Q 01/05

Which English naturalist coined the word 'aquarium'?

A) Nathaniel Ward

B) Charles Darwin

C) Philip Henry Gosse

D) Robert Warington

Answer · why

C) Philip Henry Gosse

He combined the Latin aqua with -arium and used it as the title of his 1854 book.

Q 02/05

In which city did the first public aquarium open, in May 1853?

A) Paris

B) Vienna

C) Berlin

D) London

Answer · why

D) London

London. The Fish House at the city's zoo in Regent's Park was built much like a greenhouse, and aquariums in Naples and Paris soon followed its lead.

Q 03/05

Which showman opened the first American aquarium in 1856 as part of his Broadway museum?

A) Florenz Ziegfeld

B) Harry Houdini

C) Buffalo Bill Cody

D) P. T. Barnum

Answer · why

D) P. T. Barnum

P. T. Barnum saw there was money in live sea creatures: the circus man showed them at his American Museum, beluga whales among them, until the buildin...

Q 04/05

In 1850 the chemist Robert Warington showed that a tank's water plants could supply its fish with enough of what?

A) Food

B) Oxygen

C) Shade

D) Calcium

Answer · why

B) Oxygen

Oxygen. Warington kept goldfish, eelgrass and water snails together in a glass vessel, and told the Chemical Society that only the evaporated water wo...

Q 05/05

Which French marine biologist created the first experimental aquaria in 1832?

A) Marie-Anne Lavoisier

B) Sophie Germain

C) Jeanne Villepreux-Power

D) Émilie du Châtelet

Answer · why

C) Jeanne Villepreux-Power

Jeanne Villepreux-Power. Working in Sicily, she used her glass tanks to show that the argonaut, a relative of the octopus, grows its own shell instead...