Q 01/05

In a story Eli Whitney liked to tell, which animal clawing at a chicken through a fence inspired his cotton gin?

A) A fox

B) A cat

C) A hawk

D) A raccoon

Answer · why

B) A cat

A cat reaching through a fence for a chicken came away with only feathers, Whitney said. His gin's teeth did the same job, dragging fiber through gaps...

Q 02/05

The 'gin' in cotton gin, the seed-removing device Eli Whitney patented in 1794, is a clipped form of which word?

A) Origin

B) Ginger

C) Gingham

D) Engine

Answer · why

D) Engine

Engine is the word that 'gin' clips, so a cotton gin is literally a cotton engine. The name has nothing to do with the drink.

Q 03/05

Seeds stripped out by cotton gins yield a cooking oil; which kitchen brand, launched in 1911, was first made from it?

A) Crisco

B) Parkay

C) Imperial

D) Blue Bonnet

Answer · why

A) Crisco

Crisco was hydrogenated cottonseed oil, sold from 1911 as a substitute for lard. Its early ads pitched it as more economical than butter.

Q 04/05

The earliest known cotton gins, simple single rollers used by the fifth century, come from which country?

A) Egypt

B) China

C) India

D) Mexico

Answer · why

C) India

India had roller gins some thirteen centuries before Whitney's patent. Fifth-century Buddhist paintings in the Ajanta Caves show a single-roller gin a...

Q 05/05

The cotton gin, which made slave-grown cotton hugely profitable, is often cited as an indirect cause of which conflict?

A) The Civil War

B) The War of 1812

C) The Mexican-American War

D) The Seminole Wars

Answer · why

A) The Civil War

The Civil War is often traced back to the gin, which revived a Southern plantation economy that had been in decline. Enslaved people in the US rose fr...