Hard History Trivia Questions

33 hard history trivia questions with answers

1. The Magna Carta was sealed by which English king?

   Answer: King John Sealed at Runnymede in 1215 under pressure from rebel barons.

2. Which battle in 1066 led to Norman rule in England?

   Answer: The Battle of Hastings William of Normandy defeated Harold II near the Sussex coast.Why?

3. Who was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize?

   Answer: Marie Curie She later won a second Nobel, in a different science.Why?

4. The Ottoman Empire captured Constantinople in which year?

   Answer: 1453 Mehmed II's cannon breached the city's ancient land walls.

5. Which treaty formally ended the First World War with Germany?

   Answer: The Treaty of Versailles Signed in 1919; separate treaties dealt with the other Central Powers.Why?

6. The Rosetta Stone was the key to deciphering which writing system?

   Answer: Egyptian hieroglyphs Champollion cracked it by working from the stone's Greek text.

7. Which 1494 treaty divided newly explored lands between Spain and Portugal?

   Answer: The Treaty of Tordesillas Its line down the Atlantic left Brazil on the Portuguese side.Why?

8. The Thirty Years' War was ended by which settlement?

   Answer: The Peace of Westphalia Signed in 1648, it reshaped ideas of state sovereignty in Europe.

9. Suleiman the Magnificent ruled which empire?

   Answer: The Ottoman Empire His sixteenth-century reign is treated as the empire's high point.

10. Europe's first printing press using movable metal type is credited to whom?

    Answer: Johannes Gutenberg His Bible was printed at Mainz around 1455.

11. Which Chinese dynasty produced the Terracotta Army?

    Answer: The Qin The buried figures guard the tomb of the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang.Why?

12. The Battle of Waterloo was fought in what is now which country?

    Answer: Belgium The battlefield lies a short way south of Brussels.

13. Which city did Rome destroy at the end of the Third Punic War?

    Answer: Carthage Rome razed the North African rival in 146 BC.Why?

14. The October Revolution of 1917 brought which party to power in Russia?

    Answer: The Bolsheviks Lenin led it; the old calendar is why a November event is called October.

15. Which 1815 gathering redrew the map of Europe after Napoleon's defeat?

    Answer: The Congress of Vienna Metternich, Talleyrand and Castlereagh restored monarchies and set borders that held for decades.

16. Which 1905 naval battle saw Japan destroy most of a Russian fleet?

    Answer: Tsushima It was the first modern defeat of a European power by an Asian one and helped end the Russo-Japanese War.

17. The Code of Hammurabi, one of the oldest written law codes, came from which civilisation?

    Answer: Babylon It was carved on a stone stele around 1750 BC and is now in the Louvre.

18. Which Greek city-state defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War?

    Answer: Sparta The war ended in 404 BC with the destruction of the Athenian fleet.

19. Which 1942 battle in Egypt turned the North African campaign in the Allies' favour?

    Answer: El Alamein Montgomery's Eighth Army drove Rommel's forces back from the approach to the Suez Canal.

20. Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914 in which city?

    Answer: Sarajevo Gavrilo Princip shot him and his wife on 28 June, setting off the crisis that led to war.

21. The Gallipoli campaign of 1915 was fought against which empire?

    Answer: The Ottoman Empire Australian and New Zealand troops' landing there is commemorated as Anzac Day.

22. Which February 1945 conference brought Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin together to plan post-war Europe?

    Answer: Yalta It agreed the division of Germany into zones of occupation.

23. Which 1938 agreement handed the Sudetenland to Germany?

    Answer: The Munich Agreement Chamberlain returned to Britain claiming it meant 'peace for our time'.

24. Whose ship Endurance was crushed by Antarctic ice in 1915?

    Answer: Ernest Shackleton He brought every one of his crew home alive after an open-boat voyage to South Georgia.

25. Who discovered penicillin in 1928?

    Answer: Alexander Fleming He noticed mould killing bacteria on a neglected culture plate in his London laboratory.

26. Who published the first widely recognised periodic table of the elements in 1869?

    Answer: Dmitri Mendeleev He left gaps for elements not yet discovered and correctly predicted their properties.

27. Which Byzantine emperor codified Roman law and built the Hagia Sophia?

    Answer: Justinian I His sixth-century reign briefly recovered Italy and North Africa for the empire.

28. The Taiping Rebellion, one of the bloodiest wars of the nineteenth century, took place in which country?

    Answer: China It lasted from 1850 to 1864 and cost tens of millions of lives.

29. The Treaty of Nanking in 1842 ended which war?

    Answer: The First Opium War Britain gained Hong Kong and forced open several Chinese ports to trade.

30. Mansa Musa, famed for his wealth, ruled which West African empire?

    Answer: The Mali Empire His pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 spread so much gold that prices fell in Cairo.

31. The Cuban Missile Crisis took place in which year?

    Answer: 1962 Thirteen days in October brought the superpowers closer to nuclear war than at any other time.

32. Which Mauryan emperor of India embraced Buddhism after the bloody Kalinga war?

    Answer: Ashoka His edicts, carved on pillars and rocks, are among the earliest Indian inscriptions.

33. The Defenestration of Prague in 1618 helped start which war?

    Answer: The Thirty Years' War Protestant nobles threw two imperial governors out of a castle window; they survived the fall.