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50 free Adventure trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Adventure is the story of people who went further than they had to: Shackleton rowing 800 miles of Southern Ocean to save his crew, Hillary and Tenzing on Everest the morning of a coronation, Thor Heyerdahl on a balsa raft, Alex Honnold on El Capitan without a rope. This adventure trivia quiz covers the great expeditions and the people who made them, from Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta to Amundsen and Scott, Lewis and Clark, Amelia Earhart, Lindbergh, the Trieste's dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench and Gagarin's single orbit. It also dips into adventure fiction and film: Phileas Fogg's 80 days and Nellie Bly's 72, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, Indiana Jones and 127 Hours. Questions run from easy ones anyone can answer (who first walked on the Moon) to expert-level detail about depots, raft names and forgotten first ascents. It works for a pub quiz, a classroom or a long car journey. Every answer was checked against expedition histories and encyclopaedic sources before publishing, and each question carries a citation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which two men were the first confirmed to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on 29 May 1953?
Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary
News reached London in time for the morning of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation on 2 June. Colonel John Hunt led the expedition.
Q 02What happened to Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance in the Weddell Sea in 1915?
It was crushed by pack ice and sank
Its 28 men camped on the drifting ice for months. The remarkably preserved wreck was found on the seafloor in 2022.
Q 03What was the name of the lifeboat Shackleton and five men sailed 800 miles to South Georgia?
James Caird
He then arranged the rescue of the men left on Elephant Island and brought every one of them home alive.
Q 04Roald Amundsen led the first expedition to traverse which sea route, in 1903–06, aboard the sloop Gjøa?
The Northwest Passage
Five years later he beat Scott to the South Pole, having sailed to Antarctica in the Fram.
Q 05By how many days did Amundsen's party beat Robert Falcon Scott to the South Pole in 1911–12?
34
Scott's five-man party reached the pole on 17 January 1912 and all died on the return journey.
Q 06Which member of Scott's party left the tent saying 'I am just going outside and may be some time'?
Lawrence Oates
Scott, Wilson and Bowers died in a blizzard eleven miles short of One Ton Depot; their bodies were found eight months later.
Q 07Who completed the first circumnavigation of the Earth in 1522 after Magellan was killed?
Juan Sebastián Elcano
Magellan had made the first European crossing of the Pacific and found the strait that bears his name before dying in battle in 1521.
Q 08Marco Polo dictated the story of his travels while imprisoned by which rival of Venice?
Genoa
His cellmate Rustichello da Pisa wrote it down. He had spent 24 years away, much of it at the court of Kublai Khan.
Q 09Which 14th-century Moroccan traveller covered around 117,000 km, more than any pre-modern explorer?
Ibn Battuta
His account is known as The Rihla. Zheng He managed about 50,000 km and Marco Polo 24,000.
Q 10How many 'treasure voyages' did Ming admiral Zheng He command between 1405 and 1433?
Seven
Legend says his largest ships were almost twice as long as any wooden ship ever recorded. He was born Ma He, a Muslim, and became a eunuch at court.
Q 11Which US president commissioned the Lewis and Clark Expedition?
Thomas Jefferson
The Corps of Discovery left Camp Dubois in May 1804, crossed the Continental Divide at Lemhi Pass and reached the Pacific in 1805.
Q 12Which teenage Shoshone woman travelled with Lewis and Clark from North Dakota to the Pacific?
Sacagawea
Suffragists later adopted her as a symbol of women's worth and independence, raising statues in her memory.
Q 13Which Scottish missionary-explorer was the first European to see the falls he named after Queen Victoria?
David Livingstone
He mapped most of the Zambezi. Six years out of contact, he was found at Ujiji in 1871 by Henry Morton Stanley: 'Dr. Livingstone, I presume?'
Q 21In 1960 the bathyscaphe Trieste reached the seabed's deepest point in which ocean feature?
The Mariana Trench
They reached about 10,916 metres in the Challenger Deep. The vessel was designed by Piccard's father, Auguste.
Q 22Reinhold Messner was the first person to climb all 14 of what?
Eight-thousanders
He did it all without supplementary oxygen, and made the first solo ascent of Everest. He later served in the European Parliament.
Q 23Who was the first woman to reach the summit of Everest, in 1975?
Junko Tabei
She was also the first woman to complete the Seven Summits, and a mountain range on Pluto is named Tabei Montes after her.
Q 14Percy Fawcett vanished in the Amazon in 1925 while searching for what?
A lost city he called 'Z'
His son Jack and Jack's friend Raleigh Rimmel disappeared with him. David Grann's book The Lost City of Z retold the story.
Q 15Which Black explorer, Peary's companion on seven Arctic voyages, said he reached the North Pole first?
Matthew Henson
Peary hired Henson as a valet after meeting him in a Washington hat shop in 1887. Historians now doubt Peary actually reached the Pole.
Q 16Charles Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis nonstop from New York to Paris in 1927 to win what?
The Orteig Prize
The $25,000 prize was for the first flight between the two cities. He flew alone for more than 33 hours.
Q 17Amelia Earhart disappeared over the Pacific in 1937 while attempting what?
To become the first female pilot to fly around the world
She and navigator Fred Noonan were flying a Lockheed Electra 10E she called her 'flying laboratory', bound for Howland Island.
Q 18What was Thor Heyerdahl's raft Kon-Tiki made from?
Balsa logs
He and five companions sailed 6,900 km in 101 days in 1947 before hitting a reef at Raroia in the Tuamotus.
Q 19The raft Kon-Tiki was named after an old name for which Inca god?
Viracocha
The 1950 documentary won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature; a 2012 dramatisation was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.
Q 20Jacques Cousteau co-invented which piece of equipment, the first successful open-circuit scuba apparatus?
The Aqua-Lung
His film The Silent World, co-directed with Louis Malle, won the 1956 Palme d'Or, a rare feat for a documentary.
Q 24Which English explorer first reached both poles by surface means and first crossed Antarctica on foot?
Ranulph Fiennes
He climbed Everest at 65. In 1984 the Guinness Book of Records' Norris McWhirter called him the greatest living explorer.
Q 25Aron Ralston freed himself from a boulder in a Utah canyon in 2003 by doing what?
Amputating his own forearm with a dull pocket knife
He then rappelled 65 feet and hiked seven miles before being rescued. James Franco played him in 127 Hours.
Q 26Alex Honnold's rope-free climb of El Capitan, filmed for Free Solo, was on which route?
Freerider
The film won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature and the People's Choice documentary award at Toronto.
Q 27Yuri Gagarin's Vostok 1 flight in April 1961 lasted how long?
108 minutes
He completed a single orbit and became the first human in space, launching from Baikonur.
Q 28Which Apollo 11 astronaut stayed in lunar orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the Moon?
Michael Collins
All three men were on their second and final spaceflight. The Saturn V launched from Kennedy Space Center on July 16, 1969.
Q 29Phileas Fogg's wager to circle the globe in 80 days is made with his friends at which London institution?
The Reform Club
The bet is £20,000. He wins because travelling east he gained a day, experiencing 80 sunrises while London saw 79.
Q 30What is the name of Phileas Fogg's French valet?
Passepartout
Fogg hired him after sacking his previous valet for serving shaving water at the wrong temperature.