History quiz questions

Free international history trivia quiz questions with answers.

History Trivia Questions

What Romanian dictator banned Scrabble because he deemed it too intellectual?
A: Nicolae Ceausescu.

Who inspired Communism with the line: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs"?
A: Karl Marx.

What's the submachine gun invented by Mikhail Kalashnikov in 1947 better known as?
A: The AK47.

Whose quips and quotes were collected in a CD-ROM called Well...There You Go Again?
A: Ronald Reagan's.

What Soviet leader's second wife was also his daughter, according to Kremlin Wives?
A: Joseph Stalin's.

What former secretary of state noted: "The illegal we do immediately.  The unconstitutional takes longer"?
A: Henry Kissinger.

What state has hosted the most nuclear tests in the U.S.?
A: Nevada.

What Nicaraguan "freedom fighters" did Ronald Reagan call "the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.
A: The Contras.

What country left the League of Nations in 1933?
A: Germany.

What southeastern state was the last to return to the Union after the Civil War?
A: Georgia.

What trials, beginning in 1945, spawned the phrase "I was only following orders"?
A: The Nuremberg war crimes trials.

What was the first war the U.S. took part in that was partially financed with lottery dollars?
A: The Revolutionary War.

What Bill Murray Ghostbusters term did Persian Gulf warriors use to describe being hit by chemical weapons?
A: Slimed.

What country did ever-prudent King Farouk I declare war on in 1945?
A: Germany.

What U.S. president did General George McClellan sum up as "nothing more than a well-meaning baboon"?
A: Abraham Lincoln.

What U.S. war broke out the same year the federal government first printed paper money?
A: The Civil War.

What opportunistic country declared war on Japan five days before its surrender in 1945?
A: The Soviet Union.

What U.S. military base was won in the last major battle against Japan?
W: Okinawa.

What marked the first time since the Revolution that the U.S. accepted direct financial aid to fight a war?
A: The Persian Gulf War.

What U.S. president was born William Jefferson Blythe IV?
A: Bill Clinton.

Whose assassination was Sam Seymour the last living witness to, until his death in 1956?
A: Abraham Lincoln's.

What former president was on an African hunting trip when his enemy J. P .Morgan quipped: "Let every lion do his duty"?
A: Theodore Roosevelt.

What three words did George Bush say before "no new taxes" in 1988?
A: "Read my lips".

Who was the first lawyer to become First Lady?
A: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

What 1970s president openly discussed his battle with hemorrhoids?
A: Jimmy Carter.

What future president was the only U.S. senator from a Confederate state to remain in Congress after secession?
A: Andrew Johnson.