History trivia usually arrives as one long undifferentiated list, which is why kids lose the thread halfway down. This one is sorted by era, so you can run a round on ancient Egypt without a question about the Moon landing turning up in the middle of it.
Who Smarted? has built episodes on ancient Egypt, castles, Greek gods and the inventors nobody credits, and the questions here follow the same instinct: the fact that makes a kid say wait, really? 100 questions with every answer included, plus a bonus video round.
Pick an era and go, or read straight through from the ancient world to the present.
Jump to a section:
Ancient World
Kings, Queens and Empires
American History
Modern History
How to Play This List
History trivia rewards a bit of structure. Three ways that work.
- One era at a time: Run a single era as a round of 18 to 30 questions. Ancient World is the most forgiving for younger kids because the facts are vivid rather than dated.
- Timeline game: Read a question, then ask the group to place the answer on a rough timeline before you confirm it. Turns 100 questions into a genuine history lesson.
- Homework warm up: Match the era to whatever the class is covering and use ten questions as a five minute opener.
Bonus History Trivia Video
Ancient World Trivia Questions for Kids
1. Who was the first emperor of China?
Answer: Qin Shi Huang
2. What ancient wonder was built by King Nebuchadnezzar II in Babylon?
Answer: Hanging Gardens of Babylon
3. Who was the first emperor of Japan?
Answer: Emperor Jimmu
4. What was the name of the famous Carthaginian general who crossed the Alps with his war elephants?
Answer: Hannibal
5. What was the name of the famous ancient Greek poet who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey?
Answer: Homer
6. What was the main language spoken in ancient Rome?
Answer: Latin
7. What was the original name of Constantinople?
Answer: Byzantium
8. Who is known as the “Father of Medicine”?
Answer: Hippocrates
9. Which civilization invented the wheel?
Answer: The Sumerians
10. What country is famous for its Terracotta Army and Great Wall?
Answer: China
11. Alexander the Great was a king of which ancient Greek kingdom?
Answer: Macedon
12. Who was Alexander the Great’s father?
Answer: Philip II of Macedon
13. Which ancient city was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD?
Answer: Pompeii
14. Who was the ruler of Egypt when the pyramids of Giza were built?
Answer: Pharaoh Khufu
15. What early civilization developed cuneiform writing?
Answer: The Sumerians
16. What country was formerly known as Persia?
Answer: Iran
17. What material did the ancient Egyptians make an early kind of paper from?
Answer: Papyrus
18. Who was the last pharaoh to rule ancient Egypt?
Answer: Cleopatra VII
19. What was the name of the huge amphitheater built in ancient Rome?
Answer: The Colosseum
20. Which wall was built to protect ancient China from invaders?
Answer: The Great Wall of China
21. What was the picture writing of ancient Egypt called?
Answer: Hieroglyphics
22. Which ancient Greek city state was famous for its warriors?
Answer: Sparta
Kings, Queens and Empires Trivia Questions for Kids
23. Which British queen holds the longest reign before Queen Elizabeth II?
Answer: Queen Victoria
24. What was the capital of the Aztec Empire?
Answer: Tenochtitlán
25. What city was the capital of the Byzantine Empire?
Answer: Constantinople
26. Who painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?
Answer: Michelangelo
27. What year did the Great Fire of London occur?
Answer: 1666
28. Who was the last monarch of the Tudor dynasty?
Answer: Elizabeth I
29. What was the name of Genghis Khan’s empire?
Answer: The Mongol Empire
30. Who wrote the plays Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream?
Answer: William Shakespeare
31. How long did the Hundred Years’ War actually last?
Answer: 116 years
32. Which queen was married to both Louis VII of France and Henry II of England?
Answer: Eleanor of Aquitaine
33. In which country was Mozart born?
Answer: Austria
34. What year did the French Revolution start?
Answer: 1789
35. The War of the Roses involved which two families?
Answer: The Lancasters and the Yorks
36. Who was the first Western explorer to reach China?
Answer: Marco Polo
37. What civilization built Machu Picchu?
Answer: The Inca Empire
38. What empire was ruled by Suleiman the Magnificent?
Answer: The Ottoman Empire
39. Who built the first printing press?
Answer: Johannes Gutenberg
40. What battle marked Napoleon’s final defeat?
Answer: The Battle of Waterloo
41. What dynasty ruled China during the construction of the majority of the Great Wall?
Answer: The Ming Dynasty
42. Which explorer sailed around Africa to reach India by sea in 1498?
Answer: Vasco da Gama
43. What were the names of the three ships Columbus sailed with in 1492?
Answer: The Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria
44. Who was the first person to lead an expedition that sailed all the way around the world?
Answer: Ferdinand Magellan, who organized it, though he died partway and his crew finished the voyage
45. Which English king had six wives?
Answer: Henry VIII
46. What was the Black Death?
Answer: A plague that swept Europe in the 1340s and killed millions of people
American History Trivia Questions for Kids
47. Who was the first President of the United States to live in the White House?
Answer: John Adams
48. Which treaty ended the American Revolutionary War?
Answer: The Treaty of Paris in 1783
49. What was the name of the first successful English colony in America, founded in 1607?
Answer: Jamestown
50. Which African American scientist found roughly 300 uses for the peanut and championed crop rotation?
Answer: George Washington Carver
51. In what year was the first Thanksgiving celebrated?
Answer: 1621
52. What is the oldest city in the US?
Answer: St. Augustine, Florida
53. Who was the U.S. President during the Cuban Missile Crisis?
Answer: John F. Kennedy
54. Who was the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Congress?
Answer: Shirley Chisholm
55. What famous document begins with the words “When in the course of human events”?
Answer: The Declaration of Independence
56. What was the name of the ship that transported the Pilgrims to America in 1620?
Answer: The Mayflower
57. Which U.S. president issued the Emancipation Proclamation?
Answer: Abraham Lincoln
58. What landmark Supreme Court case ended racial segregation in U.S. public schools?
Answer: Brown v. Board of Education
59. Who discovered the Americas in 1492 while sailing under the Spanish flag?
Answer: Christopher Columbus
60. What war was fought between the North and South regions of the United States?
Answer: The Civil War
61. What famous protest took place in 1963 where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech?
Answer: The March on Washington
62. In what year was the Declaration of Independence signed?
Answer: 1776
63. Who refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955?
Answer: Rosa Parks
64. What was the network of secret routes and safe houses that helped enslaved people reach freedom called?
Answer: The Underground Railroad. It was not a real railroad and it ran mostly on foot
65. Which two explorers led an expedition across the American West starting in 1804?
Answer: Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
66. Who was the first African American president of the United States?
Answer: Barack Obama
Modern History Trivia Questions for Kids
67. Who was the last Czar of Russia?
Answer: Nicholas II
68. Who was the first Prime Minister of India?
Answer: Jawaharlal Nehru
69. What was the code name of the Allied invasion of Normandy during World War 2?
Answer: Operation Overlord
70. What year did the Berlin Wall go up?
Answer: 1961
71. What year did World War II begin?
Answer: 1939
72. Who was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean?
Answer: Amelia Earhart
73. In what year did the United States land on the moon?
Answer: 1969
74. Who discovered penicillin?
Answer: Alexander Fleming
75. What year did the Titanic Sink?
Answer: 1912
76. What event started World War I?
Answer: The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
77. What was the name of the ship Charles Darwin sailed on?
Answer: HMS Beagle
78. What is the name of the famous nurse during the Crimean War?
Answer: Florence Nightingale
79. Who was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize?
Answer: Marie Curie
80. Which Victorian author wrote A Christmas Carol?
Answer: Charles Dickens
81. What year was Pluto discovered?
Answer: 1930
82. What year was 7-Up invented?
Answer: 1929
83. What is the address of the British prime minister’s residence?
Answer: Number 10 Downing Street
84. What is the name of the cat that guards 10 Downing Street?
Answer: Larry
85. Who was the British prime minister during most of World War II?
Answer: Winston Churchill
86. What structure was completed in 1889 and became a symbol of France?
Answer: The Eiffel Tower
87. What global conflict followed the assassination of Franz Ferdinand?
Answer: World War I
88. What was the first country to grant women the right to vote?
Answer: New Zealand
89. In which war was trench warfare most commonly used?
Answer: World War I
90. What was the name of the Cold War space race competition between the U.S. and USSR’s satellite launches?
Answer: The Space Race
91. Who led the Salt March in India as an act of civil disobedience against British rule?
Answer: Mahatma Gandhi
92. Who was the first person to walk on the Moon?
Answer: Neil Armstrong, in 1969
93. Which wall divided the German city of Berlin until 1989?
Answer: The Berlin Wall
94. Who was the first woman to travel into space?
Answer: Valentina Tereshkova, in 1963
95. Which South African leader was jailed for 27 years and later became president?
Answer: Nelson Mandela
96. Which disease was declared wiped out worldwide in 1980?
Answer: Smallpox
97. Who is credited with inventing the telephone?
Answer: Alexander Graham Bell
98. What was the Great Depression?
Answer: A worldwide economic collapse that began in 1929
99. Which two countries were the main rivals of the Cold War?
Answer: The United States and the Soviet Union
100. What was the name of the American programme that landed people on the Moon?
Answer: Apollo
More Fun Trivia for Kids
Keep learning fun with more trivia:
- Presidents Trivia for Kids: 75 questions at three levels
- Science Trivia for Kids: 75 questions with answers
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- Movie Trivia for Kids: 90 questions with answers
- Trivia Questions for Kids: The 135 question master list across 8 topics
- Dinosaur Trivia for Kids: 85 questions with answers
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Hear History on the Podcast
If the ancient world round went down well, What was life like in Ancient Egypt? is the natural next step. Subscribe to Who Smarted? for a new episode every weekday.
