Middle School History Trivia
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100 free Middle School History trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
42 free middle school history trivia questions with answers. This middle school history trivia quiz is pitched at grades 6 to 8 and follows the topics those years usually cover: Hammurabi and Babylon, the Silk Road, the Black Death and the Renaissance, the Aztecs and Inca, Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, the Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark, the Underground Railroad, Ellis Island, the Wright brothers, the Great Depression, D-Day, Apollo 11 and the Cold War. Most questions are answerable by a student who has been paying attention, and a handful (which lake Tenochtitlan was built in, where the first wagon train left from) will stretch the strong ones. It works as a classroom warm-up, a bell-ringer, a review game or a family quiz. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered, so teachers and parents can trust what the kids are learning.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Hammurabi, famous for his law code, was king of which ancient city?
Babylon
Hammurabi ruled Babylon as the sixth king of its Amorite dynasty; the stele carrying his code shows him receiving the laws from Shamash, the sun god and god of justice.
Q 02The Silk Road took its name from a luxury textile produced mainly in which country?
China
The term itself was only popularised in 1877, by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen.
Q 03Roughly what share of Europe's population is estimated to have died in the Black Death of 1346-1353?
30% to 60%
Estimates put the Black Death's toll at 30% to 60% of Europe's population; the disease, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, spread mainly through the bites of infected fleas.
Q 04From which besieged Crimean port did Genoese ships carry the Black Death toward Europe?
Caffa
Caffa, a Genoese colony in Crimea, was besieged by Jani Beg's Golden Horde army in 1346; plague spread into the port, and Genoese ships carried it to Sicily in 1347.
Q 05The Renaissance was first centred in which Italian city?
Florence
Florence, ruled by the banker Medici family, paid for much of the early Renaissance art, and Byzantine scholars fleeing Constantinople's fall in 1453 brought ancient texts to the city.
Q 06Martin Luther wrote his Ninety-five Theses in which year?
1517
Luther dated his Ninety-five Theses 31 October 1517, sending them to the Archbishop of Mainz; the debate they started grew into the Protestant Reformation.
Q 07The Industrial Revolution began around 1760 in which country?
Great Britain
Great Britain, with its coal, canals and textile mills, industrialised first from about 1760; by about 1840 steam power and the factory system had spread to continental Europe and the United States.
Q 08How much did the United States pay France for the Louisiana territory in 1803?
$15 million
The price was $15 million for about 828,000 square miles, less than three cents an acre, and the purchase nearly doubled the size of the United States.
Q 09Which leader had regained Louisiana for his country in 1800, three years before selling it to the US?
Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon Bonaparte regained Louisiana from Spain in the 1800 Treaty of San Ildefonso, trading territory in Tuscany for it, in the hope of rebuilding France's empire in North America.
Q 10Which president sent Lewis and Clark to explore the newly bought western lands?
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson commissioned the Corps of Discovery in 1803; Lewis and Clark crossed the Continental Divide at Lemhi Pass and reached the Pacific in November 1805.
Q 11Sacagawea, who travelled with Lewis and Clark, was a young woman of which people?
Shoshone
Sacagawea was Lemhi Shoshone, taken by the Hidatsa as a girl and later married to the fur trapper Toussaint Charbonneau, whom the expedition hired at Fort Mandan on the Missouri.
Q 12The Golden Spike completing America's first transcontinental railroad was driven in 1869 in which state?
Utah
The Golden Spike was driven at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869, joining the Union Pacific from Omaha with the Central Pacific from Sacramento after six years of building.
Q 13The first immigrant processed at Ellis Island in 1892 was a 17-year-old girl from which country?
Ireland
Annie Moore from County Cork, Ireland, landed on January 1, 1892, with her two younger brothers to join their parents in America.
Q 21The best-known sections of the Great Wall of China were built by which dynasty?
Ming
The Ming dynasty (1368-1644) built the brick-and-stone sections near Beijing that tourists know, such as Badaling; the earliest walls date to the 7th century BC and were first joined under the Qin.
Q 22The Aztec capital Tenochtitlan was founded on islets in which body of water?
Texcoco
Tenochtitlan rose on islets in Lake Texcoco, linked to the shore by causeways; the lake was later drained, and Mexico City stands on the site today.
Q 23Which city was the political and military centre of the Inca Empire?
Cusco
Cusco, high in the Peruvian Andes, was the Inca capital from which the four quarters of Tawantinsuyu, the Realm of the Four Parts, radiated; it was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America.
Q 14About how many immigrants passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954?
12 million
About 12 million immigrants entered through Ellis Island between its opening in 1892 and its closure in 1954; by one estimate two-fifths of Americans have an ancestor among them.
Q 15The Wright brothers' first powered flight in 1903 happened near which North Carolina town?
Kitty Hawk
The first flight lifted off near Kitty Hawk, at Kill Devil Hills, on December 17, 1903; the longest of the day's four flights, with Wilbur at the controls, lasted 59 seconds.
Q 16Which amendment gave American women the right to vote nationally in 1920?
19th
The 19th Amendment, ratified when Tennessee approved it in August 1920, barred denying the vote on account of sex; Wyoming had let women vote since 1869.
Q 17The Great Depression is usually said to have begun with which event in 1929?
The Wall Street crash
The Wall Street crash of October 1929, with Black Thursday on the 24th and Black Tuesday on the 29th, is the usual starting point; the downturn lasted a decade and brought bank failures and mass unemployment worldwide.
Q 18The five D-Day landing beaches were Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and which other?
Sword
Sword, the easternmost beach and the one nearest Caen, was taken by the British 3rd Division on 6 June 1944; the landings, codenamed Operation Neptune, were the largest seaborne invasion in history.
Q 19Which Apollo 11 astronaut stayed in lunar orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the Moon?
Michael Collins
Michael Collins orbited alone in the command module Columbia for about 21 hours while the lunar module Eagle sat on the Sea of Tranquility.
Q 20Which 1962 standoff is considered the closest the Cold War came to nuclear war?
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 began when US spy planes photographed Soviet missile sites in Cuba; the 13-day standoff ended with the Soviets withdrawing the missiles.
Q 24Mansa Musa, one of history's richest people, ruled which West African empire?
Mali
Mansa Musa ruled the Mali Empire from about 1312 to 1337; his 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca, with a huge entourage carrying gold, made him famous across the Mediterranean world.
Q 25In Greek myth, Paris took Helen from her husband, the king of which city?
Sparta
Helen's husband Menelaus was king of Sparta; her abduction launched the Trojan War, which ended with the trick of the wooden horse and is partly told in Homer's Iliad.
Q 26Which philosopher tutored the young Alexander the Great until he was 16?
Aristotle
Aristotle taught Alexander at Mieza from 343 BC, when the prince was 13, until he was 16; Alexander went on to be undefeated in battle before dying aged 32.
Q 27Gutenberg's famous printed book of the 1450s is also known by what number-based nickname?
The 42-line
The 42-line Bible takes its nickname from the lines of type in most of its columns; of the roughly 180 copies printed, 49 survive in substantial part and 21 in full.
Q 28Which English king sealed Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215?
John
King John, pressed by rebel barons, sealed Magna Carta on 15 June 1215; four 1215 copies survive, two at the British Library and one each at Lincoln and Salisbury cathedrals.
Q 29How many amendments make up the US Bill of Rights?
Ten
Ten amendments were ratified on December 15, 1791, out of the twelve articles Congress approved in 1789; the other two dealt with congressional size and congressional pay.
Q 30Which representative drafted the proposals that became the Bill of Rights?
James Madison
James Madison, then a Virginia congressman, introduced the amendments in June 1789 after studying Anti-Federalist objections to the Constitution and turning them into corrective proposals.