Parachute Trivia
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49 free Parachute trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Parachute trivia for skydivers, aviation nerds and anyone who has ever wondered who was brave (or foolish) enough to jump first. The quiz opens with the ancient and Renaissance dreamers: the cloaked man who leapt from a tower in 9th-century Córdoba, Leonardo's pyramid-shaped sketch, and Fausto Veranzio's 'Flying Man'. It then follows the real inventors: Lenormand, who coined the word, Garnerin's frameless silk canopy over Paris in 1797, his wife Jeanne, the first woman to jump, and the balloonist who first tested the idea on a dog. The middle rounds cover the age of aircraft: the first jump from an aeroplane, the ripcord, the backpack, the German air service that issued the first standard parachute in 1918, the Caterpillar Club, and the switch from silk to nylon when the war cut off supplies from Japan. Later questions take in paratroopers from Fort Eben-Emael to Market Garden, round versus ram-air canopies, the slider, terminal velocity, BASE jumping's acronym, wingsuits, and Felix Baumgartner's supersonic fall from the stratosphere. Questions run from easy to expert and every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source. See also our aviation and extreme sports quizzes.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What name did US paratroopers start shouting as they jumped from planes in 1940?
Geronimo
Geronimo: by the usual account, a soldier teased about his nerves the night before a test jump promised to yell it to prove he wasn't scared.
Q 02What do skydivers call pulling both steering toggles just before landing to slow a ram-air canopy?
Flaring
Flaring pulls the canopy's tail down, turning forward speed into lift so the jumper can touch down softly.
Q 03In AD 852, Armen Firman is said to have jumped from a tower with a cloak in which Spanish city?
Córdoba
Córdoba, though the story may be a muddled version of that of Abbas ibn Firnas, a Córdoba inventor who is said to have tried to glide.
Q 04Leonardo da Vinci's parachute sketch gave its canopy which shape?
pyramidal
Pyramidal, and replicas really flew: British skydiver Adrian Nicholas tested one in 2000, and a Swiss jumper rode another all the way down in 2008.
Q 05Which unidentified hijacker parachuted from a Boeing 727 in 1971 with $200,000 and was never found?
D. B. Cooper
D. B. Cooper jumped over the woods of Washington state, and the FBI stopped actively investigating in 2016 without ever identifying him.
Q 06Which NASA rover's supersonic parachute hid the motto 'Dare Mighty Things' in binary code?
Perseverance
Perseverance landed on Mars in 2021, and internet users cracked its parachute's hidden code within about six hours of NASA releasing the landing video.
Q 07Jean-Pierre Blanchard's first parachute demonstrations in 1785 used what as the passenger?
a dog
A dog: after testing his parachute on animals, including his own dog, Blanchard also claimed to have made successful jumps himself.
Q 08Which future US president survived being shot down in World War II by bailing out with a parachute?
George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush was pulled from the sea by a US submarine after Japanese fire brought his plane down on a bombing run over the Pacific.
Q 09Who became the first woman to make a parachute descent?
Jeanne Geneviève Garnerin
Jeanne Geneviève Garnerin went on to make many ascents and parachute descents in towns across France and Europe.
Q 10Which Mediterranean island did Germany capture in May 1941 with an assault led by paratroopers?
Crete
Crete fell, but German losses were so heavy that Hitler curtailed large airborne operations afterwards, even as the Allies took the battle as a model for their own.
Q 11Which fabric were most parachutes made of until World War II cut off the supply?
silk
Silk: soft, foldable silk canopies could be packed away instead of being held open by rigid frames like the earliest parachutes.
Q 12Adeline Gray's June 1942 jump used a canopy of which material, which the industry then adopted?
nylon
The war had cut off silk imports from Japan, and the synthetic turned out to be tougher anyway.
Q 13Charles Broadwick demonstrated a backpack parachute deployed with what?
a static line
A static line pulled the canopy out of the pack and then snapped, the same principle Army paratroopers use today.
Q 21Van Meter's 1916 'Aviatory Life Buoy' patent featured which quick-release mechanism?
the ripcord
The ripcord let the aviator choose when to open the canopy, so it could open only once clear of the disabled aircraft.
Q 22Which World War I flying ace survived a 1918 bailout after his parachute harness snagged on his plane's rudder?
Ernst Udet
Ernst Udet wrenched himself free and floated down into no man's land, one of the first fighter pilots ever saved by a parachute.
Q 23Which famous aviator saved his own life by parachute four times in 1925 and 1926?
Charles Lindbergh
Q 14Franz Reichelt jumped to his death in 1912 testing his wearable parachute from which landmark?
the Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower: the police had approved tests with a dummy, but Reichelt jumped himself from its first platform.
Q 15Which nickname did Britain's 1st Airborne Division carry into battle at Arnhem in 1944?
The Red Devils
The Red Devils lost about three quarters of the men who fought north of the Rhine before the survivors withdrew across the river.
Q 16Which Russian inventor designed an early knapsack parachute and tested a braking chute on a speeding car?
Gleb Kotelnikov
Gleb Kotelnikov turned to parachutes after watching the pilot Lev Matsievich fall to his death at a 1910 air festival.
Q 17Tiny Broadwick became the first woman to parachute from an airplane, jumping from one flown by which aviation pioneer?
Glenn L. Martin
Glenn L. Martin flew her, and in 1914 she demonstrated parachutes to the US Army.
Q 18In 1948, Idaho wildlife officers parachuted which animals into roadless backcountry to relocate them?
Beavers
Beavers: horses and mules spooked when loaded with them, so 76 went in by air in boxes that sprang open on landing, and all but one survived.
Q 19The first military use of parachutes, in World War I, was by crews escaping from what?
tethered observation balloons
Tethered observation balloons were filled with flammable hydrogen and made tempting targets, so crews jumped as soon as enemy fighters appeared.
Q 20Major Thomas Orde-Lees made a wartime parachute jump from which London structure?
Tower Bridge
Tower Bridge: Orde-Lees, a survivor of Shackleton's Endurance expedition, leapt from its parapet into the Thames to prove that parachutes worked.
Charles Lindbergh made all four emergency jumps before his 1927 flight from New York to Paris made him world-famous.
Q 24The club for those who have parachuted from a disabled aircraft is named after which creature?
the caterpillar
The caterpillar club took shape after Lt Harold Harris bailed out over Dayton in 1922, and parachute makers took to handing each new member a pin.
Q 25Which country formed one of the world's first airborne forces after an experimental parachute jump in 1930?
the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union's airborne force grew fast, and its 1935 manoeuvres near Kiev put mass parachute drops on show.
Q 26Which Belgian fort fell in May 1940 after airborne troops landed gliders on its roof?
Eben-Emael
Eben-Emael's guns were knocked out when glider troops blasted them with new hollow charges, opening Belgium to the invasion.
Q 27Which 1944 Allied airborne operation failed to hold the Rhine bridge at Arnhem?
Market Garden
Market Garden dropped British paratroopers up to eight miles from the Arnhem bridge, and fewer than 800 men managed to reach it.
Q 28The first US Army parachute test jump, on 16 August 1940, took place at Lawson Field on which base?
Fort Benning
The jump was from a B-18 bomber, and the Army's parachute school was established there under William Lee.
Q 29Drag chutes first entered aviation in 1937, helping planes land on ice floes for expeditions where?
the Arctic
In the Arctic, the chutes let planes stop on small ice floes, and drag chutes are now widely used to shorten landings in aviation and spaceflight.
Q 30On D-Day, US paratrooper John Steele's parachute snagged on the church steeple in which Normandy town?
Sainte-Mère-Église
Sainte-Mère-Église: Steele hung from the steeple for hours, playing dead, before enemy soldiers took him prisoner.