Ancient worlds
Long before cars or phones, people in Egypt, Greece and Rome built amazing things that you can still visit today. This round visits the pyramids and the river Nile, shows how picture writing was finally figured out, and sorts out the order of life on Earth, from dinosaurs to woolly mammoths to the first people. The first questions are gentle, and the last two will stretch older kids.
Q1.Which country is home to the famous pyramids of Giza?Tap to reveal
Answer: Egypt
The Great Pyramid was the tallest thing people had ever built for more than 3,800 years.
Q2.Did any person ever see a living T. rex?Tap to reveal
Answer: No
T. rex lived about 66 million years ago, more than 60 million years before the first people.
Q3.What long river flows through Egypt and helped farmers grow food?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Nile
Each year the river flooded and left behind rich, dark mud that was perfect for growing crops.
Q4.What were the kings of ancient Egypt called?Tap to reveal
Answer: Pharaohs
The word pharaoh comes from an Egyptian phrase meaning great house, which first meant the royal palace.
Q5.What is the name of the giant statue near the pyramids with a lion's body and a human head?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Great Sphinx
It was carved out of one huge piece of rock that was already part of the ground.
Q6.What do we call the picture writing used in ancient Egypt?Tap to reveal
Answer: Hieroglyphs
Some of the little pictures stood for whole words, while others stood for sounds, a bit like our letters.
Q7.Which ancient people held the very first Olympic Games?Tap to reveal
Answer: The ancient Greeks
The games were held at a place called Olympia, and winners got a crown made of olive leaves.
Q8.Which lived on Earth first: dinosaurs or woolly mammoths?Tap to reveal
Answer: Dinosaurs
Woolly mammoths lived during the last Ice Age, and early people even painted pictures of them on cave walls.
Q9.What famous stone helped experts finally learn to read Egyptian hieroglyphs?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Rosetta Stone
It has the same message written in three kinds of writing, and one of them was Greek, which experts could already read.
Q10.Which ancient people built long, straight stone roads and water channels called aqueducts?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Romans
Some roads the Romans laid about 2,000 years ago can still be walked on today.
Famous inventions and inventors
Every invention started with someone asking a question and trying again and again. This round meets the people behind the light bulb, the telephone, the airplane and the printing press, plus a few inventions so old that they began thousands of years ago. Kids will also find out how a teenager made a way for blind people to read and how dots and dashes carried messages across a country.
Q1.Which American inventor is famous for making a light bulb that could glow for many hours?Tap to reveal
Answer: Thomas Edison
Edison also invented the phonograph, one of the first machines that could record sounds and play them back.
Q2.What did the Wright brothers build and fly for the first time in 1903?Tap to reveal
Answer: An airplane
Their very first flight, in North Carolina, lasted just 12 seconds.
Q3.What machine is Alexander Graham Bell famous for inventing?Tap to reveal
Answer: The telephone
Bell was also a teacher of deaf students and spent much of his life helping people share sound and speech.
Q4.Which simple invention, first used more than 5,000 years ago, let people roll heavy loads on carts?Tap to reveal
Answer: The wheel
The earliest wheels were solid wooden disks, and spokes were added later to make them lighter.
Q5.Which country was the first to make paper from plants mashed into a wet mush?Tap to reveal
Answer: China
Ancient Egyptians wrote on papyrus even earlier, but they made it by pressing flat strips of a reed plant together instead of mashing it up.
Q6.Who invented a way for blind people to read by touching raised dots?Tap to reveal
Answer: Louis Braille
He came up with his dot system when he was only 15 years old.
Q7.What machine did Johannes Gutenberg build around 1450 that made books much faster to produce?Tap to reveal
Answer: The printing press
Before printing presses, books were copied out by hand, and a single book could take months to finish.
Q8.Which scientist found hundreds of different ways to use peanuts?Tap to reveal
Answer: George Washington Carver
He also taught farmers to switch which crops they planted so their soil stayed healthy.
Q9.Which scientist used a telescope in 1610 to spot four moons circling the planet Jupiter?Tap to reveal
Answer: Galileo Galilei
Those four moons are still called the Galilean moons in his honor.
Q10.Samuel Morse helped invent which machine that sent messages along wires as clicks?Tap to reveal
Answer: The telegraph
His code of dots and dashes, called Morse code, can also be sent with flashes of light.
Explorers and firsts
Explorers are people who travel somewhere new to find out what is there, whether that means across an ocean, up a mountain or into space. This round follows sailors, pilots, climbers, divers and astronauts, mixing very famous names with a few that kids may be hearing for the first time. After each answer, ask children which trip they would most like to take themselves.
Q1.Who was the first person to walk on the Moon?Tap to reveal
Answer: Neil Armstrong
His footprints may still be there, because the Moon has no wind or rain to wipe them away.
Q2.Which ocean did Christopher Columbus sail across in 1492?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Atlantic Ocean
He sailed with three ships named the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria.
Q3.Which traveler from Venice, Italy, journeyed all the way to China more than 700 years ago?Tap to reveal
Answer: Marco Polo
A splashy tag game played in swimming pools is named after him.
Q4.In 1783, the first people ever to fly rode in what kind of flying machine?Tap to reveal
Answer: A hot-air balloon
Before any people went up, a sheep, a duck and a rooster took a test ride in one.
Q5.Who was the first woman to fly an airplane alone across the Atlantic Ocean?Tap to reveal
Answer: Amelia Earhart
She made the trip in 1932, five years after Charles Lindbergh became the first person to do it alone.
Q6.Which two explorers set off in 1804 to map the land west of the Mississippi River?Tap to reveal
Answer: Lewis and Clark
A young Shoshone woman named Sacagawea helped guide them and speak with the people they met.
Q7.Which two climbers were the first to reach the top of Mount Everest, in 1953?Tap to reveal
Answer: Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay
Everest is the tallest mountain above sea level, rising almost 9 kilometers (about 5.5 miles) high.
Q8.In 1960, two explorers rode a special underwater craft all the way to the bottom of the deepest ocean trench on Earth. What is that trench called?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Mariana Trench
It is so deep that if Mount Everest sat on the bottom, its top would still be more than a mile underwater.
Q9.Who was the first person ever to travel into space, in 1961?Tap to reveal
Answer: Yuri Gagarin
His trip once around Earth took about 108 minutes, less than two hours.
Q10.Which Norwegian explorer led the first team to reach the South Pole, in 1911?Tap to reveal
Answer: Roald Amundsen
His team traveled on skis and used sled dogs to pull their supplies across the ice.
American history for kids
The United States is a young country compared with Egypt or Rome, but its story is full of famous people and places. This round covers the first president, the flag, the Statue of Liberty and the ship that brought the Pilgrims across the ocean. The last two questions, about the White House and a very long railroad, trip up plenty of grown-ups too.
Q1.Who was the first President of the United States?Tap to reveal
Answer: George Washington
The capital city, Washington, D.C., is named after him.
Q2.How many stars are on the flag of the United States?Tap to reveal
Answer: 50
Each star stands for one state, and the 13 stripes stand for the first 13 colonies.
Q3.Which giant statue in New York Harbor was a gift from France?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Statue of Liberty
Its copper skin was once shiny brown and slowly turned green after many years out in the weather.
Q4.Which president was nicknamed Honest Abe?Tap to reveal
Answer: Abraham Lincoln
He was born in a one-room log cabin in Kentucky.
Q5.What was the name of the ship that carried the Pilgrims to America in 1620?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Mayflower
The trip across the ocean took about two months.
Q6.Which mountain in South Dakota has the faces of four presidents carved into it?Tap to reveal
Answer: Mount Rushmore
Each face is about 60 feet tall, as high as a six-story building.
Q7.What important paper, signed in 1776, said the 13 colonies wanted to be their own country?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Declaration of Independence
Thomas Jefferson wrote most of the first draft when he was only 33 years old.
Q8.Which was the last state to join the United States?Tap to reveal
Answer: Hawaii
It became a state in 1959 and is the only state made up entirely of islands.
Q9.Which president was the first to live in the White House?Tap to reveal
Answer: John Adams
George Washington helped choose the spot for the house but never got to live there.
Q10.What was the name of the first railroad line, finished in 1869, that let trains cross the whole country?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Transcontinental Railroad
When the two sets of tracks met in Utah, a golden spike was tapped in to celebrate.
Frequently Asked Questions
What age is this history quiz right for?
It is written for children aged 6 to 12. Younger kids will know the easier questions at the start of each section, like who the first president was, while older kids can stretch for the last two in each round, such as the Rosetta Stone or the Transcontinental Railroad. For a mixed-age group, pair a younger child with an older one so everyone gets to answer.
How do I run this quiz with a class or at a party?
Split the group into teams of three or four and read one section per round. Give each team a moment to agree on an answer, then read the answer and the fun fact out loud, because the fun facts start the best conversations. One section of ten questions takes about ten minutes, so a single round makes a quick warm-up and all four fill a lesson.
Can teachers use these questions in class for free?
Yes. The questions are free to read aloud, write on the board or use in a classroom game, and you do not need to sign up for anything. You can print the list for a paper quiz, or let children play the online version on a tablet or computer, where the score is counted for you and each answer shows its fun fact.
Which question do kids find the hardest?
Many children find the question about which president first lived in the White House the trickiest. Lots of kids guess George Washington, but the answer is John Adams, because the house was still being built when Washington's time as president ended. It is a good one to save for last, and the story behind it makes a nice lesson about how long big buildings take to finish.
Where can kids play this history quiz online?
Right here on this page. Press play on the free quiz to answer the questions one at a time, with the score tracked as you go. It works in any web browser on a phone, tablet or computer, and there is nothing to download or install. If your family enjoys it, the other kids quizzes linked below are free to play the same way.
