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50 free Explorers trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Some explorers found what they were looking for. Most found something else: a continent instead of a spice route, a lake instead of the source of the Nile, a black flag already planted at the Pole. This quiz collects fifty of them, from a Carthaginian sailing down West Africa in the fifth century BC to the men who walked on the Moon. You'll meet the medieval travellers — Marco Polo dictating his tales in a Genoese prison, Ibn Battuta clocking up 117,000 kilometres, Zheng He bringing a giraffe home to China. Then the Atlantic and Pacific navigators, the men who walked across America, the Victorians who carved up Africa's map, and the polar parties of Nansen, Peary, Amundsen, Scott and Shackleton. The modern era brings Everest, the Aqua-Lung, Kon-Tiki, a journalist who beat Phileas Fogg, and Vostok 1. The questions start easy and end with dates, ship names and the explorer who spoke 29 languages. Fifty questions, each answer sourced. Pack light.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01To whom did Marco Polo dictate the stories of his travels while in prison?
Rustichello da Pisa
Venice was at war with Genoa; his cellmate was a romance writer who turned the tales into Il Milione.
Q 02Roughly how far did Ibn Battuta travel, more than any pre-modern explorer?
117,000 km
That beats Zheng He's 50,000 km and Marco Polo's 24,000 km; he dictated his memoir, the Rihla, near the end of his life.
Q 03Ibn Battuta came from which present-day country?
Morocco
He left Tangier in 1325 for the Hajj and did not return home for 24 years.
Q 04How many treasure voyages did Zheng He command between 1405 and 1433?
Seven
The Muslim eunuch admiral brought back a giraffe from Malindi that the court took for a mythical qilin.
Q 05Which Chinese monk's journey to India inspired the novel Journey to the West?
Xuanzang
Wu Cheng'en wrote the Ming novel about nine centuries after the monk's death.
Q 06Which ancient Greek from Massalia introduced the idea of distant 'Thule' to geography?
Pytheas
His account of the tides is also the earliest known to blame them on the Moon.
Q 07The Norse site at L'Anse aux Meadows, possibly Leif Erikson's Vinland, is in which province?
Newfoundland
It was occupied about 1,000 years ago — five centuries before Columbus.
Q 08What did Bartolomeu Dias reportedly first call the headland later named Good Hope?
Cape of Storms
King John II supposedly renamed it because it promised a sea route from west to east.
Q 09Vasco da Gama reached the coast of which modern Indian state in May 1498?
Kerala
He landed near Calicut (Kozhikode) after crossing the Indian Ocean from Malindi in Kenya.
Q 10What did the native inhabitants call the Bahamian island where Columbus first landed?
Guanahani
He renamed it San Salvador; exactly which island it was is still debated.
Q 11Which cartographer first put the name 'America' on a map in 1507?
Martin Waldseemüller
He honoured Amerigo Vespucci, who had argued the new lands were a separate continent.
Q 12Which explorer was the first European to see the Pacific, crossing Panama in 1513?
Vasco Núñez de Balboa
He was later beheaded with an axe by Spanish authorities along with four friends.
Q 13Who completed the first circumnavigation of the Earth after Magellan was killed?
Juan Sebastián Elcano
He brought the Victoria home in 1522; Magellan had died at Mactan in the Philippines the year before.
Q 21What was the name of the Dutch ship Hudson commanded out of Amsterdam in 1609?
Halve Maen
The Half Moon carried him up the river that now bears his name.
Q 22Francis Drake received his knighthood in 1581 aboard which ship?
Golden Hind
His 1577-80 voyage was only the second circumnavigation ever and the first by an English expedition.
Q 23Abel Tasman named Tasmania 'Van Diemen's Land' after what?
His patron
Anthony van Diemen was governor of the Dutch East Indies; Tasman reached New Zealand weeks later in December 1642.
Which ship carried James Cook on his first voyage of 1768-71?
Q 14On which island was Magellan killed in 1521?
Mactan
He was shot in the neck with a poison arrow in battle with Lapulapu's warriors.
Q 15In 1542 Francisco de Orellana became the first European to sail the length of which river?
The Amazon
He had set out looking for the 'Land of Cinnamon' and ended up at the Atlantic; he founded Guayaquil too.
Q 16Juan Ponce de León led the first European expedition to which future US state in 1513?
Florida
The Fountain of Youth story attached to him has no contemporary evidence at all.
Q 17Coronado's expedition made the first European sightings of which natural wonder?
The Grand Canyon
He was hunting the mythical Seven Cities of Cíbola and found canyons and bison instead.
Q 18Jacques Cartier took the name 'Canada' from the language of which people?
The Iroquoians
It was their word for a settlement, applied to Stadacona (Quebec City) and Hochelaga (Montreal).
Q 19Samuel de Champlain founded which city on 3 July 1608?
Quebec
He crossed the Atlantic between 21 and 29 times in his career.
Q 20What was the fate of Henry Hudson after his crew mutinied in 1611?
He was cast adrift in a small boat
He, his son and six others were put off the Discovery in Hudson Bay and never seen again.
Endeavour
The voyage reached the east coast of Australia; Cook was killed in Hawaii on his third voyage in 1779.
Q 25Who is credited with first using the name 'Australia' for the whole continent?
Matthew Flinders
He found it 'more agreeable to the ear' than Terra Australis.
Q 26The Burke and Wills expedition aimed to cross Australia from Melbourne to where?
The Gulf of Carpentaria
The 3,250 km trek used imported camels; both leaders died on the return.
Q 27Which president commissioned the Lewis and Clark Expedition?
Thomas Jefferson
The Corps of Discovery set out shortly after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.
Q 28Sacagawea, who helped Lewis and Clark, belonged to which people?
Shoshone
She was in her teens, carrying her infant son, for most of the journey.
Q 29Humboldt set an altitude record in 1802 on which Ecuadorian volcano?
Chimborazo
His party reached 5,878 metres without reaching the top; the peak is the farthest point from Earth's centre.
Q 30What was the local name of the waterfall Livingstone renamed Victoria Falls?
Mosi-oa-Tunya
It means 'the smoke that thunders'; he was the first European to see it.