River Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
This river trivia quiz has 100 free questions with answers and covers the great rivers of every continent: the Nile and the Amazon and their argument over which is longest, the Yangtze and its record-breaking dam, the Mississippi and its Ojibwe name, the Congo and its 220-metre depths, the Danube through ten countries and four capitals, the Thames, the Ganges, the Volga, the Zambezi and the Mekong. It also collects the oddities: the river Guinness once crowned the world's shortest, the river in Antarctica that flows away from the sea, the American river that caught fire and helped create the EPA, the river Chicago made run backwards, and the western river that rarely reaches the ocean any more. Difficulty runs from easy schoolroom geography to genuinely hard, and every question shows its level. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question carries its citation.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which two rivers are locked in a long-running dispute over the title of world's longest?
The Nile and the Amazon
The Nile is traditionally listed at about 6,650 km, but some scientists measure the Amazon as longer if you count it to the Pará estuary.
Q 02Which river did Julius Caesar cross with his army, giving us the phrase for passing the point of no return?
Rubicon
Roman law barred a general from leading troops into Italy, so crossing the Rubicon made Caesar an outlaw and started a civil war.
Q 03By discharge volume, which river is by far the largest in the world?
Amazon
No bridge crosses the Amazon's main channel: it runs mostly through rainforest with very few roads or cities, so people cross by ferry.
Q 04Florence's Ponte Vecchio was the city's only bridge to survive World War II; which river does it cross?
Arno
The Ponte Vecchio over the Arno is famous for the row of shops built along both its sides.
Q 05Which Spanish explorer navigated and named South America's greatest river in 1542?
Francisco de Orellana
Francisco de Orellana joined Gonzalo Pizarro's search for the rumoured Land of Cinnamon, and ended up sailing the river all the way to the Atlantic.
Q 06What is the pororoca?
A tidal bore on the Amazon
The pororoca is a tidal bore on the Amazon, where incoming ocean tides push waves up to 4 metres high upriver.
Q 07In which direction does the Nile flow?
North
The Nile flows north into the Mediterranean, which is why Upper Egypt, upstream, lies in the south and Lower Egypt in the north.
Q 08In which city do the White Nile and Blue Nile meet?
Khartoum
Khartoum sits where the two rivers join, and the Blue Nile, rising at Lake Tana in Ethiopia, supplies most of the water that reaches Egypt.
Q 09What is the name of the huge reservoir created by Egypt's Aswan High Dam?
Lake Nasser
Lake Nasser's rising waters threatened the temples of Abu Simbel, so they were taken apart and rebuilt on higher ground.
Q 10Which icy river did George Washington's army cross on Christmas night before surprising Hessian troops at Trenton?
Delaware
Washington's army crossed the Delaware in sleet and snow, and the victory at Trenton revived the Continental Army's collapsing morale.
Q 11According to the Gospels, in which river did John the Baptist baptize Jesus?
Jordan
The Jordan never reaches the sea: it ends in the Dead Sea, a salt lake with no outlet more than 400 metres below sea level.
Q 12Which capital's name combines two towns that face each other across the Danube?
Budapest
Budapest was created in 1873 by uniting hilly Buda and Óbuda on the Danube's west bank with flat Pest on the east.
Q 13In which German region does the Danube rise?
The Black Forest
Not far from its Black Forest springs, the Danube sinks into its own riverbed near Immendingen, and on many summer days it disappears completely.
Q 21What did engineers do to the Chicago River in 1900?
Reversed its flow away from Lake Michigan
Engineers reversed its flow away from Lake Michigan, so Chicago's sewage headed toward the Mississippi instead of into the lake that held its drinking water.
Q 22Which river did Captain Sully land his US Airways jet on after birds knocked out both engines?
Hudson River
All 155 people aboard survived when Captain Chesley Sullenberger glided the plane onto the Hudson River beside Midtown Manhattan.
Q 23The Onyx, only 32 km long, is the longest river on which continent?
Antarctica
Q 14Which European capital stands on the Vltava River?
Prague
Prague's river inspired Bedřich Smetana's symphonic poem Vltava, known in English as The Moldau.
Q 15Which river is the longest in Europe?
Volga
The Volga runs about 3,530 km through Russia, and Russian literature and folklore call it Mother Volga.
Q 16Into which body of water does Europe's longest river empty?
The Caspian Sea
The Caspian Sea is conventionally counted as the world's largest lake, even though it is called a sea.
Q 17What is the traditional source of the Mississippi River?
Lake Itasca, Minnesota
Explorer Henry Schoolcraft coined the name of Lake Itasca, Minnesota, from the Latin veritas caput, meaning 'true head' of the river.
Q 18The name Mississippi comes from an Ojibwe phrase meaning what?
Great river
Misi-ziibi, the Ojibwe name for the river, means great river, and the state of Mississippi took its name from the river.
Q 19Lewis and Clark traveled up which river, the longest in the United States?
Missouri
Measured from the Missouri's headwaters, the combined Mississippi system ranks as the fourth-longest river in the world.
Q 20Which river's 1969 fire in Cleveland helped spur the Clean Water Act and the creation of the EPA?
The Cuyahoga
The Cuyahoga had caught fire more than a dozen times since 1868, but the 1969 blaze was the one that sparked national outrage.
Antarctica's Onyx River is a summer meltwater stream that flows inland, away from the ocean, into Lake Vanda.
Q 24Which river carved the Grand Canyon?
Colorado
So much of the Colorado River's water is diverted for farms and cities that it now rarely reaches the Gulf of California.
Q 25Which dam created Lake Mead on the river that carved the Grand Canyon?
Hoover Dam
Water rising behind Hoover Dam drowned the town of St. Thomas, Nevada, whose ruins resurfaced when Lake Mead dropped in the 2000s.
Q 26As of 2025, which river powers the world's largest hydroelectric power station?
Yangtze
The Yangtze's Three Gorges Dam, the biggest power station by installed capacity, flooded whole towns and archaeological sites when its reservoir filled.
Q 27Which Chinese waterway is nicknamed both 'China's Pride' and 'China's Sorrow' for its floods?
Yellow River
The Yellow River's 1887 flood killed an estimated 900,000 to 2 million people, among the deadliest natural disasters on record.
Q 28China's second-longest river gets its colour and name from silt from which upland region?
The Loess Plateau
The Loess Plateau is built of loess, fine wind-blown dust, and the silt the river carries off it settles in its channel and causes floods.
Q 29Which river is the most sacred in Hinduism and is worshipped as a goddess?
Ganges
The Ganges fell from heaven in Hindu myth, and Shiva caught the goddess in his matted hair so the force of her fall wouldn't destroy the earth.
Q 30Which river system forms the largest delta in the world?
Ganges-Brahmaputra
The Ganges-Brahmaputra delta meets the sea in the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest and a home of the Bengal tiger.