Q 01/05

By 1920 the British Empire covered roughly what share of the Earth's total land area?

A) 12 per cent

B) 18 per cent

C) 24 per cent

D) 31 per cent

Answer · why

C) 24 per cent

That was about 35.5 million square kilometres, and by 1913 the empire already ruled 412 million people, 23 per cent of the world's population.

Q 02/05

The British Empire was famously described as 'the empire on which the sun never' does what?

A) Rises

B) Sets

C) Shines

D) Rests

Answer · why

B) Sets

The phrase captured the fact that the sun was always shining on at least one British territory somewhere on the globe.

Q 03/05

Which explorer did Henry VII commission in 1496 to find a Northwest Passage to Asia?

A) Francis Drake

B) Walter Raleigh

C) John Cabot

D) Humphrey Gilbert

Answer · why

C) John Cabot

He sailed in 1497, five years after Columbus, made landfall on the coast of Newfoundland and believed he had reached Asia; his second voyage in 1498 n...

Q 04/05

Which Elizabethan writer was the first to use the term 'British Empire'?

A) Richard Hakluyt

B) John Dee

C) Francis Bacon

D) Walter Raleigh

Answer · why

B) John Dee

Dee, a mathematician and occultist as well as an advocate of English expansion, coined the phrase while pressing Elizabeth I to build an empire of her...

Q 05/05

Who founded the ill-fated Roanoke Colony on the coast of present-day North Carolina in 1584?

A) Humphrey Gilbert

B) John Smith

C) Walter Raleigh

D) Francis Drake

Answer · why

C) Walter Raleigh

Raleigh was granted his patent after his half-brother Humphrey Gilbert died on the voyage home from claiming Newfoundland; Roanoke failed for lack of ...