History Trivia Questions: 44 With Answers, by Era

How to Run a History Round

There are 39 scored questions and five numerical tiebreakers. Award one point per question; multipart answers must be complete. Accept equivalent spellings and names. Lock each answer before revealing it, and use the tiebreakers only if scores are level.

History questions divide a room in a useful way. Some players remember dates, others remember names and places, and almost everyone knows at least one story well. The six rounds below follow a rough timeline, so you can play them in order as a walk through the centuries or pick the two eras your group enjoys most.

Questions marked (Hard) need a less familiar name, date or detail. Read each question twice, allow about thirty seconds, then read the answer and its note. The notes explain where the answer comes from, which settles most arguments before they start.

For a mixed-topic session, combine selected rounds with our fun trivia questions for adults.

Round 1: Civilizations and Historic Sites

This round travels from Babylon to the Andes. Most answers come straight from UNESCO's World Heritage descriptions of each site.

1. Which Babylonian king is associated with the law stela held by the Louvre?
   Answer: Hammurabi. The Louvre identifies the stone as black basalt.
2. Around 220 BC, under which ruler were earlier fortifications joined into a united defense system that became the Great Wall?
   Answer: Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor to unify China.
3. Construction of the Great Wall continued until which dynasty, when it became the world's largest military structure? (Hard)
   Answer: The Ming dynasty, which ruled from 1368 to 1644.
4. In what year were the famous terracotta warriors near the First Qin Emperor’s mausoleum discovered?
   Answer: 1974.
5. Which volcano engulfed the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum in AD 79?
   Answer: Mount Vesuvius.
6. Which people carved the rock-cut city of Petra, in present-day Jordan?
   Answer: The Nabataeans. UNESCO describes Petra as a major caravan center for the incense of Arabia, the silks of China and the spices of India.
7. Machu Picchu, in Peru, was an urban creation of which empire at its height?
   Answer: The Inca Empire.

Round 2: The Medieval World

Four of the six questions in this round concern places outside Europe. Angkor, Great Zimbabwe and Timbuktu were major centers in the same centuries as the Norman kings of England.

1. Which king commissioned the Domesday survey, and in what year was the survey carried out?
   Answer: William I, or William the Conqueror; the survey was carried out in 1086 after being commissioned at Christmas 1085.
2. Despite its name, is the Bayeux Tapestry a woven tapestry or an embroidery?
   Answer: An embroidery, as UNESCO and the Bayeux museum explain.
3. Angkor, in Cambodia, holds the remains of the capitals of which empire from the 9th to the 15th century?
   Answer: The Khmer Empire.
4. Besides the Bayon, what is the most famous temple at Angkor?
   Answer: Angkor Wat. The Bayon, with its countless carvings, stands at Angkor Thom.
5. UNESCO says Great Zimbabwe was founded in the 11th century by which Bantu people?
   Answer: The Shona. The site was continuously inhabited until the 15th century.
6. Name the three great mosques that recall Timbuktu's golden age. (Hard)
   Answer: Djingareyber, Sankore and Sidi Yahia.

Round 3: Explorers and Voyages

Sea routes and long overland journeys fill this round. Accept surnames alone for the navigators.

1. Which Portuguese navigator reached India by sea on May 20, 1498?
   Answer: Vasco da Gama.
2. On which side of India is Calicut, where Vasco da Gama arrived?
   Answer: The west coast, in the southwest of India. Calicut is now commonly called Kozhikode, in Kerala.
3. Ferdinand Magellan died before his expedition finished. Where was he killed on April 27, 1521?
   Answer: Mactan Island, in the Philippines.
4. Who completed the first voyage around the globe after Magellan's death?
   Answer: Juan Sebastián del Cano, also spelled Elcano.
5. Which official of Pedro Álvares Cabral's fleet wrote the letter that is the first document describing the land and people of what became Brazil?
   Answer: Pêro Vaz de Caminha. He started it on April 24, 1500 and finished it on May 1.
6. What was the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1803 to 1806 called?
   Answer: The Corps of Discovery. The National Park Service says it left Pittsburgh, followed the Missouri River and crossed the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific.

Round 4: Revolutions and New Nations

This round mixes famous documents with one famous stone. The first question catches a popular misconception, so read it slowly.

1. True or false: all the delegates signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
   Answer: False. The National Archives calls this one of the most widely held misconceptions. Congress adopted the text on July 4, and its journal records the signing of the engrossed copy on August 2, 1776.
2. How many delegates eventually signed the Declaration?
   Answer: 56, although not all of them were present on August 2.
3. From which country did the United States buy the Louisiana Territory in 1803, and for how much?
   Answer: France, for $15 million. The treaty was signed on April 30, 1803.
4. Found in 1799, the Rosetta Stone carries one decree in three writing systems. Name them.
   Answer: Hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek.
5. Which two scholars did most of the work of decoding the Rosetta Stone? (Hard)
   Answer: Thomas Young of England and Jean-François Champollion of France.
6. The Statue of Liberty was a gift from the people of which country, and on what date was it dedicated?
   Answer: France. President Grover Cleveland dedicated it on October 28, 1886.
7. On what date did locomotives meet to celebrate the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States? (Hard)
   Answer: May 10, 1869. Golden Spike National Historical Park remembers the four precious metal spikes used for the occasion.

Round 5: The 20th Century

Canals, summits and orbits: this round follows firsts and milestones rather than conflicts, so it works for mixed ages.

1. Which state became the 36th to ratify the 19th Amendment on August 18, 1920?
   Answer: Tennessee. The amendment prohibited denying voting rights on account of sex, but other discriminatory barriers still excluded many women.
2. Which steamship made the first official transit of the Panama Canal on August 15, 1914? (Hard)
   Answer: The steamship Ancon, according to the Panama Canal Authority.
3. On what date did the United Nations officially come into existence?
   Answer: October 24, 1945, after its Charter was ratified by China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States and a majority of other signatories.
4. On May 29, 1953, Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Mount Everest with which New Zealand climber?
   Answer: Edmund Hillary.
5. Who led the British Everest expedition on which Hillary and Tenzing reached the summit in 1953?
   Answer: John Hunt. The Royal Geographical Society identifies him as expedition leader.
6. Who became the first woman to travel into space, on June 16, 1963?
   Answer: Valentina Tereshkova, aboard Vostok 6.

Round 6: Inventions and Firsts

The last round moves from the printing press to the web. It is often the strongest round for younger players.

1. Around what year was the Gutenberg Bible printed?
   Answer: 1455. The British Library dates its Gutenberg Bible to that year.
2. On what date was Alexander Graham Bell’s first US telephone patent issued? (Hard)
   Answer: March 7, 1876, according to the Smithsonian. This question asks for the patent date, not who should receive sole credit for inventing the telephone.
3. Which Wright brother piloted the Wright Flyer on its first flight on December 17, 1903?
   Answer: Orville. The Smithsonian records a 12-second flight covering 120 feet, about 36 meters.
4. In 1928, Alexander Fleming noticed a mould that had created a bacteria-free circle on what kind of culture plate?
   Answer: A staphylococcus culture plate. He named the active substance penicillin.
5. In which month and year did Tim Berners-Lee write the first proposal for the World Wide Web, and where did he work?
   Answer: March 1989, at CERN.
6. What was the address of the world's first website and web server?
   Answer: info.cern.ch, running on a NeXT computer at CERN.
7. On what date did CERN make the WorldWideWeb source code available royalty-free? (Hard)
   Answer: April 30, 1993.

If your players want a change of pace after six history rounds, our sports trivia questions make a lighter closing set.

Five Closest-Number Tiebreakers

Each team writes one number. The closest answer wins, over or under. These work because a team can come close without knowing the exact figure.

1. How many square miles of land did the Louisiana Purchase cover?
   Answer: 828,000, according to the National Archives.
2. About how many miles long is the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail?
   Answer: 4,900 miles, most of it following rivers.
3. How long is the Bayeux Tapestry, in meters?
   Answer: 68.80 meters. UNESCO adds that it is 50 centimeters high and weighs close to 350 kilograms with its lining.
4. How many case laws does the Code of Hammurabi contain?
   Answer: 282.
5. How many orbits did Vostok 6 complete with Valentina Tereshkova aboard?
   Answer: 48. NASA describes a flight lasting about 71 hours.

If teams remain tied after all five, share the win. Do not reuse an answer that has already been revealed.