50 World History Trivia Questions

1. Shibam's tall historic houses in Yemen were built mainly from which material?

2. How were the great stone walls of Great Zimbabwe held together?

3. At the prehistoric village of Skara Brae, even beds and dressers were made from what?

4. How did residents usually enter the tightly packed houses at ancient Çatalhöyük?

5. Which volcanic rock forms the impressive stacked walls at Nan Madol in Micronesia?

6. The huge structures called barays at Angkor were designed to store what?

7. Which plant material is woven into the cables of Peru's traditional Q’eswachaka bridge?

8. What makes Lalibela's medieval churches especially remarkable as buildings?

9. Rani-ki-Vav in Gujarat is an elaborate example of which water structure?

10. Which people built the cliff dwellings preserved at Mesa Verde?

11. The Venetian island of Murano became famous for making which material?

12. The Saxon town of Meissen became famous for early European production of what?

13. Which metal's oxide gave traditional delftware its opaque white glaze?

14. The Ottoman town of Iznik was especially known for which decorative craft?

15. The expensive ancient dye Tyrian purple came from which creatures?

16. In its specific traditional meaning, vellum is writing material made from which animal's skin?

17. What had happened to an old manuscript before it became a palimpsest?

18. What are tesserae, used by ancient and medieval mosaic makers?

19. Despite its familiar name, the Bayeux Tapestry was made using which technique?

20. In traditional Indonesian batik, what is applied to cloth to resist the dye?

21. For traditional woodblock printing, which part of a carved block receives the ink that prints the design?

22. Lithography works partly because which two substances do not mix?

23. A traditional daguerreotype image was made on copper coated with which metal?

24. Which color is characteristic of a cyanotype print?

25. Before cinema, a magic lantern commonly projected pictures from slides made of what?

26. How did a Chappe optical telegraph tower display its coded signals?

27. What pushed mail canisters through historic pneumatic postal tubes?

28. Britain's Penny Black postage stamp appeared in which year?

29. The postal conference that founded the organization later called the Universal Postal Union met in which Swiss city in 1874?

30. What soft layer could Romans smooth and reuse on a writing tablet?

31. What was the glass-and-iron building used for London's Great Exhibition of 1851 called?

32. The Montgolfier brothers' famous 1783 flying craft stayed aloft using what?

33. Scotland's Forth railway bridge, opened in 1890, is a famous example of which bridge design?

34. What does the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct carry high above the River Dee valley?

35. In the clinker-built hulls used by Viking shipbuilders, how were neighboring planks arranged?

36. The successful submarine telegraph cable laid in 1866 crossed which ocean?

37. What shape is a traditional lateen sail?

38. Traditional dhows were especially associated with trade around which ocean?

39. The medieval Hanseatic League grew from associations of people in which occupation?

40. Why did historic canal builders install locks?

41. The Latin phrase camera obscura means what?

42. A mariner's astrolabe measured a star's height relative to what?

43. Accurate marine chronometers helped sailors calculate which coordinate?

44. What supplied the power for Arkwright's original water-frame spinning mills?

45. What could a spinning jenny do that made it an improvement on a single-spindle spinning wheel?

46. In the Bessemer process, air was blown through molten iron to help make which material?

47. Before electric refrigerators, what was regularly delivered to keep a household icebox cold?

48. Which country is home to the historic Himeji Castle, often called the White Heron Castle?

49. At Mohenjo-daro, what waterproof material helped seal the Great Bath?

50. Which material usually trickles between the bulbs of a traditional hourglass?