Everything Trivia
Browse Trivia
History

150 History Trivia Questions and Answers

Reviewed by Aleesha Rubinstein, Editor·Updated Oct 2026·19 min read

150 history trivia questions and answers, from ancient Egypt and Rome through the Renaissance, the American Civil War, both world wars and the Cold War, with easy, medium and hard questions.

History Trivia

Here are 150 history trivia questions and answers, running from the pyramids of Giza to the fall of the Soviet Union. They come in rounds — the ancient world, Greece and Rome, the Middle Ages, the age of exploration, revolutions and empires, American history, the two world wars, the Cold War, and the inventions that changed everything — so you can run a themed round or shuffle the lot.

Every question is tagged easy, medium or hard. The easy ones (who painted the Mona Lisa?) suit a mixed crowd; the hard ones (the battle where 'Remember the Alamo!' was actually shouted, or the ship Drake sailed around the world) will sort the history buffs from everyone else. Answers sit in the key at the bottom, so you can play without spoilers.

  1. 1Which river's yearly floods made farming possible in ancient Egypt?

  2. 2Which is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still largely standing?

  3. 3Which pharaoh is associated with the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza?

  4. 4In 1922, Howard Carter found the nearly intact tomb of which young pharaoh in the Valley of the Kings?

  5. 5Which stone slab, found by French soldiers in 1799, held the same decree in three scripts and unlocked Egyptian hieroglyphs?

  6. 6Which French scholar announced in 1822 that he had deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs?

  7. 7Which of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is traditionally said to have stood in Babylon?

  8. 8Which wonder of the ancient world was a giant bronze statue of the sun god Helios guarding a Greek island harbor?

  9. 9Which empire was ruled by Cyrus the Great and Darius I?

  10. 10Which Macedonian king had conquered an empire stretching from Greece to India by the time he died in 323 BC?

  11. 11Which Chinese ruler unified China in 221 BC and was buried with the Terracotta Army?

  12. 12Which Mesoamerican civilization carved colossal stone heads, some weighing over 20 tons?

  13. 13Which ancient city in present-day Jordan did the Nabataeans carve into rose-red sandstone cliffs?

  14. 14The ruins of ancient Troy lie in which present-day country?

  15. 15What term describes the long stretch of human history before written records?

  16. 16Which ancient city was said to be founded by the twins Romulus and Remus?

  17. 17Who became the first Roman emperor in 27 BC?

  18. 18Which Roman leader was stabbed to death on the Ides of March, 44 BC?

  19. 19Which Greek philosopher was sentenced to death by drinking hemlock in 399 BC?

  20. 20Athens in the 5th century BC is famous for developing what form of government, from the Greek for 'rule by the people'?

  21. 21Which Greek writer is often called the 'Father of History'?

  22. 22Which Greek physician is called the 'Father of Medicine' and has a doctors' oath named after him?

  23. 23What was the Colosseum's original name?

  24. 24According to a famous legend, which Roman emperor 'fiddled while Rome burned' in AD 64?

  25. 25Which Greek mathematician is said to have shouted 'Eureka!' after a discovery in his bath?

  26. 26Which Persian king led the massive invasion of Greece in 480 BC?

  27. 27In ancient Rome, what were members of the hereditary aristocratic class called?

  28. 28From which region did the Vikings come?

  29. 29Which Norse explorer reached North America around AD 1000, nearly five centuries before Columbus?

  30. 30Which French teenager, known as the 'Maid of Orléans,' was burned at the stake in 1431?

  31. 31What were the religious wars fought between 1096 and 1291 to take and hold Jerusalem called?

  32. 32The Wars of the Roses were fought between which two English royal houses?

  33. 33Which Venetian merchant's account of his years at Kublai Khan's court became a medieval bestseller?

  34. 34Which medieval siege engine used a heavy counterweight to hurl stones at castle walls?

  35. 35Which 1381 English uprising, led by Wat Tyler, marched on London over a poll tax?

  36. 36Which English king was killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485?

  37. 37Which Frankish leader stopped an invading Umayyad army at the Battle of Tours in 732?

  38. 38Which Byzantine emperor built the great church of Hagia Sophia, completed in 537?

  39. 39In which country did the Renaissance begin in the 14th century?

  40. 40Who painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel between 1508 and 1512?

  41. 41Who painted the Mona Lisa?

  42. 42Which Italian political thinker wrote 'The Prince' in 1513?

  43. 43Which Italian-born navigator's 1492 voyage for Spain began lasting contact between Europe and the Americas?

  44. 44The Americas are named after which Italian explorer?

  45. 45Which Portuguese explorer was the first European to reach India by sea, in 1498?

  46. 46Which Portuguese-born captain led the 1519 Spanish expedition that became the first to sail around the world, though he was killed partway through?

  47. 47Which Basque navigator brought the last ship of Magellan's expedition home to Spain in 1522, completing the first circumnavigation?

  48. 48In what ship did Francis Drake sail around the world between 1577 and 1580?

  49. 49Which Spanish conquistador brought down the Aztec Empire in 1521?

  50. 50Which conquistador led the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire in the 1530s?

  51. 51Which South American empire had its capital at Cusco?

  52. 52Which German monk launched the Protestant Reformation with his 95 Theses in 1517?

  53. 53Which English king broke with the Roman Catholic Church after the pope refused to annul his first marriage?

  54. 54Which English queen was on the throne when the Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588?

  55. 55Which astronomer's 1543 book put the sun, not Earth, at the center of the known universe?

  56. 56Which Italian astronomer was tried by the Roman Inquisition in 1633 for supporting a sun-centered system?

  57. 57Which monument did Mughal emperor Shah Jahan build as a tomb for his wife?

  58. 58Which Puritan general ruled England, Scotland and Ireland as 'Lord Protector' from 1653 to 1658?

  59. 59Which English king was beheaded in 1649 after losing the English Civil War?

  60. 60Which British navigator charted the east coast of Australia aboard HMS Endeavour in 1770?

  61. 61Which Paris fortress-prison was stormed by a crowd on July 14, 1789?

  62. 62Which French queen was executed by guillotine in October 1793?

  63. 63Which French emperor was finally defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815?

  64. 64To which remote South Atlantic island was Napoleon exiled after Waterloo?

  65. 65Which British commander defeated Napoleon at Waterloo?

  66. 66Which British admiral was killed while winning the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805?

  67. 67From which country did Mexico win its independence in 1821?

  68. 68Which leader, called 'El Libertador,' helped free Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia from Spanish rule?

  69. 69Which British monarch reigned from 1837 to 1901, giving her name to an era?

  70. 70Which Siberian mystic gained great influence over Russia's Tsarina Alexandra before his murder in 1916?

  71. 71Troops fired on peaceful marchers in which city on 'Bloody Sunday' in January 1905, sparking a revolution in Russia?

  72. 72Which empire, based in what is now Turkey, lasted from around 1300 until 1922?

  73. 73In what year did revolution topple Russia's tsar and bring the Bolsheviks to power?

  74. 74In what year did the RMS Titanic sink after hitting an iceberg?

  75. 75What was the first permanent English settlement in North America, founded in 1607?

  76. 76Which ship carried the Pilgrims to Plymouth in 1620?

  77. 77Who was the main author of the Declaration of Independence?

  78. 78Which explorers led the Corps of Discovery from St. Louis to the Pacific and back between 1804 and 1806?

  79. 79Which Shoshone woman served as an interpreter for the Lewis and Clark expedition?

  80. 80'Remember the Alamo!' was the battle cry at which 1836 battle that won Texas its independence from Mexico?

  81. 81Which 1848 treaty ended the Mexican-American War?

  82. 82The California Gold Rush began after gold was found in January 1848 at which mill on the American River?

  83. 83What was the secret network of routes and safe houses that helped enslaved people escape to freedom before the Civil War?

  84. 84Which woman escaped slavery in Maryland and then made about 13 trips back to lead others to freedom?

  85. 85Which 1857 Supreme Court decision held that Black Americans could not be U.S. citizens?

  86. 86In which war was the Battle of Gettysburg fought?

  87. 87Which general commanded the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia?

  88. 88In April 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant at which Virginia village?

  89. 89Which Union general led the destructive 'March to the Sea' from Atlanta to Savannah in 1864?

  90. 90At which 1876 battle in Montana were George Custer and his men killed by Lakota and Cheyenne warriors?

  91. 91The explosion of which U.S. battleship in Havana Harbor in 1898 helped spark the Spanish-American War?

  92. 92Which president was shot at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., in April 1865?

  93. 93What name is given to the October 1929 stock market collapse, including 'Black Tuesday,' that helped trigger the Great Depression?

  94. 94What name was given to the severe 1930s drought and dust storms that drove families off the Great Plains?

  95. 95Which president launched the New Deal in response to the Great Depression?

  96. 96Whose refusal to give up her bus seat in December 1955 sparked the Montgomery bus boycott?

  97. 97In front of which Washington, D.C., monument did Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his 'I Have a Dream' speech in 1963?

  98. 98Who became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, in 1932?

  99. 99Which 1916 armed uprising in Dublin sought to end British rule in Ireland?

  100. 100Which 1915 sinking of a British ocean liner by a German U-boat killed 128 Americans?

  101. 101Which intercepted 1917 German message proposed an alliance with Mexico against the United States?

  102. 102What was the strip of ground between opposing trenches on the Western Front called?

  103. 103Fighting in World War I stopped at the 11th hour of the 11th day of which month in 1918?

  104. 104Which 1919 treaty formally ended World War I between Germany and the Allies?

  105. 105Which 1938 agreement let Nazi Germany annex the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia?

  106. 106What did Germany, Italy and Japan call their World War II alliance?

  107. 107Which Ethiopian emperor appealed to the League of Nations after Italy invaded his country in 1935?

  108. 108Which British prime minister told Parliament in 1940 that he had nothing to offer but 'blood, toil, tears and sweat'?

  109. 109From which French port were more than 300,000 Allied troops evacuated in 1940?

  110. 110What was the code name for Germany's June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union?

  111. 111On what date did Japan attack Pearl Harbor?

  112. 112Which June 1942 naval battle, fought largely by carrier aircraft, cost Japan four aircraft carriers?

  113. 113Which city on the Volga was the site of the 1942-43 battle that ended with the surrender of the German Sixth Army?

  114. 114What was the code name for the Allied invasion of Normandy?

  115. 115On what date did the D-Day landings in Normandy take place?

  116. 116In military jargon, what does the 'D' in D-Day stand for?

  117. 117Which German cipher machine did Allied codebreakers at Bletchley Park crack?

  118. 118Which Jewish teenager's diary, written while hiding in Amsterdam, was published after the war?

  119. 119What was the code name for the U.S. program that built the first atomic bombs?

  120. 120On which Japanese city did the United States drop the first atomic bomb used in war, on August 6, 1945?

  121. 121Which American general accepted Japan's formal surrender aboard the USS Missouri in September 1945 as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers?

  122. 122Named for the German city where they were held, what were the 1945-46 trials of top Nazi leaders called?

  123. 123What 1948-49 operation flew food and fuel into West Berlin during a Soviet blockade?

  124. 124In what year did East Germany begin building the Berlin Wall?

  125. 125Which U.S. president faced the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962?

  126. 126Which Soviet leader was JFK's opponent in the Cuban Missile Crisis?

  127. 127Who became the first person to travel into space, in April 1961?

  128. 128Who was the first person to walk on the moon, on July 20, 1969?

  129. 129Which country invaded Czechoslovakia with its Warsaw Pact allies in 1968 to crush the Prague Spring?

  130. 130Which South Vietnamese capital was renamed Ho Chi Minh City after the war ended in 1975?

  131. 131What 1986 disaster happened at a nuclear power plant in Soviet Ukraine?

  132. 132In what year was the Soviet Union formally dissolved?

  133. 133Which South African leader was freed in 1990 after 27 years in prison and elected president in 1994?

  134. 134What 1947 event split British India into two independent states?

  135. 135Which British monarch reigned for 70 years, from 1952 until her death in 2022?

  136. 136Which explosive was invented by Chinese alchemists around the 9th century?

  137. 137Which English physician's 1796 experiment with cowpox laid the foundation for vaccination against smallpox?

  138. 138Who published the laws of motion and universal gravitation in 1687?

  139. 139Which naturalist published 'On the Origin of Species' in 1859?

  140. 140Which French scientist developed the heat treatment of milk and wine that bears his name?

  141. 141Which Scottish engineer's improvements to the steam engine helped power the Industrial Revolution?

  142. 142Which English mathematician designed the Analytical Engine, a mechanical general-purpose computer, in the 1830s?

  143. 143Which mathematician, daughter of Lord Byron, is often called the first computer programmer?

  144. 144Who received the first U.S. patent for the telephone, in 1876?

  145. 145Which brothers made the first powered airplane flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903?

  146. 146Which scientist published the theory of relativity?

  147. 147Who developed the first widely used polio vaccine, licensed in 1955?

  148. 148Which Norwegian explorer led the first expedition to reach the South Pole, in December 1911?

  149. 149Which two climbers made the first confirmed ascent of Mount Everest in 1953?

  150. 150Which British computer scientist invented the World Wide Web in 1989?

Answer Key

  1. 1. The Nile
  2. 2. Great Pyramid of Giza
  3. 3. Khufu
  4. 4. Tutankhamun
  5. 5. Rosetta Stone
  6. 6. Jean-François Champollion
  7. 7. Hanging Gardens
  8. 8. Colossus of Rhodes
  9. 9. Persian Empire
  10. 10. Alexander the Great
  11. 11. Qin Shi Huang
  12. 12. Olmec
  13. 13. Petra
  14. 14. Turkey
  15. 15. Prehistory
  16. 16. Rome
  17. 17. Augustus
  18. 18. Julius Caesar
  19. 19. Socrates
  20. 20. Democracy
  21. 21. Herodotus
  22. 22. Hippocrates
  23. 23. Flavian Amphitheatre
  24. 24. Nero
  25. 25. Archimedes
  26. 26. Xerxes I
  27. 27. Patricians
  28. 28. Scandinavia
  29. 29. Leif Erikson
  30. 30. Joan of Arc
  31. 31. The Crusades
  32. 32. York and Lancaster
  33. 33. Marco Polo
  34. 34. Trebuchet
  35. 35. Peasants' Revolt
  36. 36. Richard III
  37. 37. Charles Martel
  38. 38. Justinian I
  39. 39. Italy
  40. 40. Michelangelo
  41. 41. Leonardo da Vinci
  42. 42. Niccolò Machiavelli
  43. 43. Christopher Columbus
  44. 44. Amerigo Vespucci
  45. 45. Vasco da Gama
  46. 46. Ferdinand Magellan
  47. 47. Juan Sebastián Elcano
  48. 48. Golden Hind
  49. 49. Hernán Cortés
  50. 50. Francisco Pizarro
  51. 51. Inca Empire
  52. 52. Martin Luther
  53. 53. Henry VIII
  54. 54. Elizabeth I
  55. 55. Nicolaus Copernicus
  56. 56. Galileo Galilei
  57. 57. Taj Mahal
  58. 58. Oliver Cromwell
  59. 59. Charles I
  60. 60. James Cook
  61. 61. The Bastille
  62. 62. Marie Antoinette
  63. 63. Napoleon Bonaparte
  64. 64. St. Helena
  65. 65. Duke of Wellington
  66. 66. Horatio Nelson
  67. 67. Spain
  68. 68. Simón Bolívar
  69. 69. Queen Victoria
  70. 70. Grigori Rasputin
  71. 71. St. Petersburg
  72. 72. Ottoman Empire
  73. 73. 1917
  74. 74. 1912
  75. 75. Jamestown
  76. 76. Mayflower
  77. 77. Thomas Jefferson
  78. 78. Lewis and Clark
  79. 79. Sacagawea
  80. 80. Battle of San Jacinto
  81. 81. Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
  82. 82. Sutter's Mill
  83. 83. Underground Railroad
  84. 84. Harriet Tubman
  85. 85. Dred Scott v. Sandford
  86. 86. American Civil War
  87. 87. Robert E. Lee
  88. 88. Appomattox Court House
  89. 89. William T. Sherman
  90. 90. Battle of the Little Bighorn
  91. 91. USS Maine
  92. 92. Abraham Lincoln
  93. 93. Wall Street Crash
  94. 94. Dust Bowl
  95. 95. Franklin D. Roosevelt
  96. 96. Rosa Parks
  97. 97. Lincoln Memorial
  98. 98. Amelia Earhart
  99. 99. Easter Rising
  100. 100. Lusitania
  101. 101. Zimmermann Telegram
  102. 102. No man's land
  103. 103. November
  104. 104. Treaty of Versailles
  105. 105. Munich Agreement
  106. 106. Axis powers
  107. 107. Haile Selassie
  108. 108. Winston Churchill
  109. 109. Dunkirk
  110. 110. Operation Barbarossa
  111. 111. December 7, 1941
  112. 112. Battle of Midway
  113. 113. Stalingrad
  114. 114. Operation Overlord
  115. 115. June 6, 1944
  116. 116. Day
  117. 117. Enigma
  118. 118. Anne Frank
  119. 119. Manhattan Project
  120. 120. Hiroshima
  121. 121. Douglas MacArthur
  122. 122. Nuremberg trials
  123. 123. Berlin Airlift
  124. 124. 1961
  125. 125. John F. Kennedy
  126. 126. Nikita Khrushchev
  127. 127. Yuri Gagarin
  128. 128. Neil Armstrong
  129. 129. Soviet Union
  130. 130. Saigon
  131. 131. Chernobyl
  132. 132. 1991
  133. 133. Nelson Mandela
  134. 134. Partition of India
  135. 135. Elizabeth II
  136. 136. Gunpowder
  137. 137. Edward Jenner
  138. 138. Isaac Newton
  139. 139. Charles Darwin
  140. 140. Louis Pasteur
  141. 141. James Watt
  142. 142. Charles Babbage
  143. 143. Ada Lovelace
  144. 144. Alexander Graham Bell
  145. 145. The Wright brothers
  146. 146. Albert Einstein
  147. 147. Jonas Salk
  148. 148. Roald Amundsen
  149. 149. Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay
  150. 150. Tim Berners-Lee

Keep Going