60 free Famous People trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This is a quiz about the people everyone has heard of, built from the facts most people have not. Which world-famous scientist won Nobel Prizes in two different fields and left behind cookbooks too radioactive to touch? Which heavyweight champion won Olympic gold at 18 and lit the Olympic cauldron 36 years later? Which escape artist died on Halloween after being punched in the stomach? The 60 questions run from ancient Egypt and Rome to the Mongol steppe, Renaissance Florence, revolutionary France, Victorian London and modern Hollywood, sport and pop. Expect real names (the magician born Erik Weisz, the singer born Farrokh Bulsara), unlikely career detours (a basketball legend batting .202 in the minor leagues, a physicist who spent his old age chasing counterfeiters), odd coincidences (an author who arrived and left with Halley's Comet) and a few numbers worth remembering (years in prison, Oscars won, seconds on a stopwatch). Easy questions ask which ship carried Darwin and where Napoleon was born; the hard end asks for Queen Victoria's forgotten first name, the letter Beethoven wrote about going deaf and the learned society that made Florence Nightingale its first female member. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia biography of the person concerned, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Albert Einstein's 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded chiefly for his discovery of the law of what?
The photoelectric effect
Relativity was still considered too controversial for the committee, so the citation named his 1905 work on light and electrons instead.
Q 02Which Leonardo-attributed painting sold for a record US$450.3 million in 2017?
Salvator Mundi
Leonardo spent his final years in France as a close friend of King Francis I and died at the manor of Clos Lucé in 1519.
Q 03Cleopatra VII descended from Alexander's general Ptolemy I Soter, making her ethnically what?
Macedonian Greek
She is the only ruler of the dynasty known to have bothered to learn Egyptian, on top of several other languages, which helped her present herself as a native pharaoh.
Q 04On which Mediterranean island was Napoleon Bonaparte born in 1769?
Corsica
France had only acquired the island the year before. His first exile was on Elba, his last and fatal one on Saint Helena in the South Atlantic.
Q 05At which Washington venue was Abraham Lincoln shot by John Wilkes Booth in April 1865?
Ford's Theatre
He died the next morning in a boarding house across the street. Booth, a well-known actor, had performed at the theatre himself.
Q 06Marie Curie named the first element she discovered after her native country. What is the element?
Polonium
She remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, and her notebooks and even her cookbooks are still radioactive enough to be stored in lead-lined boxes.
Q 07Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in Vienna in 1791 at what age?
35
He completed more than 800 works in that short life; his sister recalled him composing little pieces at five for their father to write down.
Q 08What is Beethoven's despairing 1802 letter about his failing hearing called?
The Heiligenstadt Testament
He was never totally deaf; even late in life he could still hear low tones and sudden loud noises. He died in Vienna in 1827 at 56.
Q 09How many years did Nelson Mandela spend in prison before his release in February 1990?
27
He was held at Robben Island, Pollsmoor and finally Victor Verster, and his prisoner number, 46664, later became the name of his AIDS charity concerts.
Q 10Winston Churchill won a Nobel Prize in 1953. In which category?
Literature
The award recognised his historical writing and speeches. He had lost the general election of 1945 within weeks of victory in Europe, then returned as prime minister in 1951.
Q 11What first name, honouring her Russian godfather, did Queen Victoria later drop?
Alexandrina
Her nine children married into royal houses across the continent, earning her the nickname the grandmother of Europe.
Q 12As a young man travelling to Rhodes, Julius Caesar was captured and held for ransom by whom?
Pirates
He was later killed by senators led by Brutus and Cassius on the Ides of March, 44 BC. The month of his birth was renamed in his honour and his calendar reform lasted 1,600 years.
Q 13Which philosopher tutored Alexander the Great until he was 16?
Aristotle
Alexander went on to found more than twenty cities and was undefeated in battle before dying in Babylon at 32. His horse Bucephalas was named for its ox-shaped head.
Q 21Which Mexican painter took up art while recovering from a 1925 bus crash that impaled her pelvis?
Frida Kahlo
She had already survived polio at six. She married the muralist Diego Rivera twice, and her blue house in Coyoacán is now a museum.
Q 22Of the roughly 860 oil paintings Vincent van Gogh produced, most were made in which period of his life?
His last two years
He severed part of his left ear in Arles in December 1888 after a row with Gauguin, and died in July 1890 aged 37, two days after shooting himself.
Q 23Pablo Picasso's Guernica (1937) was painted in response to the bombing of a town in which country?
Spain
Q 14Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen in 1431. In which year was she made a saint?
1920
The retrial that annulled her conviction came in 1456, but canonisation took nearly five centuries; she was declared a patron saint of France two years after it.
Q 15After his 1633 trial by the Inquisition, how did Galileo Galilei spend the rest of his life?
Under house arrest
He was found vehemently suspect of heresy and forced to recant. He had discovered Jupiter's four largest moons in January 1610 with a telescope of his own making.
Q 16Charles Darwin's five-year voyage from 1831 to 1836 was aboard which Royal Navy ship?
HMS Beagle
He had trained for medicine at Edinburgh and for the clergy at Cambridge before the trip. He is buried in Westminster Abbey close to Isaac Newton.
Q 17Nikola Tesla was born in 1856 in the village of Smiljan, which lies in which modern country?
Croatia
He was an ethnic Serb born inside the Austrian Empire's Military Frontier. He died in a New York hotel in 1943, and the SI unit of magnetic flux density was named for him in 1960.
Q 18Amelia Earhart vanished over the Pacific in July 1937 while heading for which tiny island?
Howland
She and navigator Fred Noonan were flying a Lockheed Electra 10E on a round-the-world attempt. She was declared dead in absentia in January 1939.
Q 19Neil Armstrong earned his student pilot certificate at 16, before he had which other document?
A driver's licence
He went on to fly 78 combat missions in Korea, test the X-15 rocket plane and perform the first docking in space on Gemini 8 before commanding Apollo 11.
Q 20Which civil rights leader was born 'Michael' in 1929, renamed after his father visited Germany?
Martin Luther King Jr.
He was 35 when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and was assassinated in Memphis on 4 April 1968.
The town was bombed during the Spanish Civil War. Picasso's baptismal name ran to a full sentence of saints and relatives, and he co-founded Cubism with Georges Braque.
Q 24Which Hollywood star was born Norma Jeane Mortenson in Los Angeles in 1926?
Marilyn Monroe
She founded her own production company in 1955, married Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller, and won a Golden Globe for Some Like It Hot before dying at 36 in 1962.
Q 25In which Mississippi town were Elvis and his stillborn twin Jesse Garon born?
Tupelo
Elvis was drafted and served in the US Army from 1958 to 1960, then died at Graceland in Memphis in August 1977, aged 42.
Q 26Which boxer, born Cassius Clay, won 1960 Olympic gold and lit the Atlanta cauldron 36 years later?
Muhammad Ali
He refused induction into the army in 1967 and lost his titles; the Supreme Court unanimously overturned his conviction in 1971. He beat Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle in 1974.
Q 27In 1986 Steve Jobs bought the Graphics Group from Lucasfilm for $10 million. What did the company become?
Pixar
He had been pushed out of Apple the year before after a power struggle with CEO John Sculley, and founded NeXT the same year. He returned to Apple in 1997.
Q 28Walt Disney holds the record for the most competitive Academy Awards won by an individual. How many?
22
That came from 59 nominations. He also voiced Mickey Mouse himself from Steamboat Willie in 1928 until 1947.
Q 29Barred from the US in 1952, Charlie Chaplin settled in which country for the rest of his life?
Switzerland
He returned to Hollywood only once, to accept an honorary Oscar in 1972. He had co-founded United Artists in 1919 with Pickford, Fairbanks and Griffith.
Q 30Which rock frontman was born Farrokh Bulsara to a Parsi family in Zanzibar in 1946?
Freddie Mercury
He wrote Bohemian Rhapsody and played it first to DJ Kenny Everett, who predicted it would be number one for centuries. He died in 1991, a day after confirming he had AIDS.