19th Century
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50 free 19th Century trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The nineteenth century began with armies crossing Europe on foot and ended with electric light, moving pictures and motor cars. In between came railways, revolutions, gold rushes, the end of legal slavery across most of the world, and the first organised campaigns for women's rights. This quiz covers the whole of the 1800s. The early decades bring Napoleon, new nations in the Americas and the first steam railways; the middle years bring famine, civil war and empire; the late 19th century brings the inventions and world's fairs that shaped modern life. Women of the century appear throughout, from nurses and novelists to suffragists, scientists and reporters. It suits history classes, pub quiz writers and anyone who wants a quick test of how well they know the 1800s. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which bridal fashion is Queen Victoria credited with popularising after she married Prince Albert in 1840?
A white dress
A white dress was not her invention, but Victoria's satin and Honiton lace gown was so widely reported that she is credited with making it the bridal standard.
Q 02Which landmark, built as the centrepiece of the 1889 World's Fair, was meant to be dismantled after 20 years?
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower was due to come down in 1909 but was allowed to stay, having proved its worth as a mast for radio signals.
Q 03Which nickname was given to the fortune-seekers who rushed to California after gold was found at Sutter's Mill?
Forty-niners
Forty-niners took their name from 1849, the peak year of the rush; about half of the 300,000 arrivals came by sea.
Q 04In which war did Florence Nightingale nurse British soldiers, later charting their deaths in her 'rose diagram'?
Crimean War
The Crimean War made her 'The Lady with the Lamp', a name earned on night rounds of the wards at Scutari.
Q 05Which author conceived the novel Frankenstein during an 1816 summer near Geneva with Lord Byron and John Polidori?
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley was 18 when Byron proposed that each guest write a ghost story; her tale was published anonymously in 1818.
Q 06At which 1815 battle in present-day Belgium was Napoleon finally defeated by Wellington's and Blücher's armies?
Waterloo
Waterloo was Napoleon's last battle: he abdicated four days later, ending the comeback known as the Hundred Days.
Q 07Which invention did Alexander Graham Bell patent in 1876 after filing on the same day as rival Elisha Gray?
Telephone
Telephone history turned on one morning: Bell's lawyer and Gray both went to the US Patent Office on 14 February 1876, and who arrived first is still argued over.
Q 08Which New York landmark, dedicated in 1886, was built in France and shipped across the Atlantic in crates?
Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty reached New York aboard the steamer Isère in June 1885 and was assembled on what was then Bedloe's Island.
Q 09Which woman escaped slavery in Maryland in 1849 and then led about 70 people to freedom on the Underground Railroad?
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman made some 13 rescue missions, travelling by night, and was nicknamed 'Moses' for leading her people out of bondage.
Q 10Which Indonesian volcano erupted in 1883 with an explosion heard about 3,000 miles away near Mauritius?
Krakatoa
Krakatoa lies in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, and its blast carried as far as Rodrigues island and Perth in Australia.
Q 11Which 1803 deal nearly doubled the size of the United States at a cost of under three cents an acre?
Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase cost $15 million for 828,000 square miles and extended US sovereignty across the Mississippi River.
Q 12During which conflict did British troops capture Washington and burn the White House and the Capitol?
War of 1812
The War of 1812 reached Washington in August 1814, when First Lady Dolley Madison had staff save valuables before the British arrived.
Q 13Which Native American woman joined the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805 with her newborn son Jean Baptiste?
Sacagawea
Q 21Which New York town hosted the first women's rights convention in July 1848, organised with Elizabeth Cady Stanton?
Seneca Falls
Seneca Falls hosted a meeting planned during a visit to the area by Lucretia Mott, and those attending debated a Declaration of Sentiments before signing it.
Q 22Which German thinker co-wrote an 1848 manifesto with Friedrich Engels and spent his later decades exiled in London?
Karl Marx
Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital in London, though only its first volume was published in his lifetime, and he was buried in the city's Highgate Cemetery in 1883.
Q 23Which San Antonio mission fell to Santa Anna's Mexican army in March 1836 after a 13-day siege?
The Alamo
Sacagawea was still in her teens, and her son was born at Fort Mandan in February 1805, weeks before the party headed up the Missouri.
Q 14Which Venezuelan general, known as 'The Liberator', led six present-day Latin American countries to independence?
Simón Bolívar
Simón Bolívar gave his name to Bolivia, and Venezuela's official title, the Bolivarian Republic, honours him too.
Q 15Which medical instrument did French physician René Laennec invent in 1816, starting with a rolled-up sheaf of paper?
Stethoscope
Stethoscope design began when Laennec held a paper cylinder to a patient's chest and heard the heart more clearly than with his bare ear.
Q 16Which Frenchman, blinded in a childhood accident, published his raised-dot reading system in 1829?
Louis Braille
Louis Braille cut the twelve dots of an earlier system to six, so each letter could be recognised with a single touch of a finger.
Q 17What name is given to the forced removal of the Cherokee and other nations west of the Mississippi in the 1830s?
Trail of Tears
The Trail of Tears followed the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and displaced about 60,000 people from the south-eastern United States.
Q 18What was the name of the world's first adhesive postage stamp, issued in Britain in 1840 with Queen Victoria's profile?
Penny Black
The Penny Black let a letter of up to half an ounce travel at a flat rate of one penny, whatever the distance.
Q 19Which New York waterway, opened in 1825 and mocked as 'Clinton's Big Ditch', linked the Hudson River to the Great Lakes?
Erie Canal
The Erie Canal was championed by New York governor DeWitt Clinton, whose opponents also called the project 'Clinton's Folly'.
Q 20Aboard which Royal Navy ship did Charles Darwin sail around the world as a young naturalist in the 1830s?
HMS Beagle
HMS Beagle spent nearly five years on the survey, and Darwin had been on his way to becoming a rural clergyman when he joined.
The Alamo's fall became a rallying cry, and Texian forces defeated Santa Anna at San Jacinto on 21 April 1836.
Q 24Which territory did the United States buy from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million, about two cents an acre?
Alaska
Alaska was labelled 'Seward's Folly' or 'Seward's Icebox' by some opponents, who contended the country had acquired useless land.
Q 25Which daughter of Lord Byron is often called the first computer programmer for her notes on Babbage's engine?
Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace described how Charles Babbage's proposed Analytical Engine could calculate Bernoulli numbers, a machine that was never completed.
Q 26Which American inventor, a portrait painter by trade, built the 1844 telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore?
Samuel Morse
Samuel Morse won $30,000 from Congress for the 38-mile experimental line and gave his name to the dot-and-dash code sent along it.
Q 27Which staple crop was ruined by blight in 1840s Ireland, causing a famine known as the Great Hunger?
Potato
Potato blight struck across Europe, but Ireland suffered worst: roughly one million people died and over a million more emigrated.
Q 28Where in Charleston Harbor did the American Civil War begin with a 34-hour bombardment in April 1861?
Fort Sumter
Fort Sumter was evacuated by Major Robert Anderson's outgunned Union garrison, yet no one on either side was killed during the shelling.
Q 29At which Washington playhouse was Abraham Lincoln shot in 1865 while watching the comedy Our American Cousin?
Ford's Theatre
Ford's Theatre was a natural stage for John Wilkes Booth, by then a famous actor from a family of prominent stage performers.
Q 30Which ceremonial object did Leland Stanford drive at Promontory Summit, Utah, in 1869 to join two railroads?
A golden spike
A golden spike joined the Central Pacific line from Sacramento to the Union Pacific from Omaha, and it is now displayed at Stanford University.