Famous People Trivia
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108 free Famous People trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 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 108 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 108 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
The photoelectric effect: the citation passed over relativity, which some physicists still doubted and the prize's presentation speech called a subject of lively debate.
Q 02Which Leonardo-attributed painting sold for a record US$450.3 million in 2017?
Salvator Mundi
Salvator Mundi: it smashed the auction record even though the panel was badly damaged and not every expert accepts it as Leonardo's own work.
Q 03Cleopatra VII, last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, came from a royal dynasty of what origin?
Macedonian Greek
Macedonian Greek: the line began with Ptolemy I Soter, a general of Alexander the Great, and Cleopatra was the first of its rulers known to have learned Egyptian.
Q 04On which Mediterranean island was Napoleon Bonaparte born in 1769?
Corsica
Corsica: France had acquired the island only the year before, and Napoleon's father had joined Pasquale Paoli's resistance to French rule.
Q 05At which Washington venue was Abraham Lincoln shot by John Wilkes Booth in April 1865?
Ford's Theatre
Ford's Theatre: Booth, a star actor, had performed there, and in November 1863 Lincoln had watched him play in The Marble Heart on that very stage.
Q 06Which element did Marie Curie name after her native country?
Polonium
Polonium: Poland was then partitioned among Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary, so naming an element after it made a political statement about its lost independence.
Q 07Which composer died in Vienna in 1791, aged 35, leaving his Requiem unfinished?
Mozart
Mozart: decades after his death, a rumour spread that the composer Antonio Salieri had poisoned him, but there is no basis for it.
Q 08Beethoven's 1802 Heiligenstadt Testament, a letter to his brothers, revealed his despair over what?
His growing deafness
His growing deafness: Beethoven never sent the letter but kept it hidden among his papers for the rest of his life, and it was found only after his death.
Q 09Where did Nelson Mandela spend 18 of his 27 years behind bars?
Robben Island
Robben Island: he laboured in its lime quarry and wrote the first draft of Long Walk to Freedom there.
Q 10Which British prime minister won the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature?
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill was cited for his histories and his oratory, but he could not attend the Stockholm banquet, so his wife Clementine read his speech for him.
Q 11What first name, honouring her Russian godfather, did Queen Victoria later drop?
Alexandrina
Alexandrina: christened Alexandrina Victoria, she was only fifth in line to the throne at birth, yet she reigned simply as Victoria from 1837.
Q 12As a young man travelling to Rhodes, Julius Caesar was captured and held for ransom by whom?
Pirates
Pirates: in Plutarch's telling he mocked their ransom demand as too low, warned he would crucify them, and once freed caught them and did exactly that.
Q 13Which philosopher tutored Alexander the Great until he was 16?
Aristotle
Aristotle: as payment, Alexander's father Philip II rebuilt Aristotle's hometown of Stagira, which Philip himself had razed, and brought its exiled citizens home.
Q 21Which Mexican painter took up art while recovering from a 1925 bus crash that impaled her pelvis?
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo, who had survived polio at six, began painting in bed after the crash, and she married the muralist Diego Rivera twice.
Q 22Pablo Picasso's Guernica (1937) was painted in response to the bombing of a town in which country?
Spain
Spain: Nazi German bombers backing Franco's Nationalists attacked the Basque town on 26 April 1937, and an outraged Picasso painted Guernica that year.
Q 23Which Hollywood star was born Norma Jeane Mortenson in Los Angeles in 1926?
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe: tired of dumb-blonde roles, she left Hollywood for New York to study acting with Lee Strasberg.
Q 14In which Normandy city was Joan of Arc burned at the stake in 1431?
Rouen
Rouen: 25 years later a retrial authorised by Pope Calixtus III annulled her conviction, and in 1920 the Church declared her a saint.
Q 15After his 1633 trial by the Inquisition, how did Galileo Galilei spend the rest of his life?
Under house arrest
Under house arrest at his villa at Arcetri near Florence, Galileo, almost totally blind, still got his Two New Sciences published in Leiden in 1638.
Q 16Charles Darwin's five-year voyage from 1831 to 1836 was aboard which Royal Navy ship?
HMS Beagle
HMS Beagle: Darwin's father at first objected to the voyage as a waste of time, until Darwin's uncle Josiah Wedgwood answered his objections and he relented.
Q 17Nikola Tesla was born in 1856 in the village of Smiljan, which lies in which modern country?
Croatia
Croatia: Tesla's father, an Orthodox priest, wanted him to join the priesthood but promised him engineering school if he survived cholera, and he did.
Q 18Amelia Earhart vanished over the Pacific in July 1937 while heading for which tiny island?
Howland
Howland Island: the Coast Guard cutter Itasca waited offshore to guide her in, but radio contact failed, and a massive two-week search never found her.
Q 19Which astronaut earned a student pilot certificate at 16, before holding a driver's licence?
Neil Armstrong
Neil Armstrong: years later, on Gemini 8, he steadied a violent spin caused by a stuck thruster by using fuel meant for re-entry.
Q 20Which civil rights leader was born 'Michael' in 1929 and renamed as a small boy?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr.: his father, also born Michael, took the name in honour of the German reformer Martin Luther, and his son followed.
Q 24In which Mississippi town were Elvis and his stillborn twin Jesse Garon born?
Tupelo
Tupelo: after the family moved to Memphis, Elvis paid to cut his first record at what became Sun Studio.
Q 25Which boxer won Olympic gold in 1960 and lit the cauldron at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics?
Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali: stripped of his titles for refusing the draft in 1967, he was cleared when the Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 1971.
Q 26Which studio grew out of the Lucasfilm computer graphics group that Steve Jobs bought in 1986?
Pixar
Pixar: Jobs kept pouring his own money into the studio, and its Toy Story became the first feature film made entirely with computer animation.
Q 27As of 2025, which individual holds the record for the most Academy Awards won?
Walt Disney
Walt Disney won 22, and he was also the original voice of Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie and the early cartoons.
Q 28Barred from the US in 1952, Charlie Chaplin settled in which country for the rest of his life?
Switzerland
Chaplin settled at Corsier-sur-Vevey on Lake Geneva in Switzerland, where he died in 1977; he returned to Hollywood only once, for an honorary Oscar in 1972, having co-founded United Artists in 1919.
Q 29On which island was Freddie Mercury born in 1946?
Zanzibar
Zanzibar: in 1964 his family fled a violent revolution there and settled in England.
Q 30Which reggae star was shot in December 1976 yet still performed at the Smile Jamaica concert two days later?
Bob Marley
Bob Marley still took the stage, then left Jamaica for exile in England and did not return home until 1978.