Funny History Trivia
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49 free Funny History trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
46 free funny history trivia questions with answers. This funny history trivia quiz collects the moments historians would rather not dwell on: the army that lost to emus, the war over a shot pig, the war named after a pastry chef, the war that lasted 38 minutes and the war in which the only shot hit a soup kettle. There is a pope who put a corpse on trial, an emperor who allegedly wanted his horse made consul, a king who thought he was made of glass and a San Francisco pauper who declared himself Emperor of the United States and abolished Congress. The modern era does not escape: an Olympic marathon won on strychnine and brandy after the first finisher arrived by car, a whale blown up with half a ton of dynamite, a New York riot over straw hats, a headless chicken that toured the country, and a Pepsi promotion that printed 800,000 winning bottle caps. Every one of these stories is real and every answer has been checked against a primary source, mostly Wikipedia's articles on the events, with the citation shown once you have answered.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In 1932 the Australian Army went to war against which animal, and lost?
Emus
Emus proved hard to hit even with machine guns: Major Meredith said they faced the bullets 'with the invulnerability of tanks', and the army was recalled in December with most of the birds still at large.
Q 02Greece invaded Bulgaria in 1925 after a Greek soldier was shot, by one account while chasing what across the border?
His runaway dog
His runaway dog gave the clash its nickname, the War of the Stray Dog; Greek troops occupied Bulgarian border villages until the League of Nations stepped in and a ceasefire followed.
Q 03Which of these did Peter the Great tax from 1698 to make Russian men look more like western Europeans?
Beards
Beards were old Russia to Peter, who came home from western Europe in 1698 and shaved his courtiers himself; men who paid the tax got a copper token as proof, and police could shave those who had not.
Q 04The 1859 Pig War between the US and Britain began when an American farmer shot a pig for doing what?
Eating his potatoes
Eating his potatoes cost the Hudson's Bay Company pig its life and brought American troops and British warships to San Juan Island; nobody else was hurt, and arbitration gave the islands to the US in 1872.
Q 05Which US Army captain in the 1859 Pig War standoff later lent his name to a doomed Confederate charge at Gettysburg?
George Pickett
George Pickett landed on San Juan Island with a few dozen soldiers and refused to leave when British warships arrived; no shot was fired, and four years later his name went on Pickett's Charge.
Q 06The 1325 War of the Bucket pitted Bologna against which rival city, now famous for balsamic vinegar?
Modena
Modena beat Bologna at Zappolino and is said to have carried home a bucket from a well outside Bologna's gate as a trophy; the fighting had begun over a captured castle, not a stolen bucket.
Q 07Which Mexican general lost a leg fighting the French in the 1838 Pastry War?
Santa Anna
Santa Anna came out of retirement to fight the French at Veracruz, where grapeshot cost him a leg; the wound made him a national hero again and carried him back to the presidency within months.
Q 08The shortest war in recorded history, between Britain and Zanzibar in 1896, lasted roughly how long?
38 minutes
38 minutes is the usual count: British warships opened fire at 9:02 a.m. after a sultan who had seized the throne refused an ultimatum to leave the palace, and stopped at about 9:40 once his flag came down.
Q 09Which country's prized new warship, the Vasa, sank within minutes of first setting sail in 1628?
Sweden
Sweden's Vasa had sailed little more than a kilometre when a gust of wind heeled her over; water poured in through the open gunports and she sank in Stockholm harbour in front of the watching crowds.
Q 10Michigan lost the 1835 Toledo War to Ohio but was consoled with what territory when it became a state?
The Upper Peninsula
The Upper Peninsula struck many Michiganders as a poor trade for Toledo, a worthless wilderness, until rich deposits of copper and iron ore were found there and opinion swung round.
Q 11The Toledo War's only bloodshed came when Ohioan Two Stickney, resisting arrest, did what?
Stabbed a Michigan sheriff's deputy
Stabbed a Michigan sheriff's deputy: Two Stickney drew a penknife on Joseph Wood during a scuffle in Toledo. The wound was minor, yet Wood was the lone casualty of a war fought mostly with warning shots.
Q 12In January 1919 a wave of what swept through Boston's North End at 35 mph, killing 21 people?
Molasses
Molasses burst from a storage tank holding 2.3 million gallons and injured 150 more people; long after the cleanup, residents said the North End still smelled of it on hot summer days.
Q 13In 1814 a giant vat burst in London and sent a deadly wave of what through the St Giles slums?
Q 21Around 1781 Benjamin Franklin wrote a mock scientific proposal urging the study of what?
Farting
Farting, Franklin told the Royal Academy of Brussels, deserved a prize more than its dry mathematics question; he proposed a drug to make it 'agreeable as perfumes' and called other sciences 'scarcely worth a FART-HING'.
Q 22The 532 AD Nika riots that burned much of Constantinople began with fans of what?
Chariot racing teams
Chariot racing teams called the Blues and Greens, usually bitter rivals, joined forces against Emperor Justinian under the chant 'Nika' ('conquer'); some 30,000 people died, by Procopius's count, when his troops stormed the Hippodrome.
Q 23Joshua Norton of San Francisco declared himself what in 1859?
Beer
Beer, well over 100,000 gallons of porter, burst from a 22-foot brewery vat and killed eight people; no one was held responsible, and the brewery even reclaimed the duty it had paid on the lost beer.
Q 14In July 1518, dozens of people in Strasbourg started doing what for weeks, unable to stop?
Dancing
Dancing was at first the city's own prescription: on doctors' advice the council opened guild halls and hired musicians so the afflicted could dance it out, then changed course and banned public dancing.
Q 15What was unusual about ex-pope Formosus when Pope Stephen VI tried him in 897?
He had been dead for nine months
He had been dead for nine months: Stephen had the corpse dressed in papal robes and propped on a throne while a deacon answered for it, then threw it in the Tiber; within months Stephen was himself strangled.
Q 16Roman writers claimed Caligula planned to give which office to his horse Incitatus?
Consul
Consul is what Suetonius says Caligula was rumoured to intend for Incitatus, a horse he had already given a marble stall, an ivory manger and slaves; the ancient writers agree the appointment never happened.
Q 17'Defenestration', throwing someone out of a window, entered English after events in which city?
Prague
Prague gave English the word after 1618, when Protestant nobles threw two Catholic governors and their secretary from a castle window; all three survived, and the revolt that followed grew into the Thirty Years' War.
Q 18The astronomer Tycho Brahe lost part of his nose in 1566 in a duel over what?
Who was the better mathematician
Who was the better mathematician was the quarrel that led Tycho and his cousin Manderup Parsberg to duel; the two later became good friends, and Tycho wore a brass nose for the rest of his life.
Q 19What did Charles VI of France and other sufferers of a famous medieval delusion believe?
That they were made of glass
That they were made of glass, and might shatter, was a fear recorded among Europeans from Charles VI's day into the 1600s; historians link it to clear glass being a new, precious and almost magical material.
Q 20How did Oregon's Highway Division dispose of a huge dead whale on a beach in 1970?
Blew it up with dynamite
Blew it up with dynamite, half a ton of it, hoping to leave bite-sized scraps for seagulls; instead huge chunks of blubber rained down on the onlookers at Florence, and one flattened a parked car.
Emperor of the United States
Emperor of the United States was the title Norton, a merchant ruined by a failed bet on rice, sent to a San Francisco newspaper; the city played along, and the banknotes he printed were honoured around town.
Q 24Soon after his 1859 proclamation, San Francisco's Joshua Norton decreed what?
The abolition of the US Congress
The abolition of the US Congress was among his first decrees; when Congress met anyway, Norton ordered General Winfield Scott to march in with the army and clear its halls, and was ignored.
Q 25In medieval Europe, which animals were most often put on trial in secular courts?
Pigs
Pigs ran loose in medieval streets in great numbers and sometimes killed small children, so courts tried and hanged them like human murderers, as happened to a sow at Falaise in Normandy in 1386.
Q 26Why did Liechtenstein abolish its army in 1868?
Financial reasons
Financial reasons: when the German Confederation dissolved in 1866, Liechtenstein no longer owed it soldiers, so parliament refused to pay for the 80-man force and the prince disbanded it in 1868.
Q 27Britain lost all of the 20th-century Cod Wars to which country?
Iceland
Iceland kept widening its fishing limits and won each standoff, helped by a threat to quit NATO in the middle of the Cold War; in 1976 Britain accepted a 200-mile Icelandic fishing zone.
Q 281904 Olympic marathon 'winner' Fred Lorz was disqualified because he had done what?
Ridden part of the way in a car
Ridden part of the way in a car: Lorz quit with cramps at nine miles, rode the next eleven, then got out and ran into the stadium; he called it a joke, and a year later won the Boston Marathon on foot.
Q 291904 Olympic marathon winner Thomas Hicks was kept going with brandy, egg whites and small doses of which poison?
Strychnine
Strychnine, then used in tiny doses as a stimulant, was fed to Hicks twice by handlers who refused him water; by the end he was walking, and his trainers had to help him over the line.
Q 30Cuban runner Andarín Carvajal came fourth in the 1904 marathon despite stopping to eat what?
Rotten apples from an orchard
Rotten apples from an orchard gave him stomach cramps, so he lay down for a nap and still finished fourth; he had lost his money gambling in New Orleans and reached St. Louis by walking and hitching rides.