Q 01/05

Which animal, pulling a rival carriage, outran the steam locomotive Tom Thumb in a famous 1830 race?

A) A mule

B) A horse

C) An ox

D) A donkey

Answer · why

B) A horse

A horse won only because a belt slipped off the engine's blower and it lost power. The railroad was convinced anyway and dropped its animals for locom...

Q 02/05

Which London residence did Queen Victoria become the first monarch to live in on taking the throne in 1837?

A) Kensington Palace

B) St James's Palace

C) Hampton Court Palace

D) Buckingham Palace

Answer · why

D) Buckingham Palace

Buckingham Palace was being rebuilt for George IV, who died before it was finished, so the 18-year-old Victoria was the first sovereign to move in.

Q 03/05

What saved President Andrew Jackson when a house painter tried to shoot him at the US Capitol in 1835?

A) Both pistols misfired

B) A Bible stopped the bullet

C) A senator tackled the gunman

D) The gunman fainted

Answer · why

A) Both pistols misfired

Both pistols misfired, and the 67-year-old Jackson then set about the gunman with his cane. It was the first known attempt to kill a sitting US presid...

Q 04/05

Which heavenly body did New York's Sun newspaper claim in 1835 was home to unicorns and bat-winged people?

A) Mars

B) Venus

C) The Moon

D) Halley's Comet

Answer · why

C) The Moon

The Moon was the setting of six hoax articles that falsely credited the real astronomer Sir John Herschel with spotting bison, two-legged beavers and ...

Q 05/05

Which everyday abbreviation first appeared in print in 1839 during a Boston fad for comic misspellings?

A) PS

B) OK

C) RSVP

D) IOU

Answer · why

B) OK

OK is traced by most reference works to a jokey shortening of a misspelled "all correct". It caught on nationally a year later as a slogan in the 1840...