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60 free Cannons trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This cannons trivia quiz covers the big guns from 13th-century China to the rotary autocannon in the nose of an A-10. The easy questions ask what the word cannon originally meant, where the weapon was born, which city's walls fell to Ottoman bombards in 1453, which overture calls for live artillery and which rock band saluted with it. Then it works through the early history: the fire lance, the Xanadu Gun, Walter de Milemete's 1326 drawing, the ribaldis at Crécy, Orban's giant bombard and the shift to bastion forts. The hard end is for people who know a culverin from a saker: the sixteen English calibres, the carronade, Gustavus Adolphus's cartridges, Napoleon's whiff of grapeshot, the 12-pounder Napoleon, Armstrong's rifled breech-loader, Mons Meg's Burgundian gift, the Tsar Cannon that was never fired in anger, the Dardanelles Gun given to Queen Victoria, Bertha Krupp's namesake, the Paris Gun's Coriolis maths and Schwerer Gustav's 7-tonne shells. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries on the cannon and the individual guns named before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our military history, Napoleonic Wars and World War I quizzes are natural next stops.
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Q 01The word 'cannon' comes from the Old Italian cannone, meaning what?
Large tube
It traces back through the Latin canna to the Greek kanna, 'reed'; both 'cannons' and 'cannon' are correct plurals.
Q 02In which country did the cannon most likely first appear, possibly as early as the 12th century?
China
It probably evolved from the fire lance, a gunpowder tube on a polearm; a Dazu rock carving from 1128 may show one.
Q 03Which gun, dated 1298, is considered the earliest confirmed extant cannon because it carries an inscribed production date?
The Xanadu Gun
It is just 34.7 cm long and weighs 6.2 kg; the other early Chinese guns are dated only by context.
Q 04In 1288, troops of which dynasty are recorded using hand cannons in battle against the rebel prince Nayan?
Yuan
The Jurchen commander Li Ting led them; the Heilongjiang hand cannon was found near the battle site.
Q 05The earliest known European depiction of a gun appears in a 1326 manuscript by which author?
Walter de Milemete
It shows a vase-shaped gun firing a large arrow, lit through a touch hole with a long stick.
Q 06The oldest surviving cannon in Europe, a small bronze piece from the early-to-mid 14th century, was unearthed in which country?
Sweden
The Loshult gun from Scania is now in the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm.
Q 07English cannon called ribaldis were first recorded in preparations for which 1346 battle?
Crécy
The English hoped the noise would panic French cavalry horses; the guns helped longbowmen drive off Genoese crossbowmen.
Q 08Cannons were mainly anti-infantry weapons until around what year, when large guns first breached walls in Europe?
1374
By 1480 European cannon had reached their 'classic form', which barely changed until the 1750s.
Q 09Mehmed the Conqueror used 68 super-sized bombards to capture which city in 1453?
Constantinople
Their blast could reportedly be heard 10 miles away, and the fall of the city ended the Byzantine Empire.
Q 10Which Hungarian engineer is credited with bringing the giant bombard to the Ottomans before 1453?
Urban
The Dardanelles Gun of 1464 was modelled on his Basilic.
Q 11How many men were reportedly needed to transport the Great Turkish Bombard used in the 1453 siege?
10,000
It needed a crew of 200 and 70 oxen just to operate.
Q 12The Dardanelles Gun of 1464 was cast in bronze in two screw-together parts. Whom did Sultan Abdulaziz give it to in 1866?
Queen Victoria
It had still been firing at British ships in the 1807 Dardanelles operation, more than 340 years after it was made.
Q 13Mons Meg, the 20-inch bombard at Edinburgh Castle, was a gift to James II of Scots from which duke?
Philip the Good of Burgundy
Built in 1449, it burst its barrel in 1680 and spent 75 years in the Tower of London before Walter Scott campaigned for its return.
Q 21How many sizes of cannon did the English classify in the 16th century, from cannon royal down to rabinet?
16
Henry II of France settled for six and the Spanish for twelve; the list runs through culverin, saker, minion and falcon.
Q 22Once names were standardised, a 'cannon' proper fired a shot of what weight?
42 pounds
A demi-cannon fired 32 pounds, a culverin 18 and a demi-culverin 9.
Q 23What replaced finely ground gunpowder in the 16th century, letting the charge ignite quickly and evenly?
Corned powder
Air pockets between the coarse grains let the flame race through the whole charge.
Q 14How was the barrel of Mons Meg constructed?
From 25 iron staves held by shrunk-on hoops
A separate screw-fitted breech takes the powder charge, and the whole is 20 inches in calibre.
Q 15The Tsar Cannon in the Kremlin was cast in bronze in 1586 by which master founder?
Andrey Chokhov
Guinness lists it as the largest bombard by calibre in the world, though it was never used in war.
Q 16How much does the Tsar Cannon weigh?
39,312 kg
Its bore is 890 mm across and it carries a relief of Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich on horseback.
Q 17When Ivan III set up Russia's first cannon foundry in 1475, in which city was it?
Moscow
Russian cannon had only been documented since 1382, and the oldest surviving one dates from 1485.
Q 18The Jaivana at Jaigarh Fort, the world's largest wheeled cannon when made in 1720, was fired how many times?
Once
The single test firing under Sawai Jai Singh II used 100 kg of powder and, legend says, threw the ball some 35 km.
Q 19Which Southeast Asian empire, according to Raffles, was already using cannon widely by 1325 and made vassals hand theirs over?
Majapahit
Mongol-Chinese technology from the 1293 invasion of Java produced the cetbang, and Javanese founders were praised as masters of casting.
Q 20Japan acquired its first cannon in 1510, brought back from China by whom?
A monk
Japan never produced many, which left its troops badly outgunned by Ming artillery at Pyongyang in 1593.
Q 24Cannon made castles obsolete and gave rise to which new style of low, thick, angled fortification?
Bastion forts
Machiavelli wrote that no wall, however thick, could survive artillery for more than a few days.
Q 25How many horses were needed to move a heavy English cannon in the 16th century?
23
A culverin needed nine, and even then the guns crawled at walking pace.
Q 26Which Swedish king revolutionised field artillery with light guns handled by three men and the first combined powder-and-shot cartridge?
Gustavus Adolphus
He dropped everything heavier than 12-pounders from the field and pulled his 4- and 9-pounders with just two horses.
Q 27The German-invented mortar was designed to do what?
Lob shot at a steep angle over walls
The Dutch learned to fire powder-filled bombs from them, and only in 1650 was it found that the gun's own flash lit the fuse.
Q 28The carronade, adopted by the Royal Navy in 1779, was designed with a low muzzle velocity in order to do what?
Create more deadly wooden splinters
It weighed a third to a quarter of a long gun of the same calibre and vanished from the Navy in the 1850s.
Q 29Napoleon's dispersal of a royalist mob in Paris with cannon fire in October 1795 became known as what?
The whiff of grapeshot
It happened on 13 Vendémiaire and launched his rise to power.
Q 30In a Napoleonic-era British gun crew, why did one gunner press his thumb over the vent hole while loading?
To stop a draught fanning a hidden ember
Another gunner sponged the bore with a damp sponge for the same reason before each fresh charge.