Everyday Things
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50 free Everyday Things trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The objects you handle before breakfast have stranger histories than most museum pieces. Many were accidents, a few failed at the job they were first made for, and plenty carry the name of a person or place that almost nobody remembers. This quiz covers the stuff of daily life: things in the kitchen, the office, the wardrobe and the car, the foods in the cupboard, the words and symbols people use without thinking, and a few small parts of ordinary objects whose names you may never have heard. It suits anyone who enjoys an 'I never knew that' fact, from casual players to quiz hosts who need a general round. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you leave knowing the story as well as the score.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which packing material was created by two inventors who were trying to make three-dimensional plastic wallpaper?
Bubble wrap
Bubble wrap flopped on walls, but found its purpose in 1960 when IBM began shipping its new 1401 computers in it.
Q 02Which kitchen appliance did Percy Spencer develop after a snack reportedly melted in his pocket near a radar set?
Microwave oven
Microwave oven pioneer Percy Spencer went on to test popcorn, and then an egg that exploded in a colleague's face.
Q 03Which fastener did George de Mestral devise after burrs clung to his dog's fur on an Alpine hunting trip?
Velcro
Velcro blends the French words velours and crochet, meaning velvet and hook, after its soft side and its gripping side.
Q 04What was the first product ever scanned with a UPC barcode, at a supermarket checkout in Troy, Ohio?
A pack of gum
A pack of gum, Wrigley's Juicy Fruit, made history at 8:01 one June morning in 1974, and a facsimile of it went on show at the Smithsonian.
Q 05Which technology for linking gadgets is named after Harald, a tenth-century king who united the tribes of Denmark?
Bluetooth
Bluetooth was a code name proposed by Intel's Jim Kardach, who meant it to unite communication protocols the way the king united his people.
Q 06Which popular fruit counts as a berry in botany, even though strawberries and raspberries do not?
Banana
Banana fruits qualify because each grows from a single flower with one ovary, a test that tomatoes, grapes and cucumbers also pass.
Q 07Which children's modelling compound was first made in Cincinnati as a cleaner for wiping coal residue off wallpaper?
Play-Doh
Play-Doh got its second life in the mid-1950s, when the fading cleaner was reworked and marketed to Cincinnati schools.
Q 08Which food gave unwanted bulk email its name, by way of a Monty Python sketch about a restaurant menu?
Spam
Spam turns up in almost every dish in the sketch, just as junk messages later flooded every corner of early online newsgroups.
Q 09Which style of shoe was first worn by Persian cavalrymen to keep their feet secure in the stirrups?
High heels
High heels reached Europe with Persian emissaries in the early 17th century, and only later did the trend spread to women's fashion.
Q 10Which toy brand's name comes from a Danish phrase meaning 'play well', coined by a carpenter from Billund?
Lego
Lego began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen, who was making wooden toys years before the first plastic bricks.
Q 11Which office product grew from a weak, reusable adhesive that 3M scientist Spencer Silver created by accident?
Post-it Note
Post-it Note history turned on a colleague, Arthur Fry, who used the weak glue to anchor a bookmark in his hymn book.
Q 12Which mineral, found in a huge deposit at Borrowdale in England, forms the writing core of a pencil?
Graphite
Graphite was thought to be a form of lead when the deposit was found in the 1500s, which is why pencil cores still carry that metal's name.
Q 13Which lunchtime staple is named after an 18th-century English earl said to have eaten it during card games?
Sandwich
Sandwich was the title of John Montagu, the 4th Earl, who is said to have ordered roast beef between toast so he could stay at the gaming table.
Q 21Which fastener got its everyday name from a brand of galoshes sold by the B.F. Goodrich Company?
Zipper
Zipper boots could be closed with a single zip of the hand, and the catchy name soon passed from the galoshes to the fastener itself.
Q 22Which office item did Norwegians wear on their lapels as a quiet symbol of resistance to German occupation?
Paper clip
Paper clip wearers were getting round a ban on flag pins and on badges showing the cipher of the exiled King Haakon VII.
Q 23Which writing tool did Hungarian newspaper editor László Bíró develop after noticing how quickly printing ink dried?
Ballpoint pen
Ballpoint pen ink had to be thick, so Bíró worked with his brother György to develop a viscous ink that a rolling ball could carry onto the paper.
Q 14Which hard-wearing fabric takes its name from the French city of Nîmes, where it was first produced?
Denim
Denim is a contraction of serge de Nîmes, and Levi Strauss was the wholesaler who supplied bolts of it to the tailor Jacob Davis.
Q 15Which keyboard layout did newspaper editor Christopher Latham Sholes devise for his typewriter in the early 1870s?
QWERTY
QWERTY is named after the first six keys of its top letter row, and it caught on with the success of the Remington No. 2 typewriter.
Q 16Which sweet food, too sugary and acidic for most microbes, has been found still edible after thousands of years?
Honey
Honey holds only about 18% water, far less than the 70 to 80% in the nectar that bees collect to make it.
Q 17Which day of the week takes its English name from a Roman god rather than a Germanic one like Thor?
Saturday
Saturday keeps the Roman god Saturn, while Germanic peoples put their own gods, such as Tiw, Woden and Frigg, in place of other Roman deities.
Q 18Which word, from an Old French term for a needle, names the hard tip on the end of a shoelace?
Aglet
Aglet tips stop the fibres of a lace from unravelling, and their firm, narrow shape makes the lace easier to feed through each hole.
Q 19Which food was first sold ready-sliced by machine in Chillicothe, Missouri, thanks to inventor Otto Rohwedder?
Bread
Bread slicing took Rohwedder years to crack: a fire destroyed his 1912 prototype, and he had no fully working machine until 1928.
Q 20Which kitchen appliance did Josephine Cochrane invent and show off at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago?
Dishwasher
Dishwasher design sprang from Cochrane's frustration that her servants kept damaging her good china when they washed it by hand.
Q 24Which nonstick coating did DuPont chemist Roy Plunkett discover by accident while working on a new refrigerant?
Teflon
Teflon gave itself away when a pressure bottle of gas stopped flowing even though its weight showed it was far from empty.
Q 25Which car part did Mary Anderson patent, reportedly after seeing a New York streetcar driver struggle with snow?
Windshield wiper
Windshield wiper buyers never came for Anderson: firms saw no commercial value, and her patent expired in 1920 before mass production began.
Q 26Which car safety feature did Volvo's Nils Bohlin develop, with Volvo then letting rival carmakers use it for free?
Three-point seat belt
Three-point seat belt design followed Bohlin's earlier work on ejection seats at Saab, and he proved its worth with a study of 28,000 Swedish accidents.
Q 27Which tissue brand was launched in 1924 as a way to remove cold cream, not to blow noses?
Kleenex
Kleenex grew out of a crepe filter made for gas masks in the First World War, and it was pitched at colds and hay fever only later.
Q 28Which household repair staple was developed in World War II on a waterproof cloth backing to seal ammunition cases?
Duct tape
Duct tape spread thanks to ordnance worker Vesta Stoudt, who wrote to President Roosevelt fearing that poor box seals cost soldiers time in battle.
Q 29Which medicine-cabinet staple did Earle Dickson devise for his wife, who often cut and burned herself cooking?
Band-Aid
Band-Aid prototypes were strips of gauze on a long sticky surgical backing, which let her dress her own wounds without any help.
Q 30Which household spray was first developed to protect the outer skin of the Atlas missile from rust?
WD-40
WD-40 stands for Water Displacement, 40th formula, a name suggesting that its makers needed forty attempts to get the recipe right.