History Trivia Questions and Answers

Free history trivia questions with the answers.

 

History Trivia Quiz Questions

What tree was named for the Native American scholar who created the 85-sylable Cherokee alphabet?
A: The sequoia.

What country saw Ion Iliescu take over in 1989, after its previous president was arrested, tried and shot?
A: Romania.

What single name is more commonly applied to Holy Roman Emperor Charles the Great?
A: Charlemagne.

What anchorman admitted he was wrong to announce Russian capitalists were auctioning off Lenin's preserved corpse?
A: Peter Jennings.

 

What's explorer Fernao de Magelhaes better known as in English?
A: Ferdinand Magellan.

What got a new balcony, front portico and two extra chimneys on the back of $20 bills, in 1948?
A: The White House.

What city's worker-student protests of 1968 resulted in a 33 percent rise in the national minimum wage?
A: Paris.

What's the top-grossing U.S. retail chain owned by one family?
A: Wal-Mart.

What nation bartered 30 million barrels of oil for ten Boeing 747s in 1984?
A: Saudi Arabia.

What country's civil war was described as a "rehearsal for World War II"?
A: Spain's.

 

Who was turned down by seven people he asked to be his running mate in 1972?
A: George McGovern.

What politician agreed to cough up $432,000 in back taxes in April of 1974?
A: Richard Nixon.

Who was on the cover of Time most often-Winston Churchill, FDR, or Joseph Stalin?
A: Joseph Stalin.

What British leader was once dubbed "Attila the Hen"?
A: Margaret Thatcher.

What siblings did the Ontario government build a nursery called Quintland for?
A: The Dionne quintuplets.

What chemical's maker coughed up $180 million to pay medical costs for Vietnam vets in 1984?
A: Agent Orange's.

 

What 1962 crisis prevented the Kennedy brothers from negotiating to buy the Philadelphia Eagles?
A: The Cuban Missile Crisis.

What assassin's diary reveals that he changed his plans from kidnapping to murder the day before he did the deed?
A: John Wilkes Booth's.

What war saw GI's being told over the radio: "Bart Simpson is making love to your wife"?
A: The Persian Gulf War.

What nation's flag was referred to in World War II as a "meatball"?
A: Japan's.

Who was accused of dancing "with devils" after he announced plans to build a South Dakota casino near sacred Sioux lands?
A: Kevin Costner.

Who's been called "the French Stalin" for executing 20,000 during the Reign of Terror?
A: Maximilien Robespierre.

 

Who became Britain's longest continuously serving prime minister of the 20th century?
A: Margaret Thatcher.

What Soviet republic's 1988 earthquake marked the first time the USSR embraced international relief after a disaster?
A: Armenia's.

What French Louis reigned a record 72 years?
A: Louis XIV.

What twin cities in Japan were largely leveled by a 1923 earthquake?
A: Tokyo and Yokohama.

What socialist writer's last words were: "Last words are for fools who haven't said enough"?
A: Karl Marx's.

What country used weather-borne balloons to drop more than a hundred bombs on North America during World War II?
A: Japan.

What 10-year-old began earning his bad reputation by throwing puppies off the Kremlin walls in 1540?
A: Ivan the Terrible.