Weapons
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50 free Weapons trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Weapons have shaped history in ways that still surprise people. Some were named as jokes or cover stories, some began as accidents in a laboratory or an alchemist's workshop, and a few were feared enough that rulers and churches tried to ban them. This quiz covers the whole range: ancient and medieval arms, the blades of famous warriors, firearms and their inventors, the wartime inventions of the twentieth century, and the weapons of choice of heroes from myth, books, films and video games. A handful of questions touch on sports that grew out of combat. It is written for curious players of any age, with easy openers for families and younger quizzers and harder questions for military history fans. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play straight through or print the set for a quiz night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which rifle appears on the national flag of Mozambique, crossed with a hoe over an open book?
AK-47
The AK-47 on Mozambique's flag, shown with a bayonet fixed, stands for defence. No other national flag features a modern firearm.
Q 02Which weapon of World War I got its name from a British cover story about water carriers?
Tank
Tank began as a code word: British officials listed the secret landships as water carriers, then tanks, to hide what they were. They first fought at the Somme in September 1916.
Q 03Which naval weapon takes its name from a Latin word for the electric ray, a fish that stuns prey?
Torpedo
Torpedo was first the name of the electric ray, from a Latin root for numbness. By 1776 the word was being used for floating explosive charges, long before any could propel itself.
Q 04Which weapon did the Swiss folk hero William Tell use to shoot an apple off his son's head?
Crossbow
Crossbow in hand, Tell splits the apple with a single bolt in the Swiss story. In 1139 a Church council prohibited using crossbows against fellow Christians.
Q 05In which country did alchemists hunting for an elixir of life stumble on gunpowder in the ninth century?
China
China's Taoist alchemists probably found gunpowder by accident while heating sulfur and saltpeter in search of immortality. One early text warns that the mixture burned a house down.
Q 06Which American rocket launcher of World War II was nicknamed after a radio comedian's novelty musical instrument?
Bazooka
Bazooka was first the name of a novelty horn played by 1930s comedian Bob Burns. The new launcher's long tube looked enough like it that the nickname stuck.
Q 07Which toy did NASA engineer Lonnie Johnson dream up after an experiment shot water across his bathroom?
Super Soaker
Super Soaker water guns grew out of Johnson's tests on a new kind of refrigeration system. The toy first went on sale in 1990 under the name Power Drencher.
Q 08Which medieval siege weapon, swung by a falling counterweight, could hurl heavy stones at castle walls?
Trebuchet
The trebuchet called Warwolf, built for Edward I of England at the siege of Stirling Castle in 1304, is believed to be the largest ever made.
Q 09Which weapon's brand name is a loose acronym honouring Tom Swift, the young inventor of early adventure novels?
Taser
Taser stands for Tom Swift's electric rifle, a gadget from a 1911 novel. Its inventor Jack Cover, a NASA researcher, named the device after his childhood hero.
Q 10Which curved Japanese sword did the samurai of feudal Japan wear with its cutting edge facing upward?
Katana
The katana was thrust through a sash with its sharpened edge up, so a samurai could ideally draw and strike in a single motion. The older tachi hung edge down.
Q 11Which sword of King Arthur is, in some tellings, handed to him by the Lady of the Lake?
Excalibur
Excalibur comes out of a lake in some versions and out of a stone in others. Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur gives the same name to both swords.
Q 12Which weapon does the thunder god Thor wield in Norse mythology, a shape Vikings wore as a pendant?
Mjölnir
Mjölnir is Thor's hammer, and small hammer pendants were commonly worn across Scandinavia in the Viking Age. In one poem Loki is threatened with it in a refrain repeated four times.
Q 13Which weapon, usually cut from yew, did most of Henry V's army carry at the Battle of Agincourt?
Longbow
Longbow archers, English and Welsh, made up nearly 80 percent of Henry's army in 1415. The same weapon had already beaten French armies at Crécy and Poitiers.
Q 21Which Star Wars weapon is powered by a kyber crystal, the same kind that fuels the Death Star's superlaser?
Lightsaber
A lightsaber's kyber crystal also gives the blade its colour. Kylo Ren's unstable, fiery blade is put down to a cracked crystal.
Q 22Which fictional metal from Wakanda was used to make Captain America's famous circular shield?
Vibranium
Vibranium reached Captain America as a gift: in the comics T'Chaka, king of Wakanda, gave him a sample in 1941. A later attempt to copy the shield's metal produced adamantium instead.
Q 23Which Ottoman sultan's giant bombards, one cast by the Hungarian Orban, battered the walls of Constantinople in 1453?
Mehmed II
Q 14Which weapon did the Roman gladiator called the retiarius carry along with a weighted fishing-style net?
Trident
The trident and net were styled on a fisherman's gear, and retiarius means net-man in Latin. With almost no armour, he relied on speed and kept a dagger in reserve.
Q 15Which medieval power's navy sprayed Greek fire, an incendiary weapon whose recipe was a state secret now lost?
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire used Greek fire from the seventh century, spraying it from tubes onto enemy ships. It kept burning on water, and rival powers never managed to copy it.
Q 16Which American gunmaker made revolvers a mass-produced weapon and founded the company behind the Peacemaker?
Samuel Colt
Samuel Colt had the idea at sea, carving a model revolver from scrap wood aboard the brig Corvo. He later said a ship's capstan and windlass gave him the idea.
Q 17Which hand-cranked, multi-barrelled weapon did an American inventor design in 1861, hoping to shrink the size of armies?
Gatling gun
The Gatling gun was the work of Richard Gatling, who wrote that he built it to reduce the number of soldiers needed and so cut deaths from combat and disease.
Q 18Which codename was given to the uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima by the B-29 Enola Gay?
Little Boy
Little Boy was a gun-type design considered so sure to work that it was never tested before use. It fired one piece of enriched uranium into another.
Q 19Which simple weapon does the Bible say the young shepherd David used to fell the giant Goliath?
Sling
A sling, a staff and five stones from a brook were all David took, having turned down King Saul's armour. He then beheaded Goliath with the giant's own sword.
Q 20Which Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, the hot-tempered one in the red mask, fights with a pair of sai?
Raphael
Raphael is the only one of the four still wearing the red mask they all had in the original version, the others having switched colours. Twin sai are his primary weapon.
Mehmed II took the city after a 53-day siege and made it the new Ottoman capital in place of Adrianople. He had ordered Orban's cannon on hearing it could smash through walls.
Q 24Which blade does Link pull from a stone pedestal in The Legend of Zelda games to defeat Ganon?
Master Sword
The Master Sword debuted in A Link to the Past in 1991. In a later game, drawing it sends Link into the future and putting it back returns him to childhood.
Q 25Which weapon of choice does Indiana Jones, cinema's best-known archaeologist, carry coiled on his belt?
Bullwhip
The bullwhip is part of his signature kit with the fedora and leather jacket. A prologue set in 1912 shows a teenage Jones first using one, and getting the scar on his chin.
Q 26Which compact German pistol became James Bond's sidearm when Ian Fleming retired the spy's Beretta in Dr No?
Walther PPK
The Walther PPK was suggested by Geoffrey Boothroyd, a reader who wrote to Fleming criticising Bond's Beretta. The novel repays him with a character named Major Boothroyd, who issues the new gun.
Q 27Which Hogwarts founder's sword does Harry Potter pull from the Sorting Hat to fight the basilisk?
Godric Gryffindor
Godric Gryffindor's sword takes in basilisk venom during that fight, which is why it can later destroy Horcruxes. Ron Weasley uses it on one of them.
Q 28Which French anti-ship missile, named after a flying fish, sank HMS Sheffield during the Falklands War?
Exocet
Exocet is simply the French word for flying fish. Argentine navy jets fired two at the British destroyer in May 1982, and the damage sank her.
Q 29Which DC superhero's weapon of choice is a magic lasso that makes anyone it binds tell the truth?
Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman and her lasso were created by William Moulton Marston, a psychologist who also helped invent an early prototype of the lie detector.
Q 30Which improvised firebomb did Finnish soldiers name to mock the Soviet foreign minister during the Winter War?
Molotov cocktail
Molotov cocktail was a Finnish joke: when Molotov claimed Soviet bombers were delivering food, Finns named their bottle firebomb the drink to go with his food parcels.