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89 free Funny trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
95 free funny trivia questions with answers, and every one of them is true. Australia really did lose a war to emus. A pope really was dug up and put on trial. A Colorado chicken really did live 18 months without a head, a Polish army bear really did hold the rank of corporal, and a German city really did offer a million euros to anyone who could prove it does not exist. The questions are multiple choice with four options and they range across history, sport, animals, science, food, technology, language, geography and pop culture, so no single subject dominates. Most sit at an easy-to-medium level: the fun is in the answer, not in how hard it is to get. A few are properly obscure and will split a room. Every answer was checked against an encyclopaedic or primary source and each question shows the sentence it came from once you have answered, so when someone refuses to believe that Coca-Cola once contained cocaine or that Amazon was almost called Cadabra, the receipt is right there. Use it for a pub quiz round, a party icebreaker, a work meeting warm-up or a family night when you want the funniest trivia questions rather than the hardest.
30 of 89 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In 1932 the Australian military went to war against which animal, and lost?
Emus
Emus beat the army: soldiers with Lewis guns were sent to cull the birds in Western Australia's Wheatbelt, but the flocks scattered and the commander compared them to tanks.
Q 02The only shot fired in a 1784 Dutch-Habsburg naval standoff hit what, giving the conflict its name?
A soup kettle
The one Dutch shot struck a soup kettle aboard the Habsburg ship Le Louis, which promptly surrendered; the bloodless 1784 clash on the Scheldt is remembered as the Kettle War.
Q 03The 1838 France-Mexico war is nicknamed after the profession of a Frenchman whose shop was looted. What was he?
A pastry chef
A pastry chef named Remontel claimed Mexican officers had looted his shop in Tacubaya and demanded 60,000 pesos for a business worth under 1,000; France went to war over it.
Q 04Legend says Liechtenstein sent 80 soldiers to the 1866 Austro-Prussian War and how many came back?
81
All 80 men came home plus a friend they had made along the way, so 81 returned. Liechtenstein disbanded its army for good in 1868.
Q 05According to legend, Caligula planned to give which political office to his horse Incitatus?
Consul
Suetonius wrote that Caligula intended to make Incitatus consul, Rome's top magistracy; it never happened, and many historians read the plan as a joke at the Senate's expense.
Q 06In 1698 Tsar Peter I of Russia introduced a tax on what?
Beards
Those who paid carried a copper or silver token showing a nose, mouth and whiskers as proof. Catherine the Great repealed the tax in 1772.
Q 07In January 1943 the US government briefly banned the sale of what?
Sliced bread
The sliced bread ban began on 18 January 1943 to conserve wax-paper wrapping and was lifted on 8 March after a housewife told the New York Times sliced bread was vital to household 'morale and saneness'.
Q 08The astronomer Tycho Brahe lost part of his nose in a duel that started as an argument over what?
Who was the better mathematician
Brahe duelled fellow student Manderup Parsberg in 1566 after they quarrelled over who was the better mathematician; a 2012 analysis of his exhumed remains showed the prosthetic nose was brass, not silver.
Q 09The first man across the line in the 1904 Olympic marathon was disqualified for doing what for part of the race?
Hitched a ride in a car
Fred Lorz dropped out with cramps after nine miles, was driven back to the stadium, waved to the crowd and nearly received the gold from Alice Roosevelt.
Q 10Trainers kept 1904 Olympic marathon winner Thomas Hicks going with brandy, raw eggs and what?
Strychnine
Hicks's handlers dosed him with strychnine sulphate, a rat poison used in tiny amounts as a stimulant, washed down with brandy and raw eggs; he was hallucinating and near collapse at the finish.
Q 11Which sport did astronaut Alan Shepard play on the Moon during Apollo 14?
Golf
Golf on the Moon took a Wilson six-iron head fitted to a sample-scoop handle; swinging one-handed in a stiff suit, Shepard hit two balls in 1971.
Q 12The World Bog Snorkelling Championship is held each August in which country?
Wales
Wales hosts it in a peat bog near Llanwrtyd Wells: two lengths of a trench using flipper power only, since conventional strokes are banned.
Q 13Wife-carrying, which has its own world championship, began in 1992 in which country?
Finland
Wife-carrying began in 1992 in Sonkajärvi, Finland, which hosts the world championship; the winner's traditional prize is the wife's weight in beer.
Q 21What do sea otters keep in the loose skin pouch under each foreleg?
Food and a favourite rock
The pouch holds food gathered on a dive plus a favourite rock, which the otter uses at the surface as an anvil for cracking open clams and other shellfish.
Q 22Mike, a Colorado chicken, became famous in 1945 for living 18 months after what happened to him?
He was beheaded
The axe missed the jugular and left most of the brain stem, so he could still walk and perch; Fruita holds a Mike the Headless Chicken Day every May.
Q 23When the first preserved platypus reached Europe in 1799, scientists concluded that it was what?
Q 14Toe wrestling was invented in a Staffordshire pub in the 1970s by drinkers who wanted what?
A sport Britain could dominate
Regulars at Ye Olde Royal Oak in Wetton, Staffordshire, invented it as a sport Britain could dominate after watching the country lose at everything else; the world championship later moved to Derbyshire.
Q 15At the annual Cooper's Hill event in Gloucestershire, competitors hurl themselves down a steep hill chasing what?
A wheel of cheese
A wheel of cheese, a 7-to-9-pound Double Gloucester, is sent down Cooper's Hill, which is 1-in-1 in places; the first chaser to the bottom wins the cheese.
Q 16Which of these was an official Olympic event at every Games from 1900 to 1920?
Tug of war
Tug of war was part of the athletics programme at every Games from 1900 to 1920; in Paris 1900 a combined Danish-Swedish team took first place.
Q 17How did Eric 'the Eel' Moussambani win his 2000 Olympic 100 m freestyle heat despite the slowest time ever?
Both rivals were disqualified for false starts
The swimmer from Equatorial Guinea had never seen a 50-metre pool before Sydney and had trained in a hotel pool between 5 and 6 am.
Q 18Why was the last 'timeless' cricket Test, Durban 1939, abandoned as a draw after nine days?
The visitors had to catch their ship home
England were 654 for 5 chasing 696 when they left Durban to catch the ship, and timeless Tests were never played again.
Q 19An Olympic 'gold' medal is actually made mostly of which metal?
Silver
IOC rules require at least 92.5 percent silver plated with just 6 grams of gold, so its metal was worth around $494 in 2010.
Q 20Wombats are the only known animals to produce droppings of what shape?
Cubes
The shape stops them rolling away when stacked to mark territory; the discovery won the 2019 Ig Nobel Prize for Physics.
A fake sewn together from other animals
The prevailing suspicion was that someone had stitched a duck's beak onto a beaver-like body.
Q 24How often does a three-toed sloth climb down from its tree to use the toilet?
About once a week
A three-toed sloth descends about once a week, digs a small hole, defecates, covers it and climbs back up; the trip is risky since grounded sloths are easy prey, and its purpose is debated.
Q 25What was the favourite drink of Wojtek, the bear drafted into the Polish Army in WWII?
Beer
Beer was Wojtek's reward of choice; the bear held the rank of corporal, had his own paybook and serial number, and carried ammunition crates at Monte Cassino.
Q 26What kind of animal was Stubbs, honorary mayor of Talkeetna, Alaska, from 1997 to 2017?
A cat
Stubbs was a cat, honorary mayor of a town that has no real mayor; the story that he won a write-in election is a myth, but he drew dozens of tourists a day until his death in 2017.
Q 27In Switzerland it is illegal to keep just one of which pet?
Guinea pig
Switzerland's 2008 animal welfare ordinance classes guinea pigs as social animals, so keeping a lone guinea pig counts as mistreatment and owners must keep at least two.
Q 28The bird we call a turkey got its English name because of a mix-up with which other bird?
Guineafowl
The name first referred to guineafowl, an African bird imported to Europe via Turkey; the French instead named the American bird after India.
Q 29Botanically speaking, which of these fruits is a true berry?
Cucumber
Cucumber is a true berry (a pepo, with a firm rind), like grapes, tomatoes and bananas; a cherry is a drupe, an apple a pome, and the strawberry an accessory fruit.
Q 30The 'banana equivalent dose' is an informal unit used to explain what?
Radiation exposure
Bananas contain naturally radioactive potassium-40, so eating one is roughly one percent of an average day's background dose.