50 free Parachute trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 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.
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Q 01Who coined the word 'parachute' in 1785, two years after making the first recorded public jump?
Louis-Sébastien Lenormand
He fused the Italian 'para' (to shield) with the French 'chute' (fall), and had been inspired by a 1691 account of umbrella jumpers in Siam.
Q 02The word 'parachute' combines an Italian prefix meaning 'to shield' with the French word for what?
fall
The same French word gives us 'chute' as in a laundry chute.
Q 03In AD 852 Armen Firman jumped from a tower with a cloak to slow his fall in which Spanish city?
Córdoba
The chronicle records that 'there was enough air in the folds of his cloak to prevent great injury when he reached the ground'.
Q 04Leonardo da Vinci's parachute sketch used a square wooden frame that gave the canopy what shape?
pyramidal
The design was successfully tested in 2000 by Adrian Nicholas and again in 2008 by Olivier Vietti-Teppa.
Q 05The oldest known parachute design, from a 1470s manuscript, is attributed to which Italian engineer?
Francesco di Giorgio Martini
It shows a man clutching a crossbar under a conical canopy; the surface area is far too small to have worked.
Q 06Croatian polymath Faust Vrančić published his 'Homo Volans' parachute in which 1615-16 book?
Machinae Novae
The picture shows a man descending from a tower, presumably St Mark's Campanile in Venice; the story that he actually jumped is now thought to be a misreading.
Q 07Jean-Pierre Blanchard's first parachute demonstrations in 1785 used what as the passenger?
a dog
He later claimed to have used one himself in 1793 when his balloon ruptured, though nobody witnessed it.
Q 08Over which Paris park did Garnerin make the first frameless parachute descent in 1797?
Parc Monceau
The date fell on 1 Brumaire, Year VI of the republican calendar; he had earlier been a prisoner of the British.
Q 09Who became the first woman to parachute, descending from a balloon at 900 metres on 12 October 1799?
Jeanne Geneviève Garnerin
She went on to make many descents across France and Europe.
Q 10In 1804 the astronomer Jérôme Lalande introduced what canopy feature to stop violent oscillations?
a vent at the apex
A round canopy with no hole is still prone to swinging and is not considered steerable.
Q 11Which light, strong material did Blanchard adopt for parachutes in the 1790s?
silk
It stayed the standard until the Second World War cut off supplies from Japan.
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 13In 1907 Charles Broadwick demonstrated a backpack parachute deployed with what?
a static line
The line attached to the balloon pulled the chute from the pack and then snapped; the same principle is used by paratroopers today.
Q 21Van Meter's 1916 'Aviatory Life Buoy' patent introduced which quick-release mechanism?
the ripcord
It let a falling aviator open the canopy only once clear of the disabled aircraft.
Q 22Which famous German fighter pilot was among those saved by a parachute during World War I?
Hermann Göring
No parachutes were issued to Allied aeroplane crews at all, though the story that this was to stop pilots abandoning aircraft has no documentary support.
Q 23Leslie Irvin, who made the first premeditated free-fall jump in 1919, was on a US Army team led by which major?
Edward L. Hoffman
Q 14Franz Reichelt jumped to his death in 1912 testing his wearable parachute from which landmark?
the Eiffel Tower
A dummy test at the same tower a year earlier had worked; Reichelt insisted on trying it himself.
Q 15Grant Morton made the first parachute jump from an aeroplane in 1911 over which Californian beach?
Venice
The aircraft was a Wright Model B, and Morton simply held the folded canopy in his arms and threw it out as he left.
Q 16Which Russian inventor built the first knapsack parachute in 1911 and demonstrated the drogue chute on a speeding car?
Gleb Kotelnikov
The car test near Tsarskoye Selo in 1912 opened a canopy fixed to the back seat of a Russo-Balt at top speed.
Q 17Georgia 'Tiny' Broadwick, the first woman to leap from a moving aircraft, became in 1914 the first to do what?
free-fall before opening
During demonstrations for the US Army she deployed her chute by hand instead of relying on a static line.
Q 18Which country's air service became the first in the world to issue a standard parachute, in 1918?
Germany
The Heinecke design was made by the Schroeder company of Berlin; around a third of the first 70 airmen to bail out with it still died.
Q 19The first military use of parachutes in World War I was by observers escaping from what?
tethered observation balloons
The hydrogen-filled balloons were tempting targets, so crews jumped as soon as enemy fighters appeared.
Q 20Balloon officer Thomas Orde-Lees, the 'Mad Major', made a wartime parachute jump from which London structure?
Tower Bridge
The stunt persuaded the Royal Flying Corps' balloonists to adopt parachutes.
Their Type-A parachute combined a soft backpack, a ripcord and a pilot chute, and won Hoffman the Collier Trophy in 1926.
Q 24The club for those who have parachuted from a disabled aircraft is named after which creature?
the caterpillar
Two Dayton newspaper reporters proposed it after Lt Harold Harris's life-saving jump at McCook Field in 1922; the name nods to silk.
Q 25Which country established the world's first regular airborne troops, in 1931?
the Soviet Union
Italy had experimented with dropping soldiers as early as 1927, but the Soviets built the first standing force.
Q 26The 1940 German attack on which Belgian fort was among the first large-scale opposed paratrooper landings?
Eben-Emael
The airborne assault on The Hague the same day was the other; Crete and Market Garden followed on a much larger scale.
Q 27Which 1944 operation is described as the largest airborne military operation ever?
Market Garden
The Polish parachute brigade jumped at Driel on the south bank of the Rhine after bad weather held them up in England.
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 were first used in aviation in 1937 by Soviet aircraft supporting expeditions where?
the Arctic
The chutes let planes land safely on small ice floes while supplying the drifting station North Pole-1.
Q 30Some skydivers nickname round canopies after which sea creature?
the jellyfish
Rounds are pure drag devices with no lift, and modern sport jumpers rarely use them.