This historical figures trivia quiz has 100 free questions with answers and runs from Hammurabi's Babylon to Nelson Mandela's presidency, one famous person at a time. Fifty questions cover the rulers (Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Genghis Khan, Suleiman, Catherine the Great, Queen Victoria, Louis XIV), the thinkers and scientists (Socrates, Archimedes, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Marie Curie, Ada Lovelace, Nikola Tesla), the explorers (Magellan, Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta), the fighters and reformers (Joan of Arc, Boudica, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Gandhi, Rosa Parks) and a few whose legends outgrew them, from Vlad the Impaler to Rasputin. Easy questions ask where Napoleon was born and who found Tutankhamun's tomb; the hard ones want Genghis Khan's birth name, how far Ibn Battuta travelled, which Nobel Prize Churchill won and what Bismarck built to undercut the socialists. Made for history buffs and quiz nights, and useful as a classroom warm-up. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's biographies of each figure, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Cleopatra was the last active ruler of which dynasty, founded by a general of Alexander the Great?
Ptolemaic
Her first language was Greek, and she was the only ruler of her line known to have bothered learning Egyptian.
Q 02Which river did Julius Caesar cross with a single legion in January 49 BC, starting a civil war?
Rubicon
He was assassinated five years later on the Ides of March by senators led by Brutus and Cassius.
Q 03Which philosopher tutored the young Alexander the Great until he was 16?
Aristotle
Alexander died undefeated in battle at Babylon in 323 BC, the city he intended to make his capital.
Q 04What was Genghis Khan's birth name?
Temüjin
His father, a Borjigin chieftain, died when he was eight and the family was abandoned by its tribe.
Q 05How old was Joan of Arc when she was burned at the stake in 1431?
About nineteen
She was canonised in 1920, almost five centuries later, and made a patron saint of France in 1922.
Q 06Under which Florentine painter and sculptor was Leonardo da Vinci trained?
Andrea del Verrocchio
Leonardo was born out of wedlock to a notary and a lower-class woman in or near the town of Vinci.
Q 07On which island was Napoleon Bonaparte born?
Corsica
He was born to a family of Italian origin and only moved to mainland France in 1779.
Q 08How many men did Napoleon take with him when he escaped exile on Elba and marched on Paris?
Around a thousand
He had crowned himself Emperor of the French in December 1804 rather than let the Pope do it.
Q 09Queen Victoria married Prince Albert in 1840. What was their family relationship?
First cousins
After Albert died in 1861 she withdrew into mourning for years, though her reign ran to 63 years and 216 days.
Q 10In which state was Abraham Lincoln born, in a one-room log cabin?
Kentucky
He was shot at Ford's Theatre five days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox.
Q 11Gandhi moved to which country in 1893 to represent a merchant in a lawsuit, staying for 21 years?
South Africa
The honorific 'Mahatma' was first applied to him there in 1914, before he returned to India.
Q 12How long was the 1930 Salt March that Gandhi led to the sea at Dandi?
About 400 km
It was a protest against the British salt tax, and became the template for his mass civil disobedience.
Q 13Winston Churchill won a Nobel Prize in 1953. In which category?
Literature
He also painted seriously, exhibiting in Paris under a pseudonym.
Q 21Elizabeth I of England was the only surviving child of Henry VIII and which wife?
Anne Boleyn
Her 44 years on the throne followed the short reigns of her half-siblings and are famous for Shakespeare, Drake and the Armada.
Q 22In which year was Newton's Principia first published?
1687
He shares credit for calculus with Leibniz, though he had developed it years earlier.
Q 23Galileo was tried by the Inquisition and found 'vehemently suspect of' what?
Heresy
He was forced to recant, having observed Jupiter's four largest moons and the phases of Venus with his own telescope.
Q 14Albert Einstein's 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded chiefly for his work on what?
The photoelectric effect
He had already agreed in his divorce settlement to hand the prize money to his ex-wife Mileva Marić if he ever won.
Q 15Marie Curie remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in which two different sciences?
Physics and Chemistry
Born in Warsaw, she studied at the clandestine Flying University before Paris, and in 1906 became the first woman professor at the University of Paris.
Q 16How many years did Nelson Mandela spend in prison before his release?
27
His Xhosa forename Rolihlahla colloquially means 'troublemaker'; he later went by his clan name, Madiba.
Q 17Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, was born a princess in which kingdom?
Prussia
She was born Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst in Stettin, now Szczecin in Poland.
Q 18The sayings of Confucius were compiled after his death in which collection?
The Analects
He was born around 551 BCE in Zou, in what is now Qufu in Shandong province.
Q 19Hammurabi, famous for his law code, was king of which city?
Babylon
He was the sixth Amorite king there and brought almost all of Mesopotamia under its rule.
Q 20Which pope crowned Charlemagne emperor in Rome in the year 800?
Leo III
He was buried in 814 in his capital, Aachen, in the chapel that is now part of its cathedral.
Q 24Which navigator brought Magellan's fleet home to Spain in 1522, completing the first circumnavigation?
Juan Sebastián Elcano
Magellan himself was killed in battle in the Philippines in 1521, having made the first European crossing of the Pacific.
Q 25During which war did Florence Nightingale earn the nickname 'The Lady with the Lamp'?
Crimean War
She organised care for wounded soldiers at Constantinople and later professionalised nursing as a career for women.
Q 26Roughly how many enslaved people did Harriet Tubman personally guide to freedom over about 13 missions?
70
Separately, her guidance of the Combahee Ferry raid freed more than 700, making her the first woman to lead a US armed operation.
Q 27Ada Lovelace, often called the first computer programmer, was the daughter of which poet?
Lord Byron
She was the first to see that Babbage's Analytical Engine could do more than crunch numbers.
Q 28Nikola Tesla is best known for his contributions to which kind of electricity supply system?
Alternating current
The Serbian-American inventor first got practical experience working for Continental Edison in the early 1880s.
Q 29Amelia Earhart vanished over the Pacific in 1937 trying to be the first woman to do what?
Fly around the world
Her navigator Fred Noonan was with her; the leg to tiny Howland Island was always the hardest part of the plan.
Q 30Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat in 1955 in which city?
Montgomery
She had been secretary of the city's NAACP chapter since 1943, and her arrest sparked the year-long bus boycott.