Mexican History
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50 free Mexican History trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Mexico's history runs for more than three thousand years, from the first cities of Mesoamerica through three centuries of Spanish rule to a republic forged in invasion, civil war and revolution. Few countries have a past with so many reversals, or so many characters who seem written for the screen. This quiz covers the whole story. Expect the great pre-Hispanic civilisations and their capitals, the conquest of 1519 to 1521, colonial New Spain, the priests and generals who won independence, the wars with France and the United States, the long dictatorship swept away by the 1910 revolution, and the upheavals of the twentieth century. It suits students revising for a test, travellers reading up before a trip, and anyone who has wondered what Mexicans actually celebrate each spring and autumn. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you learn something even when you guess.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Mexican general lost a leg to French cannon fire in 1838, then had it buried with full military honours?
Santa Anna
Santa Anna later saw that buried leg dug up by a mob and dragged through the streets. A cork replacement was captured by US troops in 1847 and kept as a war trophy in Illinois.
Q 02Which country secretly offered Mexico the return of Texas, Arizona and New Mexico in a telegram decoded by Britain?
Germany
Germany made the offer in the Zimmermann Telegram, hoping a war on the border would keep American troops at home. Its exposure helped bring the United States into World War I.
Q 03Which crop did the Aztecs of Mexico froth into a bitter drink and count out as small change in markets?
Cacao
Cacao beans worked as money: Spanish records from 1545 priced a small rabbit at thirty of them and a turkey hen at a hundred.
Q 04Which 1838 conflict saw France blockade Mexico's Gulf ports over unpaid claims for damage to its citizens' property?
The Pastry War
The Pastry War took its name from a French pastry chef who said Mexican officers had looted his shop near Mexico City. He demanded 60,000 pesos for a shop valued at under 1,000.
Q 05In legend, which sign from the god Huitzilopochtli showed the Mexica where to found their capital?
An eagle on a cactus
An eagle on a cactus is the sign in the legend, and the scene sits at the centre of Mexico's flag. Several early Aztec depictions show the bird without the snake in its beak.
Q 06Which holiday marks Mexico's 1862 victory over a French army at Puebla rather than Mexican independence?
Cinco de Mayo
Cinco de Mayo recalls General Ignacio Zaragoza's troops beating the French on May 5, 1862. Inside Mexico the day stays mostly ceremonial, marked with military parades and battle re-enactments.
Q 07Which disease, brought to Mexico by a Spanish expedition in 1520, killed much of the Aztec leadership?
Smallpox
Smallpox tore through the Aztec capital months before the final siege. The Spanish, long exposed to the disease at home, were affected relatively little.
Q 08Which future US state, once a Mexican province governed from Monterey, passed to the United States in 1848?
California
California was signed over on February 2, 1848, just nine days after gold was found at Sutter's Mill. The rush that followed drew about 300,000 people.
Q 09Which Aztec island capital, founded around 1325, lies buried beneath the historic centre of modern Mexico City?
Tenochtitlan
Tenochtitlan was the largest city in the pre-Columbian Americas at its peak, joined to the lakeshore by three causeways. Spanish builders raised their own capital over its ruins.
Q 10Which revolutionary general raided Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916 and escaped the US Army sent to catch him?
Pancho Villa
Pancho Villa may have meant the raid to goad the United States into invading Mexico. General John Pershing's expedition hunted him for nearly eleven months and went home empty-handed.
Q 11Which early civilisation of Mexico's Gulf Coast carved colossal basalt heads, some weighing more than 20 tons?
Olmec
Olmec sculptors hauled the basalt from the Tuxtlas mountains, and seventeen heads are confirmed. In 1942 the archaeologist Alfonso Caso called theirs the mother culture of Mesoamerica.
Q 12Which ancient city near Mexico City holds the Pyramid of the Sun and the Avenue of the Dead?
Teotihuacan
Teotihuacan may have held 100,000 people at its height, centuries before the Aztecs arrived. They took its pyramids for tombs, which is how the avenue got its name.
Q 13Which Maya city in Yucatán is dominated by El Castillo, a pyramid voted one of the New Seven Wonders in 2007?
Chichen Itza
Q 21Which people, never conquered by the Aztecs, supplied Hernán Cortés with thousands of warriors in 1521?
Tlaxcalans
Tlaxcalans had endured generations of so-called flower wars and an Aztec trade embargo, and seized the chance to strike back. Spain rewarded their city with privileged status.
Q 22By what name is the Spaniards' bloody retreat from the Aztec capital on June 30, 1520, remembered?
La Noche Triste
La Noche Triste, or Night of Sorrows, saw many Spaniards die weighed down by the gold they carried. Mexico City has since renamed the square that marks it for the Victorious Night.
Q 23Which Gulf Coast port did Hernán Cortés found in 1519 before scuttling his ships to rule out retreat?
Veracruz
Chichen Itza's pyramid is a temple to Kukulcán, the Maya feathered serpent, whose carved heads sit at the foot of one staircase.
Q 14Which feathered serpent god of the Aztecs was linked to the wind, the planet Venus and learning?
Quetzalcoatl
Quetzalcoatl was also credited with inventing books and the calendar and with giving maize to humankind.
Q 15Which language of the Aztec Empire is the source of the English words avocado, coyote and tomato?
Nahuatl
Nahuatl words reached English through Spanish, and chili and chocolate arrived the same way. The speech of the Aztec capital became a prestige language across Mesoamerica.
Q 16What name is given to the garden islands the Aztecs built on shallow lake beds in the Valley of Mexico?
Chinampas
Chinampas are often called floating gardens, yet they never floated: farmers staked out rectangles of shallow lake bed and fenced them with woven reeds.
Q 17From which material did the ancient peoples of Mexico make solid balls for their ritual ballgame 3,500 years ago?
Rubber
Rubber balls dated to about 1600 BC, the earliest known in the world, were recovered from a sacrificial bog at El Manatí.
Q 18Which Aztec emperor was on the throne when Hernán Cortés marched into the capital in November 1519?
Moctezuma II
Moctezuma II was struck by three stones while addressing his own people, in one Spanish soldier's eyewitness telling, and refused to have the wounds dressed.
Q 19Which Nahua woman, one of 20 enslaved women given to the Spaniards in 1519, became Hernán Cortés's interpreter?
La Malinche
La Malinche spoke both Maya and the Aztec tongue, so Cortés could negotiate through her all the way inland. Their son Martín was among the first mestizos of New Spain.
Q 20Which last Aztec emperor had his feet burned by Spaniards seeking hidden gold and was later hanged by Cortés?
Cuauhtémoc
Cuauhtémoc took the throne at about 25, as smallpox swept the capital. Cortés later took him along on an expedition to Honduras and executed him on the way for an alleged plot.
Veracruz takes its name from the True Cross: Cortés came ashore on Good Friday and dedicated his new town to it.
Q 24Which sacred image, said to have appeared on a peasant's cloak, became the banner of Mexico's 1810 rebels?
The Virgin of Guadalupe
The Virgin of Guadalupe is enshrined on that cloak in a basilica in Mexico City. The story of her appearances is told in the Nican Mopohua, an account printed in a 17th-century book.
Q 25Which metal, found at Zacatecas in the 1540s, became colonial Mexico's most important export?
Silver
Silver from those northern mines was coined in Mexico into Spanish dollars, the pieces of eight that stayed legal tender in the United States until 1857.
Q 26Which Asian port was linked to Acapulco from 1565 to 1815 by Spanish galleons carrying Chinese silk and porcelain?
Manila
Manila galleons made only one or two round trips a year. The route back to Asia ran closer to the equator, by way of the Marianas.
Q 27Which machine did the Italian Juan Pablos set up in Mexico City in 1539, the first of its kind in the Americas?
A printing press
A printing press let Pablos issue the first known book published in the Americas that same year, a Christian doctrine in both Spanish and the local Mexican language.
Q 28Which Aztec temple was rediscovered in 1978 when electricity workers in Mexico City struck a carved disc?
Templo Mayor
Templo Mayor came to light after the workers hit a stone relief of the goddess Coyolxauhqui, sister of Huitzilopochtli. Archaeologists then spent four years excavating the site.
Q 29Which Zapotec capital in Oaxaca, among Mesoamerica's earliest cities, sits atop an artificially levelled ridge?
Monte Albán
Monte Albán was the leading Zapotec centre for nearly a thousand years. It was abandoned so long before written records that its original name is unknown.
Q 30Which parish priest rang his church bell in Dolores in 1810 to launch Mexico's war of independence?
Miguel Hidalgo
Miguel Hidalgo was captured and executed within a year, yet the bell lives on: Mexico's president rings it from the National Palace balcony on the eve of every Independence Day.