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Popular Trivia

We've listed 60 (now 61!) popular questions that are common in pub quizzes. How many can you answer?

Questions 1-20

  1. Can you name England's only ever pope?
  2. What is the nearest planet to earth, mars or venus?
  3. What was the name of the monster in Mary Shelly's famous horror novel?
  4. Can you name the largest bird species in the world?
  5. How many pairs of ribs do humans have?




  6. Name the largest landlocked country in the world?
  7. And name the most populated landlocked country in the world?
  8. Name the last imperial dynasty of China (which ruled China proper from 1644 to 1912)?
  9. How many books are there in the bible?
  10. How many planets are there in the solar system? Do you know the hottest?
  11. What is the Spanish word for fox? How about spanish for hat?
  12. Which period came last in the three-age system of archaeology: the Bronze Age, Iron Age or Stone Age?
  13. The word mensa is Latin for what?
  14. Kirsch is a colourless brandy traditionally made from which fruit?
  15. What does the acronym LASER stand for?
  16. How many bones are there in the human body?
  17. On which island was Napoleon exiled to following his defeat at Waterloo?
  18. How many fences are jumped in the Grand National?
  19. Which newspaper began life as the The Daily Universal Register in 1785?
  20. What is the term pogonophobia the fear of? And what is acrophobia an extreme fear of?

Answers:

  1. Pope Adrian IV (born Nicholas Breakspear). He was pope from 1154 to 1159.
  2. Venus
  3. It did not have a name but was identified by words such as monster or creature (Victor Frankenstein was the young scientist who created him)
  4. Ostrich (Struthio camelus) (note: the smallest bird in the world is the bee hummingbird)
  5. 12 pairs of ribs
  6. Kazakhstan (Mongolia was the previous largest until the break up of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991)
  7. Ethiopia (over 101 million people)
  8. The Qing dynasty (it was preceded by the Ming dynasty)
  9. 66 books (39 are found in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament)
  10. 8 planets. Venus is the hottest.
  11. Zoro is Spanish for fox. Sombrero is hat.
  12. Iron Age comes last, after the Bronze Age (iron was naturally abundant but its high melting point put it out of reach of common use until the end of the second millennium BC)
  13. Table
  14. Cherries (another cherry fact is that the maraschino cherry is nicknamed the cocktail cherry)
  15. An acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation"
  16. 206 bones (also, babies are born with about 270 bones, the femur (thigh bone) is the strongest, longest, and largest bone, and the stapes or stirrup bone in the ear is the smallest)
  17. St. Helena (other facts: he was born in Ajaccio, Corsica. His horse was Marengo and he was defeated at the 1815 Battle of Waterloo on Belguim)
  18. 30 fences (two laps of 16 fences, the first 14 of which are jumped twice)
  19. The Times
  20. Beards. Acrophobia is fear of heights (note: by definition agoraphobia is a fear of open spaces)




Questions 21-40

  1. Name the smallest country in the world?
  2. Which two countries in South America are landlocked?
  3. Where does an arboreal animal live?
  4. What is the name of phantom in the Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera?
  5. How many pairs of chromosomes do humans have?
  6. Which two country's flags are more or less the same?
  7. What are the four blood types?
  8. Which philosopher said, "I think, therefore I am"?
  9. What do the initials B and Q stand for in the DIY chain B&Q?
  10. How many stars are on the European Union flag?
  11. How long did the hundred years war last?
  12. Which King of France was known as the Sun King?
  13. What is the colour of the aircraft flight recorder known as a black box?
  14. In 1993, a dual naming policy was adopted for Australia's Ayers Rock, what is it also now called?
  15. What was the name of the ship that took Robert Falcon Scott on his final expedition to the Antarctic?
  16. How long does it take for the Earth to go around the Sun?
  17. How old is the earth?
  18. How many stars are there on the Australian flag? And what about stars on the New Zealand flag?
  19. The name 'Sahara' is derived from the Arabic word meaning what?
  20. Which weapon did early humans use to protect themselves against dinosaurs?

Answers:

  1. Vatican City
  2. Bolivia and Paraguay
  3. In trees (the biggest aboreal animal is the orang-utan)
  4. Erik
  5. 23 pairs of chromosomes (for a total of 46)
  6. Romania and Chad (the slight differences can only be spotted with a very keen eye)
  7. A, B, AB, and O
  8. Rene Descartes
  9. Block and Quayle (it was founded in 1969 in Southampton by Richard Block and David Quayle)
  10. 12 stars
  11. 116 Years
  12. Louis XIV (14th)
  13. Orange
  14. Uluru
  15. Terra Nova
  16. 1 year or 365 days
  17. 4.5 billion years
  18. Australia: 6 stars. And NZ flag has 4 stars.
  19. Desert (so Sahara Desert actually means Desert Desert)
  20. None, they never met. Modern humans appeared about 200,000 years ago, and dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago.



Popular Trivia Questions 41-61

  1. What is the largest fish in the world?
  2. Name the largest country in Africa?
  3. In which year and city was President Kennedy assassinated?
  4. Which play was Abraham Lincoln watching when he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth?
  5. What is the last event of the decathalon? And what about the ladies' version, the heptathlon?
  6. What is the largest desert on earth?
  7. In which year was the Gundpowder Plot? How about the Spanish Armada?
  8. Big Ben is not the name of the famous Westminster clock tower but is the name usually used to describe it, what is the tower's official name?
  9. It is said if it rains on St. Swithun's day on 15 July, it will rain for how many days?
  10. Which calendar is the calendar used in most of the world, Julian or Gregorian?
  11. How many bones are there in an elephant's trunk? How about bones in a giraffe's neck?
  12. What does the acronym NASA stand for?
  13. How many stripes are there on the USA flag?
  14. Which American state is sometimes called the 'First State' because it was the first colony to accept the new constitution? And which state joined last?
  15. Which is the only vowel on a standard keyboard that is not on the top line of letters?
  16. What was the first man made object to break the sound barrier?
  17. Which Apollo mission put man on the moon, and in which year?
  18. The air we breath consists of which three main components?
  19. Which of Henry VIII's wives were beheaded?
  20. Which king's remains were found underneath a Leicester car park in 2012?
  21. Can you name the tallest building in the world?

Answers:

  1. The whale shark
  2. Algeria (the Democratic Republic of Congo is the second largest and Nigeria is Africa's most populated country)
  3. November 1963 in Dallas
  4. "Our American Cousin" (at the Ford's Theatre, Washington D.C. in 1865)
  5. 1,500-metres in the decathlon, and 800 meteres in the heptathlon
  6. Antarctica (the Antarctic Polar Desert). (The Sahara is the largest hot desert.)
  7. 1605 saw the Gunpowder Plot, and 1588 saw the Armada arrive
  8. Elizabeth Tower
  9. 40 days
  10. Gregorian calendar (introduced in the UK in 1752, 11 days were lost when the Gregorian replaced the Julian calendar)
  11. Elephant's trunk has no bones. Giraffes have 7 vertebrae in their neck, the same as humans.
  12. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration
  13. 13 stripes on the USA flag (that represent the thirteen British colonies that declared independence)
  14. The first state to join the union was Delaware in 1787. Last: Hawaii joined in August 1959 (note Alaska joined in January 1959)
  15. The letter 'A'
  16. A whip
  17. Apollo 11 in 1969. (the whole mission lasted 8 days, 3 hours, 18 minutes and 35 seconds. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, whilst Michael Collins flew the command module in lunar orbit. A piece of trivia that often comes up is that Buzz Aldrin's mother's maiden name was Marion Moon.)
  18. Nitrogen (78%), Oxygen (21%), and Argon (1%)
  19. Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard (his wives in order: Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Parr. Jane Seymour was the only wife to give Henry a son, was the only one to be given a queen’s funeral, and was the wife who Henry chose to be buried with at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, upon his death in 1547.)
  20. Richard III (the last Plantagenet king after his defeat and death at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 by Henry VII)
  21. The Burj Khalifa (in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Built in 2010, with a total height of 829.8 metres.)