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
He was the sixth Amorite king there and presented his laws as a revelation from Shamash, the 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%
The disease, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, was mainly spread by flea bites.
Q 04The Black Death is said to have reached Europe during the 1347 siege of which Crimean trading port?
Caffa
The Golden Horde army of Jani Beg was besieging the Genoese port when the plague spread from the camp to the city.
Q 05The Renaissance was first centred in which Italian city?
Florence
Its ruling Medici family paid for much of the art, and Greek scholars fleeing the fall of Constantinople brought ancient texts with them.
Q 06Martin Luther wrote his Ninety-five Theses in which year?
1517
They started an international debate that grew into the Protestant Reformation.
Q 07The Industrial Revolution began around 1760 in which country?
Great Britain
By about 1840 it had spread to continental Europe and the United States, bringing steam power and the factory system.
Q 08How much did the United States pay France for the Louisiana territory in 1803?
$15 million
That worked out to less than three cents an acre and nearly doubled the size of the country.
Q 09Which leader had regained Louisiana for his country in 1800, three years before selling it to the US?
Napoleon Bonaparte
He had traded territories in Tuscany for it, hoping to rebuild a French empire in North America.
Q 10Which president sent Lewis and Clark to explore the newly bought western lands?
Thomas Jefferson
The expedition crossed the Continental Divide near Lemhi Pass and reached the Pacific in 1805.
Q 11Sacagawea, who travelled with Lewis and Clark, was a young woman of which people?
Shoshone
She was married to the French-Canadian fur trapper Toussaint Charbonneau, whom the expedition met on the Missouri.
Q 12The Golden Spike completing America's first transcontinental railroad was driven in 1869 in which state?
Utah
The line joined Council Bluffs, Iowa, with San Francisco Bay 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 Cork was travelling with her two 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 earliest walls date to the 7th century BC and were first joined together under the Qin.
Q 22The Aztec capital Tenochtitlan was founded on islets in which body of water?
Texcoco
Mexico City stands on the site today; Hernán Cortés arrived when the empire was at its largest in 1519.
Q 23Which city was the political and military centre of the Inca Empire?
Cusco
The Inca ruled the largest empire in pre-Columbian America and called it the Realm of the Four Parts.
Mansa Musa, one of history's richest people, ruled which West African empire?
Q 14About how many immigrants passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954?
12 million
By one estimate two-fifths of Americans descend from them.
Q 15The Wright brothers' first powered flight in 1903 happened near which North Carolina town?
Kitty Hawk
The longest of that day's flights lasted 26 seconds.
Q 16Which amendment gave American women the right to vote nationally in 1920?
19th
Several states and territories had already let women vote before the national change.
Q 17The Great Depression is usually said to have begun with which event in 1929?
The Wall Street crash
The downturn lasted a decade and brought bank failures and mass unemployment around the world.
Q 18The five D-Day landing beaches were Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and which other?
Sword
Codenamed Operation Neptune, the landings 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
He orbited alone in the command module Columbia while the lunar module Eagle sat in the Sea of Tranquility.
Q 20Which 1962 standoff is considered the closest the Cold War came to nuclear war?
Cuban Missile Crisis
It followed US missile deployments in Europe and Soviet missiles in Cuba, three years after the Cuban Revolution.
Mali
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
The war ended with the trick of the wooden horse, and Homer's Iliad tells part of the story.
Q 26Which philosopher tutored the young Alexander the Great until he was 16?
Aristotle
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
Of the roughly 158 to 180 copies printed, 49 survive in substantial part and 21 in full.
Q 28Which English king sealed Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215?
John
Four copies of the original charter still exist: two at the British Library, one at Lincoln and one at Salisbury.
Q 29How many amendments make up the US Bill of Rights?
Ten
Congress actually approved twelve articles in 1789; ten were ratified on December 15, 1791.
Q 30Which representative drafted the proposals that became the Bill of Rights?
James Madison
He studied the Anti-Federalists' objections to the Constitution and turned them into corrective amendments.