Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free Famous Firsts trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
46 free famous firsts trivia questions with answers. Everyone remembers who did it first. This quiz collects the famous firsts of exploration, science, sport, politics and entertainment: Gagarin and Armstrong, the Wright brothers and Lindbergh, Amundsen at the South Pole and Hillary on Everest, Bannister's mile, Bertha Benz's road trip, the first satellite, the first test-tube baby, the first woman elected prime minister and the first Black actor to win an Oscar. The easy questions ask who first walked on the Moon and who broke baseball's colour line. The hard ones want the length of Gagarin's flight, the date the Wright Flyer left the ground, the schoolteacher who went over Niagara Falls in a barrel on her birthday, and how many days Bannister's record survived. Built for pub quizzes, classrooms and anyone who likes a record book. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's biographies and event articles, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who was the first human to travel into space, in April 1961?
Yuri Gagarin
His single orbit aboard Vostok 1 was his only spaceflight.
Q 02How long did Gagarin's Vostok 1 flight last?
108 minutes
He later served as backup for the Soyuz 1 flight that killed his friend Vladimir Komarov.
Q 03Who was the first woman in space?
Valentina Tereshkova
She flew a solo mission on Vostok 6 in June 1963.
Q 04Who was the first American in space?
Alan Shepard
He named his Mercury capsule Freedom 7 and later hit golf balls on the Moon during Apollo 14.
Q 05Who was the first American woman in space?
Sally Ride
At 32 she was also the youngest American to fly, on the shuttle mission STS-7 in 1983.
Q 06The first person to walk on the Moon commanded which mission?
Apollo 11
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent two and a half hours outside the lunar module Eagle.
Q 07What was the first artificial Earth satellite?
Sputnik 1
The Soviet Union launched it on 4 October 1957 from what is now Baikonur.
Q 08Laika, the first animal to orbit the Earth, was what kind of animal?
A dog
The Moscow stray flew on Sputnik 2 in November 1957 and died of overheating within hours.
Q 09On what date did the Wright brothers make the first controlled, sustained powered flight?
17 December 1903
It happened four miles south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, at what is now Kill Devil Hills.
Q 10Charles Lindbergh's 1927 flight was the first solo crossing of the Atlantic between which two cities?
New York and Paris
He flew the Spirit of St. Louis alone for over 33 hours to win the $25,000 Orteig Prize.
Q 11In what year did Amelia Earhart become the first woman to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic?
1932
She had crossed as a passenger in 1928 and vanished over the Pacific in 1937.
Q 12Bessie Coleman, the first African-American woman pilot, had to train in which country?
France
No US school would take her, so she earned her licence from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale in 1921.
Q 13Who led the first party to reach the South Pole in December 1911?
Roald Amundsen
The Norwegian had earlier led the first successful transit of a fabled Arctic sea route.
Q 21Karl Benz's Patent-Motorwagen, considered the first practical modern car, dates from which year?
1885
He patented it in 1886 and drove it publicly the same year.
Q 22Louise Brown, the first baby born through IVF, was born in 1978 in which English town?
Oldham
The technique was developed by Patrick Steptoe, Robert Edwards and Jean Purdy.
Q 23Who was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize?
Marie Curie
She remains the only person to win in two different sciences, physics in 1903 and chemistry in 1911.
Q 24Who was the first woman in the world to be elected prime minister, in 1960?
Q 14Who accompanied Peary on the 1909 North Pole expedition and later said he got there first?
Matthew Henson
Peary had hired him as a valet in 1887 and took him on seven Arctic voyages.
Q 15Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were the first confirmed to summit Everest on which date?
29 May 1953
They were part of the ninth British expedition, led by John Hunt.
Q 16Junko Tabei was the first woman to climb Everest and the first to complete which challenge?
The Seven Summits
She also led annual climbs of Mount Fuji for young people affected by the 2011 earthquake.
Q 17Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four-minute mile at which track?
Iffley Road, Oxford
Chris Chataway and Chris Brasher paced him on 6 May 1954.
Q 18How long did Bannister's mile record last before John Landy broke it?
46 days
Landy ran 3:57 in Turku, Finland, on 21 June 1954.
Q 19Who was awarded the first US patent for the telephone in March 1876?
Alexander Graham Bell
He considered it an intrusion on his real work and refused to have one in his study.
Q 20Bertha Benz made the first long-distance drive in a motor car in 1888, covering roughly how far?
105 km
She invented brake lining along the way and won the Patent-Motorwagen its first sales.
Sirimavo Bandaranaike
She led Sri Lanka three times and also became the first woman to chair the Non-Aligned Movement.
Q 25Who was the first woman to serve on the US Supreme Court?
Sandra Day O'Connor
Ronald Reagan nominated her in 1981 and she served until 2006.
Q 26Who was the first woman to serve in a US presidential cabinet?
Frances Perkins
She was Franklin Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor for his entire presidency.
Q 27Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to the US Congress in 1916, represented which state?
Montana
In 1941 she was the only member of Congress to vote against declaring war on Japan.
Q 28How many tie-breaking Senate votes did Kamala Harris cast as vice president, a record?
33
They included votes to pass the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act.
Q 29Before the US presidency, Barack Obama was the first Black president of which institution?
The Harvard Law Review
The election made national news and led to the book deal that became his memoir.
Q 30Jackie Robinson broke MLB's colour line playing which position for the Brooklyn Dodgers?
First base
He debuted on 15 April 1947 and won the inaugural Rookie of the Year award.