Which Came First Trivia
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108 free Which Came First trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Every question here gives you four things and asks one thing: which came first? Some are famous head-scratchers (Voyager 2 really did launch before Voyager 1, and the fax machine beat the telephone by decades). Others line up brands, bands, board games, landmarks and inventions from the same era so you have to think about the actual dates rather than the vibes. It works well as a round for pub quizzes and family game nights because everyone can have a go: you do not need to know the year, just the order. Play it solo to see how good your sense of history really is, or read the questions aloud and let the table argue. Each answer is checked against a reference page and the explanation gives the dates of the runners-up, so you learn the whole timeline, not just the winner.
30 of 108 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which of these inventions was patented first?
The fax machine
The fax machine was patented by the Scottish inventor Alexander Bain in 1843, more than three decades before Bell's telephone. By the 1860s a commercial service was wiring images between Paris and Lyon.
Q 02Which came first?
The University of Oxford
The University of Oxford was teaching by 1096 and grew fast after 1167, when Henry II barred English students from Paris. The Aztecs did not found their capital, Tenochtitlan, until the 14th century.
Q 03Which of these 17th-century milestones came first?
Harvard University
Harvard University was founded in 1636 by a vote of the Massachusetts colony's court, not by John Harvard, a minister who left the young college his library and half his estate. The Royal Society first met in 1660.
Q 04Which of these 18th-century milestones came first?
The Guinness brewery
The Guinness brewery began on 31 December 1759, when Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease on a disused Dublin brewery at £45 a year. American independence was still seventeen years away.
Q 05Which invention is the oldest?
The vending machine
The vending machine goes back to Hero of Alexandria, who described a device that took a coin and dispensed a measure of holy water in ancient temples, many centuries before eyeglasses or mechanical clocks.
Q 06All four date from 1889, but which came first?
The Eiffel Tower's completion
The Eiffel Tower's completion came on March 31, 1889, when Gustave Eiffel climbed its stairs to raise a French flag because the lifts weren't ready. Nintendo began later that year as a maker of playing cards.
Q 07Which toy came first?
Lego bricks
Lego bricks took their modern form in January 1958, a year before Barbie's debut, when tubes were added inside each brick so that models gripped together instead of falling apart.
Q 08Which of these postwar household items came first?
The microwave oven
The microwave oven went on sale in 1947 as Raytheon's Radarange, which stood nearly six feet tall and weighed about 750 pounds, three years before Zenith's first TV remote.
Q 09Which of these 1970s computing and phone milestones came first?
Network email
Network email began in 1971, when Ray Tomlinson sent mail between two ARPANET computers and picked the @ sign to split the user's name from the machine's, a format still in every address.
Q 10Which of these 2001 launches came first?
Wikipedia
Wikipedia went live on 15 January 2001, months before the iPod or Windows XP, as a side project of the expert-written Nupedia, whose slow review process had approved only a handful of articles.
Q 11All four date from 1928, but which came first?
Sliced bread
Sliced bread first went on sale in July 1928 in Chillicothe, Missouri, two months before Fleming spotted penicillin, and caught on so well that a 1943 US wartime ban on it was quickly dropped.
Q 12Which of these 1990s tech arrivals came first?
USB
USB 1.0 was published in January 1996, a year before the first Wi-Fi standard, to end a mess in which each new PC add-on needed its own kind of port.
Q 13Which of these 2007-08 arrivals could customers use first?
Netflix streaming
Netflix streaming began in January 2007 as 'Watch Now', with only about 1,000 films to choose from. The iPhone had been unveiled a week earlier but did not go on sale until that June.
Q 21All four date from 1903, but which came first?
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company was incorporated on June 16, 1903, two weeks before the first Tour de France set off, and it was Henry Ford's third attempt at a car firm after two unsuccessful earlier ventures.
Q 22Which of these 1860s milestones came first?
The London Underground
The London Underground began in January 1863, when the Metropolitan Railway opened between Paddington and Farringdon Street with steam locomotives hauling the trains. Its first electric line did not come until 1890.
Q 23All four date from 1961, but which came first?
The Peace Corps
Q 14Which of these sweet treats came first?
The Oreo
The Oreo arrived in 1912 as a copy of Hydrox, a near-identical sandwich cookie launched four years earlier, yet it so outsold the original that many people assume Hydrox is the knockoff.
Q 15Which of these everyday items came first?
The safety pin
The safety pin was patented in 1849 by Walter Hunt, who twisted it from a piece of wire to pay off a $15 debt and then sold the rights for just $400.
Q 16Which American landmark opened first?
The Brooklyn Bridge
The Brooklyn Bridge opened in May 1883 as the world's longest suspension bridge, and the first ride across went to Emily Roebling, who had run the site for years on behalf of her bedridden engineer husband.
Q 17Which of these late-1970s arrivals came first?
Star Wars
Star Wars opened on May 25, 1977 in fewer than 50 US theaters, a tiny launch for what became a surprise blockbuster. The Atari 2600 followed that September and Space Invaders in 1978.
Q 18Which board game went on sale first?
Monopoly
Monopoly went on sale from Parker Brothers in 1935, but it grew out of The Landlord's Game, which Lizzie Magie had patented three decades earlier to show how landlords grow rich at their tenants' expense.
Q 19Which burger chain came first?
White Castle
White Castle opened in Wichita in 1921, when hamburger stands had a reputation for dirty kitchens and doubtful meat, so its founders picked a name meant to suggest purity and permanence.
Q 20Which soft drink came first?
Dr Pepper
Dr Pepper was first served in Waco, Texas in 1885, a year before Coca-Cola, at a drugstore soda fountain where customers ordered the pharmacist's new drink by asking him to shoot them a 'Waco'.
The Peace Corps was created by President Kennedy's executive order on March 1, 1961, six weeks before Gagarin flew. He had first aired the idea in a late-night campaign speech to students at the University of Michigan.
Q 24Which company came first?
Amazon
Amazon was founded in July 1994 as Cadabra, a play on 'abracadabra', selling only books from Jeff Bezos's garage near Seattle. eBay followed in 1995 and Google in 1998.
Q 25Which launched first?
Facebook went live on February 4, 2004 as TheFacebook, open only to Harvard students, and well over a thousand of them signed up within 24 hours. Gmail launched that April Fools' Day.
Q 26Which of these ancient monuments was begun first?
Stonehenge
Stonehenge was begun about 3000 BC as a circular ditch and bank, some four centuries before the Great Pyramid, though its famous standing stones were only raised around 2500 BC.
Q 27Which sporting event came first?
Wimbledon
Wimbledon began in 1877, when a London croquet club that had taken up the newer game held a men's singles event for just 22 amateurs. The Stanley Cup was first awarded in 1893.
Q 28Which award came first?
The Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prize was first handed out in 1901, five years after the death of dynamite's inventor Alfred Nobel, whose family had fought the will that gave away his fortune. The Pulitzers began in 1917.
Q 29Which of these comic-book heroes debuted first?
Superman
Superman debuted in Action Comics #1 in April 1938, after creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had signed away their rights to him for just $130. Batman followed a year later.
Q 30Which cartoon character came first?
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse reached cinemas in Steamboat Willie in November 1928, dreamed up after Walt Disney lost control of his star Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Legend has it Walt wanted to call him Mortimer until his wife Lillian objected.