General Knowledge
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208 free General Knowledge trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
83 free bar trivia questions with answers, written the way a good quiz night runs: a bit of history, a bit of science, geography, food and drink, sport, film, music and art, with nothing in common except that each one is worth knowing. The first rounds are gentle enough that nobody at the table is left out; the later rounds bring the stingers about the longest-running Broadway show, the only bone not connected to any other, and which planet actually has the most moons. It works as a full pub quiz, a warm-up round for your own trivia night, or a game to argue over at happy hour, in the car or after dinner. If you want one set of ultimate trivia questions that covers everything, start here. Every question is short, has four options and comes with an explanation that gives you something to talk about before the next one. Every answer has been checked against a real source and each question shows where it came from, so a bar-room dispute can be settled on the spot.
30 of 208 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the chemical symbol for gold?
Au
Au comes from aurum, Latin for gold, yet an Olympic gold medal today must be at least 92.5% silver, with only about 6 grams of gold.
Q 02Which is the longest river in South America?
Amazon River
The Amazon River pushes so much fresh water into the ocean that explorer Vicente Yáñez Pinzón named it Santa María de la Mar Dulce, the 'fresh-water sea'.
Q 03Which Paris landmark did a crowd storm on 14 July?
Bastille
The Bastille held only seven prisoners, but the crowd came for its gunpowder, and within months the building had been demolished.
Q 04Who wrote the dystopian novel '1984'?
George Orwell
George Orwell's dystopian novel 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' popularized terms like 'Big Brother' and 'Thought Police,' serving as a warning against totalitarianism.
Q 05Mixing red and green light, as screens do, makes which colour?
Yellow
Yellow: most screens have no yellow elements at all, so the yellow you see on one is red and green lights glowing side by side.
Q 06Which is the only mammal capable of true flight?
Bat
The bat flies by flapping membranes stretched across long finger bones, while flying squirrels, sugar gliders and colugos can only glide.
Q 07Which ancient civilization built the pyramids at Giza?
Egyptian
The Egyptian workers who built them were probably not slaves: their tombs lie beside the pyramids, stocked with bread and beer for the afterlife.
Q 08Who wrote the play "Romeo and Juliet"?
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare didn't invent the story: he closely followed Arthur Brooke's poem The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet.
Q 09Which artist painted "The Starry Night"?
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh painted it while living in the asylum at Saint-Rémy, which he had admitted himself to, working from sketches of the view from his bedroom window.
Q 10Which organ is responsible for pumping blood throughout the body?
Heart
The heart sets its own beat with a natural pacemaker, the sinoatrial node, which fires by itself while nerves only speed it up or slow it down.
Q 11Who is credited with inventing the light bulb?
Thomas Edison
Several inventors, including Britain's Joseph Swan, made incandescent lamps before Thomas Edison, but his was the first practical one, thanks to a better filament and a higher vacuum.
Q 12How often are the Summer Olympic Games held?
Every 4 years
The Summer Olympics come every 4 years, and since 1994 the Winter Games have run in the even years between them, so there is an Olympics every two years.
Q 13Which ingredient gives sushi rice its sour tang?
Vinegar
Vinegar: sushi began as fish packed in fermenting rice for months, and mixing vinegar into the rice gave the same sourness at once, turning sushi into fast food.
Q 21What is the highest mountain in Africa?
Mount Kilimanjaro
Mount Kilimanjaro sits close to the equator yet still carries ice, although almost 85% of its ice cover vanished between 1912 and 2011.
Q 22Who is widely credited with inventing the telephone?
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell patented the first practical telephone in 1876. His mother and his wife were both deaf, which shaped his lifelong work on speech and hearing.
Q 23Which ocean lies between Europe and America?
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is still widening: along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the plates carrying Europe and North America drift apart by a few centimetres a year.
Q 14Which of these is a string instrument?
Violin
The violin is played with a bow strung with horsehair, which players rub with rosin so the hair grips the strings instead of sliding over them.
Q 15In Greek mythology, who was the king of the gods?
Zeus
Zeus drew the sky when he and his brothers split the world by lot after defeating the Titans: Poseidon got the sea and Hades the underworld.
Q 16Which large flightless bird, the world's second-tallest, is endemic to Australia?
Emu
The emu is the world's second-tallest bird after the ostrich, reaching up to 190 cm. The cassowary is also found in Australia, but only in the far north-eastern rainforests, and it is bulkier rather than taller.
Q 17Which national capital stands on the river that divides Ontario from Quebec?
Ottawa
Ottawa got the job when Queen Victoria was asked to choose, ending years in which the seat of government kept moving between Kingston, Montreal, Toronto and Quebec City.
Q 18What is the force that pulls objects towards the center of the Earth?
Gravity
Gravity still grips astronauts on the space station; they float because they are in constant free fall, moving sideways fast enough to keep missing Earth.
Q 19Which novelist created Mr Darcy?
Jane Austen
Jane Austen sold the copyright to Mr Darcy's story outright for £110, so the novel's later success earned her nothing more.
Q 20What element has the chemical symbol K?
Potassium
K comes from kalium, which traces back to the Arabic for plant ashes, and potassium was the first metal ever isolated by electrolysis, by Humphry Davy.
Q 24Which planet is known for its Great Red Spot, a high-pressure storm that has been raging for centuries?
Jupiter
Jupiter's Great Red Spot is shrinking: it is now less than half as wide as in the late 1800s, though still wider than Earth.
Q 25What is the currency of Japan?
Yen
Yen means 'round', after round silver coins, and the Chinese yuan and Korean won take their names from the same word.
Q 26Which country is famous for the tango dance?
Argentina
Argentina's elite once scorned tango as a dance of port bars and brothels, yet by the 1910s it was a craze in Paris.
Q 27What is the chemical formula for water?
H2O
Water is H2O, and unlike most substances it is less dense as a solid, which is why ice floats and lakes don't freeze from the bottom up.
Q 28Who is generally credited with inventing the printing press?
Johannes Gutenberg
Johannes Gutenberg lost his workshop to his investor Johann Fust, who sued him to get his loans back.
Q 29What is the largest organ of the human body?
Skin
Skin is the body's largest organ, and pig skin is close enough to ours that it is used as a temporary covering for severe burns.
Q 30Who wrote the novel "The Great Gatsby"?
F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel sold poorly, and when he died in 1940 it had fallen into near obscurity; its fame as a classic came only after his death.