44 questions with answers · tap one to see its answer
History Trivia Questions
These 44 history trivia questions run from the ancient world to the 20th century and cover every continent: empires and rulers, explorers, inventions, buildings, treaties and the firsts nobody disputes. Each answer has a line of context, which makes them good for a history lesson's warm-up as well as a quiz round. To test your sense of when things happened, try which came first?.
Every answer was checked against two independent sources on November 9, 2026.
Which Polynesian people were the first to settle New Zealand, more than 700 years ago?
Answer: The Māori
They arrived from eastern Polynesia in great ocean-going voyaging canoes called waka.
Checked against Wikipedia and theconversation.com
Whose refusal to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955 sparked a famous boycott?
Answer: Rosa Parks
The Montgomery bus boycott lasted 381 days and helped make Martin Luther King Jr. a national figure.
Checked against Wikipedia and kinginstitute.stanford.edu
Which British monarch reigned for 63 years, from 1837 to 1901?
Answer: Queen Victoria
She was the first monarch to live at Buckingham Palace, moving in soon after she came to the throne.
Checked against Wikipedia, rct.uk and westminster-abbey.org
What were the long, narrow wooden ships that Viking raiders and traders sailed called?
Answer: Longships
Their shallow hulls let Vikings sail across open sea and also far up rivers into the heart of Europe.
Checked against Wikipedia, World History Encyclopedia and oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com
What title was given to the kings of ancient Egypt?
Answer: Pharaoh
The word comes from an Egyptian phrase meaning great house, which first referred to the royal palace.
Checked against Wikipedia and education.nationalgeographic.org
Which period of the ancient past takes its name from a metal made by mixing copper with tin?
Answer: The Bronze Age
It is named for bronze, the metal people of that period used for tools and weapons.
Checked against Wikipedia, oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com and oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com
What do we call a body that ancient Egyptian embalmers dried out and wrapped in linen bandages?
Answer: A mummy
The drying was done with natron, a natural salt, and the whole process could take about 70 days.
Checked against Wikipedia and australian.museum
What were the mounted, armored warriors who served a lord in medieval Europe called?
Answer: Knights
A boy training to be a knight usually served first as a page and then as a squire.
Checked against Wikipedia, oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com, oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com and oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com
Which famous document, adopted in 1776, announced that the 13 American colonies were free from British rule?
Answer: The Declaration of Independence
It was adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, now celebrated every year as Independence Day.
Checked against Wikipedia, National Archives and opm.gov
What were the trained fighters who fought each other for public entertainment in ancient Roman arenas called?
Answer: Gladiators
The word comes from gladius, the Latin word for sword.
Checked against Wikipedia and oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com
Which female pharaoh of ancient Egypt sent a famous trading expedition to the Land of Punt?
Answer: Hatshepsut
Carvings of the voyage, including the live myrrh trees it brought back, decorate her temple at Deir el-Bahari.
Checked against Wikipedia and National Geographic
Which embroidered cloth, about 70 meters long, shows the Norman conquest of England in 1066?
Answer: The Bayeux Tapestry
Despite its name it is embroidery rather than true tapestry, stitched in colored wool yarn on linen.
Checked against Wikipedia and bayeuxmuseum.com
Which English sea captain sailed around the world aboard the Golden Hind between 1577 and 1580?
Answer: Sir Francis Drake
His ship set out under the name Pelican, and he renamed it the Golden Hind partway through the voyage.
Checked against Wikipedia and World History Encyclopedia
What name is given to the 11 ships that brought the first British settlers to Australia in 1788?
Answer: The First Fleet
Its commander raised the British flag at Sydney Cove on January 26, 1788, the date now marked as Australia Day.
Checked against Wikipedia and latrobejournal.slv.vic.gov.au
Who led the Gold Coast to independence as Ghana and became the new country's first president?
Answer: Kwame Nkrumah
Ghana took its name from the medieval Ghana Empire, which lay hundreds of miles to the northwest.
Checked against Wikipedia and sahistory.org.za
Which railway, completed in 1885, first linked eastern Canada with the Pacific coast?
Answer: The Canadian Pacific Railway
The last spike was driven at Craigellachie, British Columbia, on November 7, 1885.
Checked against Wikipedia and historymuseum.ca
Which city-state on the Adriatic was ruled for more than a thousand years by elected leaders called doges?
Answer: Venice
The Republic of Venice lasted from the late 600s until 1797, when Napoleon's forces ended it.
Checked against Wikipedia and visitvenezia.eu
Which American inventor patented the cotton gin in 1794?
Answer: Eli Whitney
The machine pulled cotton fibers away from their seeds far faster than could be done by hand.
Checked against Wikipedia and National Archives
Which horseback mail service carried letters between Missouri and California in 1860 and 1861?
Answer: The Pony Express
Riders swapped horses at relay stations, and the service ended soon after the transcontinental telegraph was completed.
Checked against Wikipedia and National Park Service
The ballpoint pen is called a biro in many countries after which Hungarian-born inventor?
Answer: László Bíró
Argentina, where he later settled and perfected the pen, marks Inventor's Day on his birthday, September 29.
Checked against Wikipedia and casarosada.gob.ar
Which ancient seafaring people of the eastern Mediterranean spread an alphabet that led to the Greek one?
Answer: The Phoenicians
They were also famous for a costly purple dye made from sea snails, known as Tyrian purple.
Checked against Wikipedia and metmuseum.org
In which year did Australia's six colonies unite to form the Commonwealth of Australia?
Answer: 1901
Federation took effect on January 1, 1901, and Edmund Barton became the first prime minister.
Checked against Wikipedia and peo.gov.au
In 1888, which country became the last in the Americas to abolish slavery?
Answer: Brazil
The law that ended it, signed by Princess Isabel, is known as the Golden Law.
Checked against Wikipedia, dukeupress.edu and library.brown.edu
Which Canadian city hosted the Expo 67 world's fair, held during Canada's 100th birthday year?
Answer: Montreal
One of its best-known buildings, the stacked-box housing complex Habitat 67, is still lived in today.
Checked against Wikipedia, The Canadian Encyclopedia and safdiearchitects.com
In which Australian colony did the 1851 gold rush that made Ballarat and Bendigo famous take place?
Answer: Victoria
The rush drew hundreds of thousands of newcomers, and within a decade Victoria's population passed half a million.
Checked against Wikipedia and ergo.slv.vic.gov.au
What name did Captain James Cook give to the Hawaiian Islands when he reached them in 1778?
Answer: The Sandwich Islands
He named them after the Earl of Sandwich, who was then First Lord of the Admiralty.
Checked against Wikipedia, portrait.gov.au and rmg.co.uk
Who became the first person to swim the English Channel without artificial aids, in 1875?
Answer: Matthew Webb
He swam from Dover to near Calais in about 21 hours and 45 minutes.
Checked against Wikipedia, cspf.co.uk and ishof.org
Which Japanese mountaineer became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest, in 1975?
Answer: Junko Tabei
She later became the first woman to climb the highest peak on every continent, the Seven Summits.
Checked against Wikipedia and alpinist.com
Who became the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, in 1849?
Answer: Elizabeth Blackwell
She graduated from Geneva Medical College in New York and later opened a hospital for poor women and children.
Checked against Wikipedia and cfmedicine.nlm.nih.gov
Which canal, opened in 1825, linked the Hudson River with Lake Erie?
Answer: The Erie Canal
It made New York City the country's leading port by giving it a water route to the Great Lakes and the Midwest.
Checked against Wikipedia and eriecanalway.org
Which ancient Mesopotamian civilization is credited with developing cuneiform, one of the earliest writing systems?
Answer: The Sumerians
Cuneiform means wedge-shaped, after the marks made by pressing a reed stylus into wet clay.
Checked against Wikipedia and metmuseum.org
Who became Africa's first elected female head of state when she won Liberia's 2005 presidential election?
Answer: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
She shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize with two other women, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman.
Checked against Wikipedia and The Nobel Prize
Which Kenyan environmentalist became the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, in 2004?
Answer: Wangari Maathai
Her Green Belt Movement has planted tens of millions of trees across Kenya since 1977.
Checked against Wikipedia, The Nobel Prize and greenbeltmovement.org
The Rosetta Stone was found in 1799 by soldiers in the army of which French leader?
Answer: Napoleon Bonaparte
British forces took it after defeating the French in Egypt, and it is now displayed in the British Museum.
Checked against Wikipedia and World History Encyclopedia
Which present-day Canadian province was the last to join Canada, in 1949?
Answer: Newfoundland and Labrador
Before 1949 it was a separate dominion of the British Empire, and its people chose to join Canada in the second of two referendums in 1948.
Checked against Wikipedia and The Canadian Encyclopedia
Which Han dynasty court official is traditionally credited with inventing papermaking around 105 CE?
Answer: Cai Lun
Scraps of even older paper have since been found in China, so he is now seen as having greatly improved papermaking rather than inventing it.
Checked against Wikipedia, World History Encyclopedia and paper.gatech.edu
Which ancient center of Buddhist learning in Bihar, India, drew students from across Asia for centuries?
Answer: Nalanda
Its ruins are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and a new Nalanda University opened nearby in 2014.
Checked against Wikipedia, nalandauniv.edu.in and UNESCO
Which Ottoman sultan, later known as the Conqueror, captured Constantinople and ended the Byzantine Empire?
Answer: Mehmed II
He made the conquered city the new capital of the Ottoman Empire.
Checked against Wikipedia and metmuseum.org
What were the relay runners who carried messages along the Inca roads called?
Answer: Chasquis
Working in relays, they could carry messages well over 100 miles in a single day.
Checked against Wikipedia and World History Encyclopedia