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50 free Common Misconceptions trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Some facts are so familiar that nobody checks them: Napoleon was tiny, goldfish forget everything in three seconds, you can see the Great Wall from space. Each one is wrong, and the true version is usually stranger than the myth. These fifty questions take the things everyone 'knows' and ask what the evidence really says, from the colour of the Sun to who actually built the light bulb, with every answer backed by a cited source and a one-line explanation of where the myth came from. It is built for people who like being surprised: pub quiz setters who want a round that trips up the confident, teachers hunting for a lesson on checking sources, and anyone who has ever lost an argument to a fact that turned out to be false.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What did Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut, report about seeing the Great Wall of China from orbit?
He could not see it
He could not see it, and NASA agrees: the wall is barely visible from low orbit even in perfect conditions and no more conspicuous than many other man-made objects. From the Moon, none of it can be seen.
Q 02Napoleon stood roughly 1.67 metres; how did that compare with Frenchmen of his era, despite the cartoons?
About average
About average is right: 5 feet 2 inches in old French measure was just under 5 feet 6 inches imperial, the period's typical adult male height. British cartoonist James Gillray did most to popularise the myth of a tiny emperor.
Q 03Why does a matador's red cape not enrage the bull, which charges at the movement of the cloth?
Cattle are dichromats
Cattle are dichromats, functionally colour-blind where red is concerned, so the muleta is red by tradition and, it is thought, to mask the bull's blood.
Q 04Goldfish, said to forget everything within seconds, actually have a memory span of at least how long?
Three months
Three months is the floor: goldfish remember shapes, colours and sounds for at least that long, and MythBusters' fish still ran a maze correctly after more than a month.
Q 05Albert Einstein, far from failing maths, taught himself algebra and which subject at age twelve?
Calculus
Calculus came so easily that he found an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem before his thirteenth birthday, and had mastered integral and differential calculus by fourteen.
Q 06Which two of the usual seven continents does the six-continent model used in Russia merge into one?
Europe and Asia
Europe and Asia become Eurasia in that model, while Greece and many Romance-speaking countries, including Latin America, also count six by merging the Americas instead.
Q 07In Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein is the name of which figure, rather than of the creature?
The scientist
The scientist is Victor Frankenstein; his nameless creation was already being called 'Frankenstein' by 1908, and James Whale's 1931 film fixed the mix-up for good.
Q 08Which New York landmark is hit by lightning about 23 times a year, refuting 'it never strikes twice'?
Empire State Building
The Empire State Building averages 23 strikes a year because lightning favours the most prominent, conductive object in reach, so tall towers are hit again and again.
Q 09How much of the human brain is in use over a day, contrary to the famous ten percent claim?
Nearly all
Nearly all of it: neurologist Barry Gordon puts it as using virtually every part of the brain, most of it active almost all the time. The myth is often pinned on Albert Einstein, who never said it.
Q 10Viewed from space, above the atmosphere, what colour does the Sun actually appear to an astronaut?
White
White is the true colour: the Sun emits across the whole visible spectrum and that mix reads as white outside the atmosphere, with scattering painting it yellow, orange or red near the horizon.
Q 11Horned helmets, mentioned in no Viking Age text, entered popular culture through whose Norse operas?
Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner's productions from the 1800s put horns and wings on Viking helmets, and the image stuck; contemporary sagas mention helmets often but never horned ones.
Q 12Chameleons, which rarely match their backdrop, change colour to regulate heat and, most often, for what purpose?
Social signalling
Social signalling is the main job: a chameleon's colour tracks its mood and its messages to other chameleons, not the leaf behind it.
Q 13What is the scientific verdict on the 'sugar rush', the hyperactivity that parents blame on sweets?
It is a myth
Q 21Scholars in 1492 knew the world was round; what did they say Christopher Columbus had misjudged?
The distance to the Indies
The distance to the Indies was the sticking point: his critics feared the East Indies lay far farther west than he presumed, and they were right; only the unexpected Americas saved his crews.
Q 22The Salem witch trials burned nobody; how were its nineteen convicted 'witches' actually executed?
Hanged
Hanged, all nineteen of them; at least five more of the accused died in prison, and one man was pressed to death under stones as the court tried to force a confession.
Q 23Genesis never names the forbidden fruit; the apple is often traced to a pun on which Latin word for evil?
malum
It is a myth, in the words of the scientific community: the evidence for sugar-fuelled hyperactivity is low quality, and a 2019 meta-analysis found sugar can actually lower alertness and raise fatigue within an hour.
Q 14Donald Unger cracked only his left-hand knuckles for fifty years to test for which feared ailment?
Arthritis
Arthritis never appeared in either hand, a result Unger published in Arthritis & Rheumatism in 1998 and for which he won the 2009 Ig Nobel Prize in Medicine.
Q 15Which sense beyond the classic five lets you touch your nose with eyes closed, as in a sobriety test?
Proprioception
Proprioception is the sense of self-movement, force and body position; with it intact, a person touches their nose blindfolded to within about 20 mm.
Q 16Where on the tongue is sweetness sensed, despite the textbook 'tongue map' that confines it to the tip?
Across its whole surface
Across its whole surface: every taste can be sensed on all regions of the tongue, some slightly more sensitive than others. The map came from Edwin Boring's 1942 re-plotting of a 1901 German study, which later textbooks misread.
Q 17Britain's wartime claim that carrots gave its pilots night vision was cover for which new technology?
Radar
Radar was the real secret, so the carrot story was fed to the public as well; by 1942 Britain was sitting on a 100,000-ton carrot surplus.
Q 18Gum that is swallowed, rumoured to linger seven years, actually leaves the body in roughly how long?
A few days
A few days at most: swallowed gum passes through the system about as quickly as any other food, and comes out, as one account puts it, 'pretty unmolested'.
Q 19The Coriolis force is too weak to steer a draining sink, so what mostly decides the spin direction?
The shape of the basin
The shape of the basin, the drain geometry and whatever motion the water already had are orders of magnitude stronger than Coriolis; identical toilets flushed in both hemispheres drain the same way.
Q 20Owing to the equatorial bulge, which Ecuadorian summit is the point on Earth's surface farthest from its centre?
Chimborazo
Chimborazo's summit sits about 2.1 km farther from the centre of the planet than Everest's, because Earth bulges at the equator and Chimborazo stands only about one and a half degrees south of it.
Malum meant evil and, with a different vowel length, also apple, a coincidence artists seized on; Latin Christian writers actually preferred pomum, plain 'fruit', which drifted to mean apple in Old French.
Q 24Whose Confessions, written while Marie Antoinette was a child, already contained 'let them eat cake'?
Rousseau
Rousseau put the line in book six of his Confessions, written in 1765, as the words of 'a great princess'; Marie Antoinette would not even reach Versailles from Austria until 1770.
Q 25Whose Gateshead home was the world's first with working light bulbs, before he merged firms with Edison?
Joseph Swan
Joseph Swan's house at Low Fell was the first anywhere with working bulbs, and his strong British patents pushed the rival firms into the 1883 Edison & Swan United Electric Light Company, 'Ediswan'.
Q 26Twinkies, rumoured to last for decades, actually carry an official shelf life of roughly how long?
45 days
45 days is the limit today, and before stronger preservatives arrived in 2012 it was just 26 days; the legend of a snack lasting ten, fifty or a hundred years is pure urban myth.
Q 27Why can harvestmen, the 'daddy longlegs' of legend, not be the most venomous animal alive?
They have no venom glands
They have no venom glands at all: a harvestman's chelicerae are grasping claws, not hollow fangs, and usually too weak to break human skin, which makes the creature harmless.
Q 28A camel's humps, widely believed to be water tanks, actually hold a reserve of what?
Fat
Fat is what fills the humps, a calorie reserve for lean times; the water a camel drinks is stored in its bloodstream, which is why it can go so long between drinks.
Q 29Which French tune of 1761, now 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star', did Mozart merely write variations on?
Ah! vous dirai-je, maman
'Ah! vous dirai-je, maman' was first published in 1761 and was later arranged by several composers, Mozart's Twelve Variations among them; the melody existed long before he touched it.
Q 30Deoxygenated blood in human veins, whatever the textbook diagrams show, is actually what colour?
Deep red
Deep red is the true shade, thanks to haemoglobin; oxygenated blood in the arteries runs a lighter cherry red, and no blood anywhere in the body is blue.