic, what farm tool does the man hold?
Answer: A pitchfork
The models were Wood's sister, Nan Wood Graham, and his dentist, Byron McKeeby.
Checked against Wikipedia and BBC
The tiny extra pocket on the front of many jeans was originally made to hold what?
Answer: A pocket watch
Levi Strauss and Co. calls it the watch pocket, and it has been on the company's jeans since the 1870s.
Checked against levistrauss.com, Wikipedia and Dictionary.com
Which South American nation takes its name from argentum, the Latin word for silver?
Answer: Argentina
Early European explorers were drawn by legends of silver in the region, and plata, as in the Río de la Plata, is Spanish for silver.
Checked against argentina.gob.ar and Wikipedia
The blue-glazed Ishtar Gate, now rebuilt inside a Berlin museum, was once the grand entrance to which ancient city?
Answer: Babylon
King Nebuchadnezzar II had it built in the sixth century BCE, decorated with dragons and bulls in glazed brick.
Checked against Wikipedia and smb.museum
The digits 0 to 9 that we use today were invented by mathematicians in which country?
Answer: India
They reached Europe through Arabic scholars, which is why they are often called Hindu-Arabic numerals.
Checked against Wikipedia and mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk
The board game Trivial Pursuit was invented in 1979 by two friends in which country?
Answer: Canada
Chris Haney and Scott Abbott came up with it one evening in Montreal while playing Scrabble.
Checked against Wikipedia and The Canadian Encyclopedia
Viti Levu and Vanua Levu are the two largest islands of which Pacific nation?
Answer: Fiji
Fiji is made up of more than 300 islands, about a third of which are inhabited.
Checked against Wikipedia, thecommonwealth.org, American Heritage Dictionary and Dictionary.com
Which Canadian territory, where most people are Inuit, was created in 1999?
Answer: Nunavut
Its name means our land in Inuktitut, one of the territory's official languages.
Checked against The Canadian Encyclopedia and Wikipedia
Which eye doctor created the international language Esperanto, publishing its first textbook in 1887?
Answer: L. L. Zamenhof
He wrote under the pen name Doktoro Esperanto, meaning one who hopes, and the language took its name from it.
Checked against Wikipedia and theophthalmologist.com
What word describes a plant, such as many orchids, that grows on another plant without harming it?
Answer: Epiphyte
Epiphytes take water from rain and air, and nutrients from debris that collects around them.
Checked against Wikipedia, Dictionary.com and publish.illinois.edu
Australian scientist David Warren invented which aviation device in the 1950s?
Answer: The flight recorder (black box)
Despite the nickname, flight recorders are painted bright orange so they are easier to find.
Checked against nma.gov.au, Wikipedia and generalaviationnews.com
Which Moroccan scholar spent nearly 30 years traveling across Africa and Asia in the 1300s?
Answer: Ibn Battuta
He dictated his travels on his return home, and the account is known as the Rihla.
Checked against Wikipedia and orias.berkeley.edu
Insulin was first isolated in 1921 by Frederick Banting and Charles Best in which city?
Answer: Toronto
Banting and John Macleod shared the 1923 Nobel Prize for the discovery, and each split his prize money with a colleague.
Checked against Wikipedia, The Nobel Prize and The Canadian Encyclopedia
What is the small dot over a lowercase i or j called?
Answer: A tittle
The word tittle comes from the Latin titulus, meaning a small mark or inscription.
Checked against Wikipedia, Dictionary.com and American Heritage Dictionary
Which material, invented by Leo Baekeland in 1907, was the first fully synthetic plastic?
Answer: Bakelite
It was used for telephones, radios and jewelry.
Checked against Wikipedia and sciencehistory.org
In the A-series paper sizes, what is the area of one A0 sheet in square meters?
Answer: One square meter
Each smaller size is half the one before, so an A4 sheet is one sixteenth of a square meter.
Checked against Wikipedia and cl.cam.ac.uk
What was the name of the first space station, launched by the Soviet Union in 1971?
Answer: Salyut 1
Salyut means salute in Russian; the station orbited for about six months.
Checked against NASA, Wikipedia and Dictionary.com