Explorers Trivia
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50 free Explorers trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Some explorers found what they were looking for. Most found something else: a continent instead of a spice route, a lake instead of the source of the Nile, a black flag already planted at the Pole. This quiz collects fifty of them, from a Carthaginian sailing down West Africa in the fifth century BC to the men who walked on the Moon. You'll meet the medieval travellers — Marco Polo dictating his tales in a Genoese prison, Ibn Battuta clocking up 117,000 kilometres, Zheng He bringing a giraffe home to China. Then the Atlantic and Pacific navigators, the men who walked across America, the Victorians who carved up Africa's map, and the polar parties of Nansen, Peary, Amundsen, Scott and Shackleton. The modern era brings Everest, the Aqua-Lung, Kon-Tiki, a journalist who beat Phileas Fogg, and Vostok 1. The questions start easy and end with dates, ship names and the explorer who spoke 29 languages. Fifty questions, each answer sourced. Pack light.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Marco Polo dictated his travels in prison after being captured in Venice's war with which rival city?
Genoa
Genoa. In a Genoese prison Polo told his stories to a fellow inmate, Rustichello da Pisa, a professional writer of romances who shaped them into the book that made him famous.
Q 02Ibn Battuta spent years as a judge for the sultan of which city?
Delhi
Delhi. Its sultan, Muhammad bin Tughluq, later sent him to China as an envoy, but bandits attacked the party on the road and a storm then wrecked the mission in port before he had boarded.
Q 03Ibn Battuta came from which present-day country?
Morocco
Morocco. He left his home city of Tangier at 21 to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, and did not come back for 24 years.
Q 04Zheng He's fleet brought home which African animal, hailed at court as a qilin?
Giraffe
Giraffe. The qilin stood for good fortune, so the long-necked arrival was read at court as a sign of heaven's favour; Zheng He led seven such voyages, reaching as far as East Africa.
Q 05The monk Xuanzang, whose pilgrimage inspired Journey to the West, sought Buddhist scriptures in which land?
India
India. Xuanzang came home with 657 Buddhist texts and spent the rest of his life translating them; the novel later gave him the Monkey King as a travelling companion.
Q 06Around 325 BC the Greek explorer Pytheas reported which land, six days' sail north of Britain?
Thule
Thule. Nobody has settled where Pytheas meant, with Iceland and Norway the leading guesses, so 'Ultima Thule' came to mean any place beyond the edge of the known world.
Q 07The Norse site at L'Anse aux Meadows, possibly Leif Erikson's Vinland, is on which Canadian island?
Newfoundland
Newfoundland. A burst of cosmic rays in 993 left a marker in tree rings worldwide, which let scientists date wood the Norse cut there to exactly 1021, long before Columbus.
Q 08What did Bartolomeu Dias reportedly first call the headland later named Good Hope?
Cape of Storms
Cape of Storms, or Cabo das Tormentas. Tradition says King John II of Portugal renamed it Good Hope because rounding it promised a sea route to the East.
Q 09Vasco da Gama reached the coast of which modern Indian state in May 1498?
Kerala
Kerala. Da Gama landed near Calicut, where his royal gifts of cloth, hats, sugar and honey failed to impress a court that had expected gold.
Q 10Columbus's first landfall in 1492, on Guanahani, was in which present-day country?
The Bahamas
The Bahamas. Columbus renamed the Lucayan island of Guanahani San Salvador, but scholars still disagree over which island it actually was.
Q 11Which institution now owns the 1507 map that first printed the name 'America'?
The Library of Congress
The Library of Congress. Its copy of Martin Waldseemüller's map, the only one known to survive from a printing of about 1,000, lay unnoticed in a German castle until 1901.
Q 12Which explorer crossed Panama in 1513 to become the first European to see the Pacific from the Americas?
Vasco Núñez de Balboa
Vasco Núñez de Balboa. He waded in to claim the whole 'South Sea' for Spain, but a few years later a rival governor had him arrested by Francisco Pizarro, tried for treason and beheaded.
Q 13Who captained the Victoria home to complete the first circumnavigation after Magellan was killed?
Q 21The Englishman Henry Hudson explored the Hudson River in 1609 while sailing for which nation?
The Dutch
The Dutch. Their East India Company hired Hudson to find a northeast route to Asia; when that failed he took the Halve Maen (Half Moon) west instead and sailed up the river.
Q 22Francis Drake received his knighthood in 1581 aboard which ship?
Golden Hind
Golden Hind. Drake had renamed the Pelican mid-voyage in honour of his patron Sir Christopher Hatton, whose family crest showed a golden hind, and he was knighted on her deck at Deptford.
Q 23After reaching Tasmania in 1642, Abel Tasman became the first European to sight which country?
New Zealand
Juan Sebastián Elcano
Juan Sebastián Elcano. His was the last of the fleet's five ships, and it reached Spain in 1522 with a hold full of spices and only a handful of the men who had set out.
Q 14In which present-day country was Magellan killed in 1521?
The Philippines
The Philippines. Magellan landed on the island of Mactan to fight the chief Lapulapu on behalf of a local ally, was hit by a poisoned arrow and was then overwhelmed by Lapulapu's warriors.
Q 15In 1542 Francisco de Orellana became the first European to sail the length of which river?
The Amazon
The Amazon. Sent ahead by boat to find food for Gonzalo Pizarro's cinnamon-hunting expedition, Orellana never turned back and reached the Atlantic in August 1542.
Q 16Juan Ponce de León led the first known European expedition to which future US state in 1513?
Florida
Florida. He never mentioned a Fountain of Youth in his surviving letters to the king; a Spanish chronicler pinned the tale on him in 1535, years after his death.
Q 17Coronado's expedition made the first European sightings of which natural wonder?
The Grand Canyon
The Grand Canyon. Coronado sent García López de Cárdenas to look for a great river in 1540, and his scouts reached the rim while the main force hunted the fabled Seven Cities of Cíbola.
Q 18Jacques Cartier took the name 'Canada' from a word used by which people?
The Iroquoians
The Iroquoians. The usual account is that in 1535 locals used their word kanata, meaning village, to direct Cartier to Stadacona, and he applied it to the whole region.
Q 19Samuel de Champlain founded which city on 3 July 1608?
Quebec
Quebec. Champlain built his fort where the Saint Lawrence River tightens beneath a cliff, and the name comes from an Algonquian word for 'narrows'.
Q 20What happened to Henry Hudson after his crew mutinied in 1611?
He was cast adrift in a small boat
He was cast adrift in a small boat. After a winter trapped in the ice Hudson wanted to keep exploring, so the crew put him, his teenage son and a few loyal or sick men over the side and sailed home.
New Zealand. Tasman's first meeting with Māori ended with four of his sailors dead, so he named the anchorage Murderers' Bay and sailed away.
Q 24Which ship carried James Cook on his first voyage of 1768-71?
Endeavour
Endeavour. She ran onto the Great Barrier Reef in 1770, and Cook had to beach her for weeks of repairs before the voyage could go on.
Q 25Which navigator, the first to sail right around the continent, popularised the name 'Australia'?
Matthew Flinders
Matthew Flinders. He found 'Australia' 'more agreeable to the ear' than Terra Australis and pushed for it from 1804; the governor of New South Wales took it up in his despatches in 1817, three years after his death.
Q 26Which imported animals carried supplies for the Burke and Wills crossing of Australia in 1860–61?
Camels
Camels. Two dozen were shipped in with their handlers; Burke and Wills got within reach of the Gulf of Carpentaria, then struggled back to their depot to find the support party had left only hours earlier.
Q 27Which president commissioned the Lewis and Clark Expedition?
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson. He asked Congress for the money in a secret message in January 1803, months before the Louisiana Purchase, and had Lewis study botany, medicine and astronomy first.
Q 28Sacagawea, who helped Lewis and Clark, belonged to which people?
Shoshone
Shoshone. The expedition's journals say Hidatsa raiders had kidnapped her as a girl, and that the chief of the band Lewis and Clark needed horses from proved to be her brother, Cameahwait.
Q 29Which naturalist climbed higher than any European before him on Ecuador's Chimborazo in 1802?
Humboldt
Humboldt. The Prussian naturalist turned back a few hundred metres short of a summit that, thanks to Earth's equatorial bulge, is the farthest point on the surface from the planet's centre.
Q 30Victoria Falls, which David Livingstone named in 1855, lies on which river?
The Zambezi
The Zambezi. The Lozi name for the falls, Mosi-oa-Tunya, means 'the smoke that thunders', for the roar and the veil of mist; Livingstone renamed them after his queen.