Science true-or-false
Statements about animals, physics, space, biology. Half false on purpose — the counterintuitive ones surprise.
Q1.True or false: Sound travels faster through water than through air.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
Sound moves through water at roughly 1,500 metres per second, more than four times its speed in air, because water is far harder to compress than air and that stiffness outweighs its greater density.
Q2.True or false: Bats are blind.Tap to reveal
Answer: False
Every bat species has working eyes, and the echolocating ones simply add sonar on top of ordinary vision to hunt in the dark.
Q3.True or false: A lightning bolt is hotter than the surface of the Sun.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
The air in a lightning channel is heated to around 30,000 kelvin, roughly five times the temperature of the Sun's visible surface.
Q4.True or false: The chemical symbol for gold is Ag.Tap to reveal
Answer: False
Ag belongs to silver, from the Latin argentum, while gold takes Au from aurum.
Q5.True or false: Mercury is the hottest planet in the solar system.Tap to reveal
Answer: False
Venus, though farther from the Sun, keeps a surface temperature of about 465 degrees Celsius because its thick carbon dioxide atmosphere traps heat.
Q6.True or false: An adult human skeleton has 206 bones.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
Newborns start with roughly 270 to 300 bony pieces, many of which fuse together as the skeleton matures.
Q7.True or false: Glass is a slow-flowing liquid, which is why old window panes are thicker at the bottom.Tap to reveal
Answer: False
Old panes are uneven because of how crown glass was spun and cut, and glaziers often set the heavier edge downward for stability.
Q8.True or false: Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
Hydrogen accounts for about three quarters of the universe's ordinary matter by mass, with helium making up most of the remainder.
Q9.True or false: The tongue has separate zones for tasting sweet, salty, sour and bitter.Tap to reveal
Answer: False
The tongue-map idea grew out of a misreading of a 1901 German study, and every taste quality can be detected across the whole tongue.
Q10.True or false: An octopus has three hearts.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
Two hearts push blood through the gills while the third serves the body, and that systemic heart actually stops beating when the octopus swims.
Q11.True or false: Absolute zero is minus 273.15 degrees Celsius.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
That temperature equals zero kelvin, the point of minimum possible thermal motion, which laboratories can approach to within billionths of a degree but never reach.
Q12.True or false: Pluto's orbit sometimes carries it closer to the Sun than Neptune.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
Pluto spent the twenty years ending in 1999 inside Neptune's orbit, and a 3:2 orbital resonance guarantees the two bodies will never collide.
Q13.True or false: Helium was discovered on the Sun before it was found on Earth.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
Astronomers spotted its unknown yellow spectral line in sunlight during an 1868 eclipse, and chemists did not isolate the gas on Earth until 1895.
History true-or-false
Common historical 'facts' that turn out to be myths. Reward fact-checkers.
Q1.True or false: The Titanic sank in 1912.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
The liner struck an iceberg on the night of 14 April during its maiden voyage and went down in the early hours of the following morning.
Q2.True or false: Napoleon Bonaparte was unusually short.Tap to reveal
Answer: False
He stood about five feet six or seven inches in modern units, average for a Frenchman of his time; the myth grew from confusion between French and English inches and from British caricature.
Q3.True or false: The Berlin Wall fell in 1989.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
The crossings opened on the night of 9 November after East German spokesman Gunter Schabowski fumbled a press conference, and Germany reunified less than a year later.
Q4.True or false: Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
The Great Pyramid was finished around 2560 BC, some 2,500 years before Cleopatra died in 30 BC, while the Moon landing came less than 2,000 years after her.
Q5.True or false: The Hundred Years' War lasted exactly one hundred years.Tap to reveal
Answer: False
The on-and-off conflict between England and France ran from 1337 to 1453, a span of 116 years.
Q6.True or false: Vikings wore horned helmets into battle.Tap to reveal
Answer: False
No horned Viking helmet has ever been excavated; the image was popularised by 19th-century costume designs for Wagner's Ring cycle operas.
Q7.True or false: The Western Roman Empire fell in 476 AD.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
The Germanic commander Odoacer deposed the boy emperor Romulus Augustulus that year, while the Eastern Empire in Constantinople endured until 1453.
Q8.True or false: George Washington was the first president to live in the White House.Tap to reveal
Answer: False
John Adams moved in during 1800, the year after Washington's death; Washington chose the site and oversaw construction but never lived there.
Q9.True or false: King John of England agreed to Magna Carta in 1215.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
He set his seal to the charter at Runnymede in June, and Pope Innocent III annulled it within about ten weeks, though it was reissued after John's death.
Q10.True or false: Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
Teaching was already under way at Oxford by 1096, whereas the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan was founded in 1325 and the Triple Alliance formed in 1428.
Q11.True or false: France last used the guillotine in the 19th century.Tap to reveal
Answer: False
France's final guillotine execution took place in 1977, and the country abolished the death penalty in 1981.
Q12.True or false: The Great Fire of London in 1666 killed thousands of people.Tap to reveal
Answer: False
Fewer than ten deaths were officially recorded even though the blaze destroyed more than 13,000 houses and St Paul's Cathedral, though some historians suspect the true toll went unrecorded.
Q13.True or false: The Mongol Empire was the largest contiguous land empire in history.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
At its peak in the late 13th century it stretched from the Pacific coast of Asia to Eastern Europe, and it was later divided among descendants of Genghis Khan into separate khanates.
Geography true-or-false
Country sizes, capitals, longest rivers. Geography myths are everywhere.
Q1.True or false: Australia is both a country and a continent.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
It is the smallest continent by land area, and most Australians live along the eastern and south-eastern coasts rather than in the arid interior.
Q2.True or false: The Nile is the longest river in Africa.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
It runs about 6,650 kilometres and its basin touches eleven countries, yet the shorter Congo River carries far more water.
Q3.True or false: Sydney is the capital of Australia.Tap to reveal
Answer: False
Canberra was purpose-built as the capital because rivals Sydney and Melbourne could not agree on which of them should hold the title.
Q4.True or false: Africa is the largest continent by area.Tap to reveal
Answer: False
Asia covers roughly 44 million square kilometres, leaving Africa in second place with about 30 million.
Q5.True or false: Greenland is the world's largest island.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
Australia is larger but is classed as a continent, so Greenland tops the island list at about 2.1 million square kilometres, most of it buried under ice.
Q6.True or false: Reno, Nevada lies farther west than Los Angeles.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
Reno sits near 119.8 degrees west while Los Angeles is near 118.2, because the California coastline slants sharply to the south-east.
Q7.True or false: Mount Everest is the tallest mountain on Earth when measured from base to summit.Tap to reveal
Answer: False
Hawaii's Mauna Kea rises about 10,200 metres from its base on the seafloor, though only 4,207 metres of it stand above the water.
Q8.True or false: The shore of the Dead Sea is the lowest point on Earth's land surface.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
It lies around 430 metres below sea level and keeps dropping by roughly a metre a year as the Jordan River's water is diverted upstream.
Q9.True or false: Maine is the only US state that borders exactly one other state.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
Its sole state neighbour is New Hampshire, with the Canadian provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick making up the rest of its land border.
Q10.True or false: Africa has more countries than any other continent.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
The continent holds 54 United Nations member states, the newest being South Sudan, which gained independence in 2011.
Q11.True or false: Alaska is the northernmost, westernmost and easternmost state in the USA.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
The Aleutian Islands cross the 180th meridian, placing part of the state in the Eastern Hemisphere and giving it the easternmost longitude as well.
Q12.True or false: Monaco is the most densely populated sovereign country in the world.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
About 38,000 residents share barely two square kilometres, and the principality has repeatedly reclaimed land from the Mediterranean to make room.
Q13.True or false: Bolivia has no coastline but still maintains a navy.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
Bolivia lost its Pacific coast to Chile in the War of the Pacific of 1879 to 1884, yet it keeps a naval force on Lake Titicaca and its rivers and still marks a Day of the Sea every year.
Pop culture true-or-false
Did Brian May actually have a PhD before joining Queen? Did Albert Einstein fail math? Pop culture has its own myth-busting territory.
Q1.True or false: The Beatles came from Liverpool.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
All four members were born in the city, and its Cavern Club hosted the band nearly 300 times before they broke through nationally.
Q2.True or false: Superman's home planet was called Vulcan.Tap to reveal
Answer: False
Superman was sent to Earth from Krypton; Vulcan is the home world of Mr Spock in Star Trek.
Q3.True or false: Robert Downey Jr. played Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
The 2008 Iron Man film launched the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the studio had initially considered Downey too risky a choice because of his earlier legal troubles.
Q4.True or false: The first Star Wars film released was Episode IV.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
The 1977 original carried no episode number at all; the Episode IV: A New Hope subtitle was added to the opening crawl for a 1981 re-release.
Q5.True or false: The sitcom Friends was set in Los Angeles.Tap to reveal
Answer: False
The show was set in Manhattan's Greenwich Village but filmed almost entirely on a soundstage at the Warner Bros lot in Burbank, California.
Q6.True or false: Michael Jackson's Thriller is the best-selling album of all time.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
Worldwide sales estimates exceed 70 million copies, and the 14-minute title video was directed by John Landis of An American Werewolf in London.
Q7.True or false: Titanic was the first film to gross more than one billion dollars worldwide.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
It crossed the mark in 1998, and James Cameron repeated the feat with Avatar, the first film to pass two billion.
Q8.True or false: Nintendo's Mario was originally called Jumpman.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
In the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong the hero was a carpenter named Jumpman, later renamed after Mario Segale, the landlord of Nintendo of America's warehouse.
Q9.True or false: Mickey Mouse's official birthday is 18 November, the day Steamboat Willie premiered in 1928.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
Disney counts the New York premiere of Steamboat Willie on 18 November 1928 as Mickey's birthday, even though the character had been shown in a test screening of Plane Crazy earlier that year.
Q10.True or false: The Nintendo Game Boy was released in the 1980s.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
It launched in Japan in April 1989 and shipped with Tetris in the West, going on to outsell the more powerful colour handhelds of its era.
Running true-or-false trivia
True/false works as a rapid-fire round (20-30 statements in 5 minutes). Use as warm-up or tiebreaker.
Trivio.NET has True/False packs in multiple categories.
Frequently Asked Questions
What's the best ratio of true to false statements?
50/50. Players' guessing patterns even out, so make it pure recall not pattern recognition.
How long should a true/false round last?
5-10 minutes max. The format works as a rapid warm-up or tiebreaker, not a full round.
Where can I find true/false trivia packs?
Trivio.NET has T/F packs across science, history, geography categories.
Is true/false trivia good for kids?
Yes — easier than multiple-choice. Just yes/no decision. Great for ages 6+.
