Fun Trivia Questions

Geography trivia questions and answers

Capitals, rivers, oceans and famous places.

1. 1.What is the capital of New Zealand?Answer: Wellington. Wellington is the southernmost capital city of any country in the world.
2. 2.What is the longest river in South America?Answer: The Amazon. The Amazon carries more water into the sea than any other river on Earth.
3. 3.What is the capital of Egypt?Answer: Cairo. The pyramids of Giza stand at the edge of greater Cairo.
4. 4.Which long, narrow country runs down the west coast of South America?Answer: Chile. Chile is more than 4,000 kilometers long but, on average, less than 200 kilometers wide.
5. 5.What is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea?Answer: Sicily. Mount Etna, one of the most active volcanoes in the world, is on Sicily.
6. 6.What is the capital of Spain?Answer: Madrid. Madrid sits very close to the geographic center of Spain.
7. 7.Which Italian city is built on more than 100 small islands linked by bridges?Answer: Venice. Instead of streets, many parts of Venice have canals.
8. 8.Which is the coldest continent on Earth?Answer: Antarctica. Antarctica is also the driest and the windiest continent.
9. 9.In which mountain range is the Matterhorn?Answer: The Alps. The Matterhorn sits on the border between Switzerland and Italy.
10. 10.What is the capital of Ireland?Answer: Dublin. The River Liffey runs through the middle of Dublin.
11. 11.What is the capital of South Korea?Answer: Seoul. Seoul first became a royal capital in 1394.
12. 12.Which river flows through the middle of Paris?Answer: The Seine. More than 30 bridges cross the Seine inside Paris.
13. 13.In which country is the ancient temple of Angkor Wat?Answer: Cambodia. Angkor Wat appears on the national flag of Cambodia.
14. 14.What is the name of the imaginary line that divides Earth into the Northern and Southern Hemispheres?Answer: The equator. The equator is about 40,075 kilometers (24,901 miles) long.
15. 15.In which country is Mount Kilimanjaro?Answer: Tanzania. Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain in Africa.
16. 16.Which country is home to the Great Barrier Reef?Answer: Australia. It is the largest coral reef system in the world, made of thousands of separate reefs.
17. 17.Which canal links the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea?Answer: The Suez Canal. The Suez Canal opened in 1869.

Science and space trivia questions

Volcanoes, vaccines, hurricanes and the shape of DNA.

1. 18.What is the study of earthquakes called?Answer: Seismology. Scientists who study earthquakes record them with instruments called seismographs.
2. 19.About how fast does light travel?Answer: About 300,000 km per second. In one second, light could travel around Earth about seven and a half times.
3. 20.What is the twisted-ladder shape of DNA called?Answer: A double helix. Scientists described the double helix shape in 1953.
4. 21.What is the most common element in the universe?Answer: Hydrogen. Stars like the Sun shine by turning hydrogen into helium.
5. 22.Which astronomer discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter in 1610?Answer: Galileo Galilei. They are called the Galilean moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.
6. 23.What do you call animals that have no backbone?Answer: Invertebrates. Most animal species on Earth, including every insect, are invertebrates.
7. 24.What is the calm center of a hurricane called?Answer: The eye. Inside the eye, winds are light and the sky can even be clear.
8. 25.What was the name of the giant supercontinent that broke apart to form today's continents?Answer: Pangaea. Pangaea began breaking apart about 200 million years ago.
9. 26.Which scale measures how acidic or basic something is?Answer: The pH scale. Pure water has a pH of 7, which is neutral.
10. 27.What is the outermost layer of Earth called?Answer: The crust. The crust is thinnest under the oceans.
11. 28.Which scientist developed the first safe and effective polio vaccine, announced in 1955?Answer: Jonas Salk. Salk did not patent his vaccine.
12. 29.Which planet is home to Olympus Mons, the tallest known volcano in the solar system?Answer: Mars. Olympus Mons is about two and a half times as tall as Mount Everest.
13. 30.At what temperature in Celsius does water boil at sea level?Answer: 100 degrees. In Fahrenheit, that is 212 degrees.
14. 31.What is the coldest possible temperature called?Answer: Absolute zero. Absolute zero is about minus 273 degrees Celsius.
15. 32.Which organ makes insulin?Answer: The pancreas. Insulin helps the body use sugar for energy.
16. 33.How many chambers does the human heart have?Answer: Four. The two upper chambers are called atria and the two lower ones are called ventricles.
17. 34.What does a light-year measure?Answer: Distance. It is how far light travels in one year, about 9.46 trillion kilometers.

History trivia questions and answers

Explorers, inventors, ancient cities and famous firsts.

1. 35.In which year did the Titanic sink?Answer: 1912. It sank on its very first voyage, from Southampton, England, to New York.
2. 36.Which ancient Roman city was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD?Answer: Pompeii. The ash preserved streets, houses, paintings and even loaves of bread.
3. 37.Which giant bronze statue was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World?Answer: The Colossus of Rhodes. It stood for only about half a century before an earthquake knocked it down.
4. 38.Which Roman emperor ordered a long wall built across northern Britain?Answer: Hadrian. Work on Hadrian's Wall began around AD 122.
5. 39.Which Greek philosopher was a teacher of Alexander the Great?Answer: Aristotle. Aristotle had studied with Plato for about 20 years.
6. 40.Which famous queen was the last to rule Egypt before it became part of the Roman Empire?Answer: Cleopatra. Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the building of the Great Pyramid.
7. 41.Which Portuguese explorer was the first European to reach India by sea, in 1498?Answer: Vasco da Gama. He sailed around the southern tip of Africa to get there.
8. 42.In which country is Stonehenge?Answer: England. The oldest parts of Stonehenge were built about 5,000 years ago.
9. 43.Which famous charter did King John of England agree to in 1215?Answer: The Magna Carta. It said that even the king had to follow the law.
10. 44.In which country was paper first made, about 2,000 years ago?Answer: China. Ancient Egyptians wrote on papyrus, which is made differently, from pressed reeds.
11. 45.What was the name of the first artificial satellite, launched in 1957?Answer: Sputnik 1. It was launched by the Soviet Union and was about the size of a beach ball.
12. 46.The Pyramid of the Sun stands in which ancient city near Mexico City?Answer: Teotihuacan. The city was already in ruins when the Aztecs found it and gave it its name.
13. 47.On which ship did Charles Darwin sail around the world?Answer: HMS Beagle. The voyage lasted almost five years, from 1831 to 1836.
14. 48.What are the giant stone statues of Easter Island called?Answer: Moai. The island's own name for itself is Rapa Nui.
15. 49.In which country did the Industrial Revolution begin?Answer: Great Britain. It began in the late 1700s with new machines for making cloth.
16. 50.In which country did people first fly in a hot air balloon, in 1783?Answer: France. The balloon was built by the Montgolfier brothers.
17. 51.What were the kings of ancient Egypt called?Answer: Pharaohs. The word pharaoh first meant "great house," the royal palace.

Animal trivia questions

Seahorse dads, narwhal tusks and what is really in a camel's hump.

1. 52.How many legs does a lobster have, counting its two big claws?Answer: Ten. Lobsters belong to a group called decapods, which means "ten feet."
2. 53.Which animal is famous for building dams across streams?Answer: The beaver. A beaver's front teeth are orange because the enamel contains iron.
3. 54.What is the largest living reptile?Answer: The saltwater crocodile. Despite the name, saltwater crocodiles live in rivers and swamps as well as the sea.
4. 55.What is a male honeybee called?Answer: A drone. All worker bees are female.
5. 56.Which bird is famous for laying its eggs in other birds' nests?Answer: The cuckoo. Not every kind of cuckoo does this, but the common cuckoo does.
6. 57.What do koalas eat almost all the time?Answer: Eucalyptus leaves. Koalas sleep for most of the day, often 18 hours or more.
7. 58.Which Arctic whale has a long, spiral tusk?Answer: The narwhal. Long ago, traders sold narwhal tusks in Europe as unicorn horns.
8. 59.How many arms does a typical starfish have?Answer: Five. Many sea stars can regrow an arm they have lost.
9. 60.What makes flamingos pink?Answer: The food they eat. Pigments in the algae and tiny shrimp they eat turn their feathers pink.
10. 61.Which sea creature has no brain, no heart and no bones?Answer: The jellyfish. Jellyfish have been drifting through the oceans for more than 500 million years.
11. 62.In seahorses, which parent gives birth to the babies?Answer: The father. The male carries the eggs in a pouch on his belly until they hatch.
12. 63.Which big cat lives high in the mountains of Central Asia?Answer: The snow leopard. It wraps its long, thick tail around its face like a scarf to stay warm.
13. 64.What do you call a scientist who studies birds?Answer: An ornithologist. Entomologists study insects, herpetologists study reptiles and ichthyologists study fish.
14. 65.What word describes an animal that no longer lives anywhere on Earth?Answer: Extinct. The dodo, a flightless bird from the island of Mauritius, went extinct in the 1600s.
15. 66.What is a female fox called?Answer: A vixen. Baby foxes are called kits, cubs or pups.
16. 67.The orca is actually the largest member of which animal family?Answer: The dolphin family. Orcas live in close family groups called pods.
17. 68.What does a camel store in its hump?Answer: Fat. It is a store of energy the camel can use when food is hard to find.

Food trivia questions and answers

Where your favorite foods come from and what is really in them.

1. 69.Which pasta's name means "little tongues" in Italian?Answer: Linguine. Spaghetti means "little strings."
2. 70.Sushi is a traditional food from which country?Answer: Japan. Nigiri sushi, a slice of fish pressed onto a small ball of rice, became popular in Tokyo, then called Edo, in the 1800s.
3. 71.Kimchi, a pickled vegetable dish, comes from which country?Answer: Korea. Kimchi is usually made from fermented cabbage or radish with chili, garlic and ginger.
4. 72.Besides eggs, what is the main ingredient in a Spanish tortilla?Answer: Potatoes. In Mexico a tortilla is a flatbread, but in Spain it is a thick omelet.
5. 73.Which Indian bread is baked on the wall of a clay oven called a tandoor?Answer: Naan. The dough is slapped onto the hot inside wall of the oven to bake.
6. 74.Which fruit is baked upside down in a classic French tarte Tatin?Answer: Apples. The fruit cooks under the pastry, and the tart is flipped over before serving.
7. 75.What is a croque monsieur?Answer: A toasted ham and cheese sandwich. Add a fried egg on top and it becomes a croque madame.
8. 76.What is polenta made from?Answer: Cornmeal. Polenta has been an everyday food in northern Italy for centuries.
9. 77.What is tahini made from?Answer: Sesame seeds. Tahini is a key ingredient in many Middle Eastern sauces and dips.
10. 78.Pierogi, filled dumplings, are a famous dish from which country?Answer: Poland. Pierogi are often filled with potato, cheese, cabbage or fruit.
11. 79.Which spice, made from dried red peppers, is the star of Hungarian goulash?Answer: Paprika. Paprika can be sweet, smoky or hot, depending on the peppers used.
12. 80.Besides sugarcane, which plant is a major source of table sugar?Answer: Sugar beets. Sugar from beets and sugar from cane are chemically the same.
13. 81.Which soft Italian dumplings are often made from potato and flour?Answer: Gnocchi. In Argentina and Uruguay, many families eat gnocchi on the 29th of every month.
14. 82.What is the Japanese dish of seafood and vegetables fried in a light batter called?Answer: Tempura. Portuguese visitors are thought to have brought this way of frying to Japan in the 1500s.
15. 83.On which continent were potatoes first grown?Answer: South America. People in the Andes grew potatoes thousands of years before they reached Europe.
16. 84.Coffee plants originally come from which continent?Answer: Africa. Arabica coffee plants first grew wild in the highlands of Ethiopia.

General knowledge questions about art, books and myths

Painters, composers, Greek myths, classic books and a few number puzzles.

1. 85.Which Dutch artist painted Girl with a Pearl Earring?Answer: Johannes Vermeer. He painted it around 1665.
2. 86.Which French painter is famous for his paintings of water lilies?Answer: Claude Monet. He painted the water lilies in his own garden at Giverny, France.
3. 87.Which Spanish artist helped invent the style of art called Cubism?Answer: Pablo Picasso. He developed Cubism together with the French painter Georges Braque.
4. 88.Who composed the opera The Magic Flute?Answer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart wrote his first pieces of music when he was about five years old.
5. 89.Which composer wrote his famous Ninth Symphony when he was almost completely deaf?Answer: Ludwig van Beethoven. The symphony ends with the famous "Ode to Joy."
6. 90.In Greek myths, who is the king of the gods?Answer: Zeus. In the myths he rules from Mount Olympus.
7. 91.In Greek myths, who opened a container that let all kinds of troubles into the world?Answer: Pandora. In the oldest versions of the myth, it was a large jar, not a box.
8. 92.Which hero of Greek myths could only be hurt on his heel?Answer: Achilles. That is why the tendon at the back of your ankle is called the Achilles tendon.
9. 93.How many lines does a sonnet have?Answer: Fourteen. Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets.
10. 94.Who wrote the novel Pride and Prejudice?Answer: Jane Austen. It was published in 1813.
11. 95.Who wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer?Answer: Mark Twain. Mark Twain was a pen name. His real name was Samuel Clemens.
12. 96.Which storybook boy never grows up?Answer: Peter Pan. J. M. Barrie first put Peter Pan on stage in 1904.
13. 97.How many degrees are in a right angle?Answer: 90. A full circle has 360 degrees.
14. 98.Which number, spelled out in English, has its letters in alphabetical order?Answer: Forty. F, O, R, T, Y: each letter comes later in the alphabet than the one before it.
15. 99.On standard dice, what do the numbers on opposite sides always add up to?Answer: Seven. That is why 1 sits across from 6, 2 from 5, and 3 from 4.
16. 100.What do you call a person who makes maps?Answer: A cartographer. The oldest known map of the world was made in ancient Babylon, more than 2,500 years ago.

How to play these trivia questions in teams

Split into teams and play this exact list with the player at the top of the page. The phone tells each team when it is their turn, someone reads the question out loud, and the team answers before anyone taps to show the answer. For the full setup, with team names, 5, 10 or 15 questions per team and the choice between multiple choice and no options, open the Trivia game.

Every question has one clear answer and three wrong ones, so it works both ways. Multiple choice keeps things friendly for mixed ages. No options is the real test, and it is where the arguments start.

• Pass the phone to whoever is not on the team that is answering, so the reader cannot help.
• Read the fact out loud after each answer. Half the fun is the "wait, really?" moment.
• For a big room, let teams buzz in with the Game Show Buzzer and give the point to whoever is first and right.
• Pick one group per round, like Animals first and History second, so each round feels different.

Good for family game night, parties and classrooms

These are general knowledge questions anyone can enjoy. Nothing needs special expertise, and each group mixes easy questions with a few harder ones, so a ten-year-old and a grandparent can both score.

They suit a family game night, a birthday party, a road trip stop or the last ten minutes of a lesson. Teachers can put the page on a projector and play class against class. If the youngest players struggle, switch to the trivia questions for kids, which keep to easy and medium.

Tips for a better trivia night

Keep teams small, three or four people each, so everyone gets to talk. If one team runs away with the score, give the next round double points. If you want a theme, there are seasonal lists for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas too.

Want to write your own round? Pick one topic your group knows well, like your town or your family, and ask the questions out loud before switching back to the phone. The best trivia questions have one answer nobody can argue with and a fact that makes people smile.

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