Q 01/05

Teaching at which university is recorded as early as 1096?

A) Cambridge

B) Harvard

C) Bologna

D) Oxford

Answer · why

D) Oxford

It is the world's second-oldest university in continuous operation; only Bologna, from 1088, is older.

Q 02/05

Cleopatra was born in 69 BC. Which of these events happened closest in time to her life?

A) The building of the Great Pyramid

B) The raising of Stonehenge's stones

C) Apollo 11 in 1969

D) The invention of writing in Sumer

Answer · why

C) Apollo 11 in 1969

The Great Pyramid went up around 2600 BC, roughly 2,500 years before her, while the first Moon landing came just under 2,000 years after her death.

Q 03/05

Which of these appeared on Earth first?

A) Trees

B) Sharks

C) Dinosaurs

D) Flowering plants

Answer · why

B) Sharks

Shark-like fish were swimming in the Devonian over 400 million years ago; the first trees appeared later in that same period, and dinosaurs not until ...

Q 04/05

Which planet has the hottest surface in the Solar System, at around 464 C?

A) Venus

B) Mercury

C) Mars

D) Jupiter

Answer · why

A) Venus

A runaway greenhouse atmosphere of carbon dioxide traps the heat, and the surface pressure is 92 times Earth's.

Q 05/05

Claude Shannon's famous figure of roughly 10 to the power of 120 is a lower-bound estimate of what?

A) Atoms in the observable universe

B) Grains of sand on Earth

C) Possible Rubik's Cube positions

D) Possible games of chess

Answer · why

D) Possible games of chess

Claude Shannon worked it out in his 1950 paper that founded computer chess; the figure comfortably exceeds the estimated number of atoms in the observ...