Q 01/05

By the account most historians accept, how did the explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano die on a Caribbean island in 1528?

A) Hanged as a pirate

B) Eaten by cannibals

C) Drowned in a shipwreck

D) Killed by a fever

Answer · why

B) Eaten by cannibals

Eaten by cannibals is the version scholars favour: he rowed ashore, probably on Guadeloupe, while his ships sat anchored too far out to help.

Q 02/05

Until 2018, New York's Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge officially misspelled the explorer's surname by leaving out what?

A) A second Z

B) A second R

C) The final O

D) The word da

Answer · why

A) A second Z

A second Z went missing in a 1959 construction contract, and the bridge stayed Verrazano for nearly six decades until a student's campaign got it fixe...

Q 03/05

Verrazzano saw the broad waters of Pamlico Sound behind North Carolina's Outer Banks and mistook them for which ocean?

A) The Indian

B) The Arctic

C) The Pacific

D) The Southern

Answer · why

C) The Pacific

The Pacific, he believed, lay just beyond a thin strip of sand, so maps showed a Sea of Verrazzano cutting into North America for about a century.

Q 04/05

In 1524 Verrazzano likened an island off New England to which Greek island?

A) Crete

B) Santorini

C) Mykonos

D) Rhodes

Answer · why

D) Rhodes

Rhodes was his comparison, and later colonists assumed he meant Aquidneck Island. That is one theory for how Rhode Island got its name; a rival traces...

Q 05/05

Verrazzano's letter complains that Native traders on the coast of Maine mocked his departing crew in which rude way?

A) Throwing rotten fish

B) Baring their bottoms

C) Burning a French flag

D) Spitting at the ship

Answer · why

B) Baring their bottoms

Baring their bottoms and laughing was the farewell he recorded. These traders around Casco Bay were already used to bargaining with Europeans.