Middle School History Trivia
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98 free Middle School History trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
42 free middle school history trivia questions with answers. This middle school history trivia quiz is pitched at grades 6 to 8 and follows the topics those years usually cover: Hammurabi and Babylon, the Silk Road, the Black Death and the Renaissance, the Aztecs and Inca, Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, the Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark, the Underground Railroad, Ellis Island, the Wright brothers, the Great Depression, D-Day, Apollo 11 and the Cold War. Most questions are answerable by a student who has been paying attention, and a handful (which lake Tenochtitlan was built in, where the first wagon train left from) will stretch the strong ones. It works as a classroom warm-up, a bell-ringer, a review game or a family quiz. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered, so teachers and parents can trust what the kids are learning.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01King Hammurabi, famous for the law code he issued, ruled which ancient city?
Babylon
Babylon's king Hammurabi had his laws carved on a tall stone stele; centuries later it was carried off to Susa as war plunder, dug up there in 1901, and now stands in the Louvre.
Q 02The Silk Road took its name from a luxury textile produced mainly in which country?
China
China kept silk-making a closely guarded secret for centuries, so the cloth had to travel west by caravan; the name 'Silk Road' was only popularised in 1877, by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen.
Q 03The plague bacterium behind the Black Death spread mainly through the bites of which pest?
Fleas
Fleas carried the plague bacterium, most likely riding on the black rats aboard merchant ships, which is how the Black Death is thought to have reached Europe's ports.
Q 04Twelve Genoese galleys brought the Black Death in October 1347 to which Mediterranean island?
Sicily
Sicily's port of Messina was where the galleys docked, many of their sailors already dead or dying; the plague spread across the island and reached mainland Italy within months.
Q 05The Renaissance was first centred in which Italian city?
Florence
Florence's dominant banking family, the Medici, bankrolled artists and scholars, one reason the Renaissance took root there before spreading through the rest of Italy and Europe.
Q 06Whose Ninety-five Theses set off the Protestant Reformation?
Martin Luther
Martin Luther wrote the theses against the sale of indulgences, then being preached in Germany to help pay for St Peter's in Rome; printers quickly spread them from city to city.
Q 07The Industrial Revolution began around 1760 in which country?
Great Britain
Great Britain, with its coal, canals and textile mills, industrialised first from about 1760; by about 1840 steam power and the factory system had spread to continental Europe and the United States.
Q 08How much did the United States pay France for the Louisiana territory in 1803?
$15 million
The price was $15 million for about 828,000 square miles, less than three cents an acre, and the purchase nearly doubled the size of the United States.
Q 09Which leader had regained Louisiana for his country in 1800, three years before selling it to the US?
Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon Bonaparte regained Louisiana from Spain in the 1800 Treaty of San Ildefonso, trading territory in Tuscany for it, in the hope of rebuilding France's empire in North America.
Q 10Which president sent Lewis and Clark to explore the newly bought western lands?
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson commissioned the Corps of Discovery in 1803; Lewis and Clark crossed the Continental Divide at Lemhi Pass and reached the Pacific in November 1805.
Q 11Sacagawea, who travelled with Lewis and Clark, was a young woman of which people?
Shoshone
Sacagawea was Lemhi Shoshone by the expedition's account, seized in a Hidatsa raid at about twelve; Lewis and Clark met her at Fort Mandan, where they hired her husband, the fur trader Toussaint Charbonneau, as interpreter.
Q 12The Golden Spike completing America's first transcontinental railroad was driven in 1869 in which state?
Utah
The Golden Spike was driven at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869, joining the Union Pacific from Omaha with the Central Pacific from Sacramento after six years of building.
Q 13The first immigrant processed at Ellis Island in 1892 was a teenage girl from which country?
Ireland
Q 21The best-known sections of the Great Wall of China were built by which dynasty?
Ming
The Ming dynasty (1368-1644) built the brick-and-stone sections near Beijing that tourists know, such as Badaling; the earliest walls date to the 7th century BC and were first joined under the Qin.
Q 22The Aztec capital Tenochtitlan was founded on islets in which body of water?
Texcoco
Tenochtitlan rose on islets in Lake Texcoco, linked to the shore by causeways; the lake was later drained, and Mexico City stands on the site today.
Q 23Which city was the political and military centre of the Inca Empire?
Cusco
Cusco, high in the Peruvian Andes, was the capital from which the Inca realm's four quarters radiated; the Spanish later built their churches and palaces directly over its Inca walls.
Annie Moore from County Cork, Ireland, landed on January 1, 1892, with her two younger brothers to join their parents in America; as the first arrival she was handed a $10 gold piece.
Q 14About how many immigrants passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954?
12 million
About 12 million immigrants entered through Ellis Island between its opening in 1892 and its closure in 1954; by one estimate two-fifths of Americans have an ancestor among them.
Q 15The Wright brothers' first powered flight in 1903 happened near which North Carolina town?
Kitty Hawk
Kitty Hawk drew the Wrights from Ohio because it was known for strong, frequent winds; on December 17, 1903, they made four flights nearby, the longest lasting 59 seconds with Wilbur at the controls.
Q 16Which amendment gave American women the right to vote nationally in 1920?
19th
The 19th Amendment, ratified when Tennessee approved it in August 1920, barred denying the vote on account of sex; Wyoming had let women vote since 1869.
Q 17The Great Depression is usually said to have begun with which event in 1929?
The Wall Street crash
The Wall Street crash of October 1929, with Black Thursday on the 24th and Black Tuesday on the 29th, is the usual starting point; the downturn lasted a decade and brought bank failures and mass unemployment worldwide.
Q 18The five D-Day landing beaches were Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and which other?
Sword
Sword, the easternmost beach and the one nearest Caen, was taken by the British 3rd Division on 6 June 1944; the landings, codenamed Operation Neptune, were the largest seaborne invasion in history.
Q 19Which Apollo 11 astronaut stayed in lunar orbit while Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the Moon?
Michael Collins
Michael Collins circled the Moon alone in the command module Columbia; he was often described as the world's loneliest man, yet he insisted he never felt lonely.
Q 20Which 1962 standoff is considered the closest the Cold War came to nuclear war?
Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 began when US spy planes photographed Soviet missile sites in Cuba; the 13-day standoff ended with the Soviets withdrawing the missiles.
Q 24Mansa Musa, one of history's richest people, ruled which West African empire?
Mali
Mansa Musa ruled the Mali Empire from about 1312 to 1337; his 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca, with a huge entourage carrying gold, made him famous across the Mediterranean world.
Q 25In Greek myth, Paris took Helen from her husband, the king of which city?
Sparta
Helen's husband Menelaus was king of Sparta; her abduction launched the Trojan War, which ended with the trick of the wooden horse and is partly told in Homer's Iliad.
Q 26Which philosopher tutored the young Alexander the Great until he was 16?
Aristotle
Aristotle taught Alexander at Mieza from 343 BC, when the prince was 13, until he was 16; as his fee, the king rebuilt Aristotle's home town of Stagira, which he himself had destroyed.
Q 27Which German printer produced the 42-line Bible in the 1450s, Europe's first major book printed with movable type?
Johannes Gutenberg
Johannes Gutenberg printed the Bible in Mainz, but before it could make his fortune his backer Johann Fust demanded his money back, and a court handed Fust the printing workshop.
Q 28Which English king sealed Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215?
John
King John, confronted by rebel barons, sealed Magna Carta on 15 June 1215 to head off civil war; four copies from that year survive, two of them in the British Library.
Q 29How many amendments make up the US Bill of Rights?
Ten
Ten amendments were ratified on December 15, 1791, out of twelve that Congress proposed in 1789; one of the two left behind, on congressional pay, finally became the 27th Amendment in 1992.
Q 30Which representative drafted the proposals that became the Bill of Rights?
James Madison
James Madison, then a Virginia congressman, introduced the amendments in June 1789 after studying Anti-Federalist objections to the Constitution and turning them into corrective proposals.