Former Countries
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50 free Former Countries trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The map of the world is rewritten more often than most people realise. Empires that lasted for centuries were wound up in an afternoon, unions of nations came apart within a few years, and some states were so short-lived that they are remembered mainly for a flag or a single ruler. This quiz is a tour of countries that don't exist anymore. It covers the great collapses of the twentieth century, breakaway republics that never won recognition, kingdoms swallowed by larger neighbours, and familiar nations that simply changed what they were called. Each answer comes with a short explanation of what happened and what stands there now. It is written for history fans, geography buffs and quiz teams. The opening questions are ones most people can reason out, and the later ones reward anyone who enjoys the odd corners of an old atlas.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which former country, a union of South Slavic peoples long led by Tito, broke up in the early 1990s?
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia had been created after World War I as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and it split at first into five countries, setting off the Yugoslav Wars.
Q 02Which US state was an independent republic for almost ten years before the United States annexed it in 1845?
Texas
Texas was a sovereign country for nine years and entered the Union as the 28th state, though the formal handover of power waited until February 1846.
Q 03Which empire, the eastern heir of Rome, ended when Mehmed II captured Constantinople in 1453?
Byzantine
The Byzantine state was the last surviving part of the Roman Empire, so its fall closed a story that had begun in roughly 27 BC, nearly 1,500 years earlier.
Q 04Which French Enlightenment writer quipped that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire?
Voltaire
Voltaire's jibe outlived its target: Emperor Francis II dissolved the empire in 1806 after a military defeat by the French under Napoleon.
Q 05Which tiny state was created in 1929, decades after Italy absorbed the much larger Papal States?
Vatican City
Vatican City was created by the Lateran Treaty, which ended the decades after 1870 when popes, having lost Rome, lived as self-declared prisoners in the Vatican.
Q 06Which animal appeared on the flag of the California Republic, a breakaway state that lasted 25 days in 1846?
Grizzly bear
A grizzly bear in silhouette gave the rebels' Bear Flag its name, and the design later became the basis for California's official state flag.
Q 07By what name was the island nation of Sri Lanka known until it became a republic in 1972?
Ceylon
Ceylon had been independent since 1948 as a dominion sharing its monarch with other Commonwealth countries, and it took its present name on becoming a republic.
Q 08Which East German car, with body panels of plastic made from cotton waste, became a symbol of the country?
Trabant
The Trabant kept its 1950s design almost unchanged until 1990, and it came to symbolise the country as East Germans crossed the open border in 1989.
Q 09Which island nation united with mainland Tanganyika in 1964 to form a new East African country?
Zanzibar
Zanzibar merged with Tanganyika three months after a revolution deposed its sultan, and the new country's name, Tanzania, blends the two.
Q 10Which city was the capital of South Vietnam until the country fell to northern forces in 1975?
Saigon
Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in 1976, when North and South were formally merged into a single country under the victorious communist government.
Q 11Who was the last leader of the Soviet Union, resigning as the country dissolved in December 1991?
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev had led the country since 1985, and after stepping down he became a vocal critic of Russian presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin.
Q 12By what short name was East Germany's Ministry for State Security, its feared secret police, commonly known?
Stasi
The Stasi relied on a vast network of civilian informants, and after reunification its files on millions of citizens were opened so that people could read their own.
Q 13Which city was the capital of West Germany from 1949 until the country's reunification in 1990?
Bonn
Q 21Which British dominion gave up self-government in 1934 and became a province of Canada in 1949?
Newfoundland
Newfoundland is the only dominion ever to give up its self-governing status, and for 15 years it was run by an appointed six-member commission.
Q 22Which Himalayan kingdom, ruled by a priest-king called the Chogyal, became a state of India in 1975?
Sikkim
Sikkim had been a monarchy since 1642, and it joined its giant neighbour after a referendum held once troops had taken over the capital, Gangtok.
Q 23Egypt united in 1958 with which country to form the United Arab Republic, a union that lasted three years?
Syria
Syria seceded after a coup in 1961, yet Egypt went on calling itself the United Arab Republic for another ten years.
Bonn stayed the seat of government for reunified Germany until 1999, when the government finally relocated to Berlin.
Q 14Which former German kingdom, with its capital at Berlin, was formally abolished by the Allies in 1947?
Prussia
Prussia was condemned by the Allies as a bearer of militarism and reaction, though it had lost its real independence in 1932, when its government's powers passed to the German chancellor.
Q 15Which empire, ruled by sultans for about six centuries, was replaced by the Republic of Turkey in the 1920s?
Ottoman
The Ottoman name is an English form of Osman, the tribal leader whose small principality in north-western Anatolia grew into the empire.
Q 16Which Habsburg-ruled dual monarchy in Central Europe was dissolved in 1918 at the end of World War I?
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary dated only from 1867, when a compromise turned the old Habsburg empire into a union of two states under one monarch.
Q 17What title was held by the ruler of the Republic of Venice, elected for life until Napoleon ended the state?
Doge
The Doge was chosen through a complex series of votes, and by tradition the office lasted about 1,100 years, from 697 to 1797.
Q 18Which general led the volunteer Expedition of the Thousand that conquered the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1860?
Giuseppe Garibaldi
Giuseppe Garibaldi sailed from near Genoa with a corps of volunteers, landed at Marsala in Sicily, and conquered the south in the name of King Victor Emmanuel II.
Q 19Which city served as capital of the Confederate States of America for nearly all of the Civil War?
Richmond
Richmond took over in May 1861 from Montgomery, Alabama, which had been the Confederate capital for less than four months.
Q 20Queen Liliʻuokalani, deposed in a coup in 1893, was the last monarch of which Pacific island kingdom?
Hawaii
Hawaii lost its queen to a coup led by a committee made up mostly of residents of American descent, after she tried to bring in a constitution strengthening royal power.
Q 24Which port city was the capital of South Yemen until the country united with its northern neighbour in 1990?
Aden
Aden had been a British colony before independence in 1967, and until 1937 it was governed as a part of British India.
Q 25Biafra, a breakaway state whose defeat ended a civil war in 1970, tried to secede from which country?
Nigeria
Nigeria faced the secession of its Eastern Region, home mainly to the Igbo people, which declared independence in 1967 and held out for two and a half years.
Q 26Which West African country was called Upper Volta until Thomas Sankara renamed it in 1984?
Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso means 'Land of Incorruptible People', a name adopted exactly one year after Sankara took power in a military coup.
Q 27Which African country, ruled by emperors until a 1974 coup, was historically known as Abyssinia?
Ethiopia
Ethiopia was ruled by a dynasty founded around 1270 until its final emperor, Haile Selassie, was deposed, and the old empire also covered present-day Eritrea.
Q 28Which Southeast Asian country was officially called Burma in English until a name change in 1989?
Myanmar
Myanmar declared independence in 1948, and a coup in 1962 began the long military rule under which the English name was changed.
Q 29What name did Mobutu Sese Seko give the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which used it from 1971 to 1997?
Zaire
Zaire vanished along with its ruler: the old name was restored in 1997, and Mobutu died in exile less than four months later.
Q 30Which unrecognised state, which declared independence from Britain in 1965 under Ian Smith, is now Zimbabwe?
Rhodesia
Rhodesia broke away to delay black majority rule, then fought a long bush war against nationalist guerrillas before a 1979 agreement led to recognised independence.