80 Fun Facts About Multiple Choice

In which year did the Berlin Wall come down?

East Germany announced on the evening of 9 November that its citizens could cross freely, and crowds took the checkpoints that night.

Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March in which year?

The conspirators were led by Brutus and Cassius, and Caesar was due to leave for a Parthian campaign three days later.

Napoleon's final defeat in June 1815 came at which battle?

A Seventh Coalition, with Wellington and Blücher, ended his Hundred Days comeback and sent him to exile on Saint Helena.

The storming of the Bastille, the flashpoint of the French Revolution, happened in which year?

The fortress was rumoured to hold many prisoners but actually held just seven, including four forgers.

Cleopatra was the last active ruler of which Egyptian dynasty?

The dynasty was founded by Ptolemy I, a Macedonian Greek general who served under Alexander the Great, and Cleopatra was the only one of them known to learn Egyptian.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose 1914 assassination triggered World War I, was shot in which city?

He was visiting the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which Austria-Hungary had annexed only six years earlier.

World War II is generally said to have begun when Germany invaded which country in September 1939?

Britain and France declared war on Germany two days after the invasion began.

Machu Picchu was built by which civilization?

The citadel sits at about 2,430 metres in the Peruvian Andes and is thought to have been an estate of the emperor Pachacuti.

Roughly how long did the Pony Express mail service actually operate?

It cut coast-to-coast delivery to about 10 days but went bankrupt once the transcontinental telegraph was completed.

The Great Fire of London in 1666 started in a bakery on which street?

The blaze began shortly after midnight on 2 September and gutted the medieval City inside the old Roman wall.

Which English king sealed Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215?

His son Henry III reissued a trimmed-down version the following year in a bid for baronial support.

Which city is the capital of Australia?

The purpose-built capital sits inside its own territory, the ACT, and its suburbs run right up to the New South Wales border.

Which is the world's largest island?

It lies between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans and is still mostly covered by an ice sheet.

Which is the deepest lake in the world?

Its maximum depth of 1,642 metres means it holds more fresh water than all the North American Great Lakes combined.

Which is the smallest sovereign state in the world by both area and population?

It covers just 44 hectares and had a population of about 882 in 2024.

Mount Fuji stands on which of Japan's main islands?

The active stratovolcano rises 3,776 metres near the Pacific coast, just southwest of Tokyo.

What is the capital of Iceland?

It is home to about 35% of the country's roughly 395,000 people, and hosted the 1986 Reagan–Gorbachev summit.

The Amazon River empties into which ocean?

Before the Andes rose, the river is thought to have drained westward toward the Pacific instead.

Angkor Wat, the largest religious complex in the world, is in which country?

The temple complex is such a national symbol that it appears on the country's flag.

Why does the Leaning Tower of Pisa lean?

The lean began during construction in the 12th century and today stands at nearly four degrees.

The Sydney Opera House was designed by an architect from which country?

Jørn Utzon won an international competition in 1957 but resigned before the building opened in 1973.

Antarctica, despite its ice, is technically classified as what kind of environment?

The continent receives on average the equivalent of only about 150 mm of water a year, mostly as snow.

Which country is the largest in the world by land area?

It spans eleven time zones and shares land borders with fourteen countries.

What is the chemical symbol for gold?

The symbol comes from the Latin word aurum; the element's atomic number is 79.

Which element has the atomic number 2?

Its name comes from the Greek word for the Sun, because it was first detected in the solar spectrum.

Which planet rotates almost on its side, with an extreme axial tilt?

Its rotation is also retrograde, and it takes about 17 hours to spin once.

Which is the hardest natural material on the Mohs scale?

Its rigid tetrahedral bonds give it more atoms per unit volume than any other known substance.

Roughly how fast does light travel in a vacuum?

The exact figure, 299,792,458 metres per second, is now used to define the metre itself.

Marie Curie remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in which two sciences?

She was the first person to win two Nobels, and only Linus Pauling has since matched her feat of winning in two different fields.

Charles Darwin's five-year voyage from 1831 to 1836 was aboard which ship?

During the voyage he ate puma, iguana and giant tortoise, and accidentally ate part of a rhea he meant to study.

Which planet's position was worked out by mathematics before anyone had knowingly seen it?

Johann Galle found it in 1846 within a degree of where Urbain Le Verrier's calculations said it would be.

In plants, photosynthesis takes place inside which organelle?

A typical plant cell contains somewhere between 10 and 100 of them.

Which is the hottest planet in the Solar System?

Its surface sits at around 464 °C under an atmosphere 92 times as heavy as Earth's at sea level.

Alexander Fleming's 1928 discovery of penicillin came from what kind of organism?

He shared the 1945 Nobel Prize with Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, who turned the discovery into a usable drug.

Which film won 11 Oscars in 1998, tying Ben-Hur's record?

It also matched All About Eve's record of 14 nominations, making it the most successful single film in Oscar history.

Who directed the 1972 film The Godfather?

He co-wrote the screenplay with Mario Puzo, whose 1969 novel the film was based on.

The original 1977 Star Wars film was later given which subtitle?

The Episode IV label and subtitle were only added for the 1981 re-release.

What is the official name of the Oscar statuette?

The Academy also hands out nine honorary awards from time to time, including the Thalberg Memorial Award, a bust rather than a statuette.

Which was Walt Disney's first full-length animated feature film, released in 1937?

It took four years to make and was followed by Pinocchio and Fantasia in 1940.

The Simpsons live in a fictional town with what name?

The show never pins the town to any specific state, and Homer works at its nuclear power plant.

Rick Blaine's nightclub in the film Casablanca is in which country?

The story is set in December 1941, when the city was under French control.

The TV drama Breaking Bad is set and filmed in which city?

Its events unfold between 2008 and 2010, and the follow-up film El Camino arrived in 2019.

In The Wizard of Oz (1939), what is the name of Dorothy's dog?

Neighbour Almira Gulch tries to seize the dog with a sheriff's order after being bitten.

The Beatles formed in 1960 in which English city?

They grew out of John Lennon's skiffle group the Quarrymen and honed their act in clubs there and in Hamburg.

Beethoven's famous 'Ode to Joy' theme comes from which of his symphonies?

Brahms quoted the theme in his own First Symphony, which Hans von Bülow jokingly called 'Beethoven's Tenth'.

Mozart was born in which city?

He was a court musician there at 17 but grew restless and left in search of a better position.

What was the name of Elvis Presley's mansion in Memphis?

He bought the 18-room house in March 1957 and died there in August 1977, aged 42.

Which album is the best-selling of all time?

Estimated sales are around 70 million copies, and it was the first album to be the US best-seller two years running.

How many keys does a standard modern piano have?

Bösendorfer and Stuart & Sons build a few models that go beyond that number.

Queen singer Freddie Mercury was born on which island?

Born Farrokh Bulsara to Parsi parents in Stone Town, he moved to England in 1964 when his family fled the island's revolution.

Which team won the first Super Bowl, played after the 1966 season?

Bart Starr was named MVP as they beat the AFL champions 35–10.

Which country hosted and won the very first FIFA World Cup in 1930?

Every match was played in Montevideo, mostly at the purpose-built Estadio Centenario.

The first modern Olympic Games in 1896 were held in which city?

The choice was made at a Paris congress in 1894, the same meeting that created the IOC.

How long is a marathon?

The distance was standardised in 1921 based on the course used at the 1908 London Olympics.

In the Tour de France, what colour jersey does the overall race leader wear?

It goes to the rider with the lowest cumulative time; Jacques Anquetil once promised to wear it from day one and did.

Wimbledon is the only tennis Grand Slam still played on which surface?

It has been played there since 1877 and was once officially billed as the World Grass Court Championships.

How many NBA championships did Michael Jordan win with the Chicago Bulls?

He played 15 NBA seasons between 1984 and 2003, all his titles coming in two three-peats.

Under what name was Muhammad Ali born?

He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in January 1942 and named after his father.

Who wrote the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four?

He wrote it on the Scottish island of Jura while also filing journalism for Tribune and The Observer.

Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is loosely based on her childhood in which state?

The characters draw on her family and neighbours in Monroeville and an event near her hometown in 1936.

In Moby-Dick, what is the name of the obsessed captain of the Pequod?

The narrator Ishmael tells the story of his vengeful hunt for the white whale that took his leg.

William Shakespeare was born and raised in which town?

He was baptised there on 26 April 1564.

Who wrote Pride and Prejudice?

A family memoir later revealed that Kitty Bennet ended up marrying a clergyman near Pemberley.

Under the AOC rules, where must the secondary fermentation that makes champagne fizzy take place?

That in-bottle fermentation is what creates the carbonation; the rules also restrict grapes to designated vineyards in the region.

Cocoa beans, the raw material for chocolate, are the seeds of which tree?

The tree was domesticated in what is now Ecuador more than 5,000 years ago, long before it reached Mesoamerica.

According to legend, the red, white and green of a pizza Margherita were chosen to represent what?

The story says pizzaiolo Raffaele Esposito made it for Queen Margherita in 1889, though later research doubts the tale.

Which ingredient is the defining component of sushi?

Nigiri, the most familiar type, is credited to Hanaya Yohei, who pressed seafood onto hand-formed rice.

Marzipan is made mainly from sugar and which ground nut?

Versions made from apricot or peach kernels exist too, and Geneva smashes a marzipan-filled chocolate cauldron every December.

Which country grows more coffee than any other?

It produced about 31% of the world's beans in 2023, with Vietnam in second place.

Bitcoin's 2008 white paper was published under which pseudonym?

The paper, titled 'Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System', was posted to a cryptography mailing list on 31 October 2008.

Who invented the World Wide Web while working at CERN in 1989?

He rejected the tree-style structure of existing documentation systems in favour of hyperlinks.

Larry Page co-founded Google in 1998 with whom?

The pair began it as a research project in 1996, and the original logo was Brin's own design.

Apple was founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and which third partner?

He left within weeks, and the company was incorporated the following year without him.

The Wright brothers made the first powered flight in 1903 near which town?

The exact spot, four miles south of the town, is now known as Kill Devil Hills.

The Mona Lisa hangs in which museum?

It has been on display there since 1797, and its sitter is thought to be the Florentine Lisa del Giocondo.

In which year did Vincent van Gogh paint The Starry Night?

It shows the pre-dawn view from his asylum window at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, plus an imaginary village.

Pablo Picasso was born in which Spanish city?

His relatives opened a museum dedicated to him there in 2003.

For how many years was the Eiffel Tower the world's tallest human-made structure?

It overtook the Washington Monument during construction and held the title until New York's Chrysler Building was finished in 1930.

Emi Koussi, the highest peak in the Sahara, is a shield volcano in which country?

It rises from the Tibesti range in northern Chad; the Sahara is dotted with volcanic mountains such as the Ahaggar and Aïr ranges.

What is the Eiffel Tower's local nickname, 'La dame de fer', in English?

The name refers to its wrought-iron construction; it was built as the centrepiece of the 1889 World's Fair.