Transportation Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
This transportation trivia quiz has 105 free questions with answers and covers every way people and goods get around: the first powered flight at Kill Devil Hills, the Model T rolling off the assembly line, the world's first underground railway, the bullet train, the container ship, the hovercraft and the humble bicycle. It also takes in canals, bridges, roundabouts, traffic lights, seat belts and the escalator, because moving people is about infrastructure as much as vehicles. About a third of the questions are easy enough for a family car ride, a third are pub-quiz medium, and the rest will test transport enthusiasts and engineers. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference page, so you can settle arguments with confidence. Play it in the app or use it to run your own quiz night on planes, trains and automobiles.
30 of 105 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How long did the Wright Flyer's first powered flight last in December 1903?
12 seconds
12 seconds was all Orville managed on the first hop, covering 120 feet; Wilbur stayed up for 59 seconds on the day's fourth flight, before a gust of wind flipped and wrecked the machine.
Q 02What was the nickname of the Ford Model T?
Tin Lizzie
Tin Lizzie, a nickname of unknown origin, became the car for the masses: Ford's assembly line cut its price from $850 at launch to under $300, and more than 15 million were built.
Q 03Which car overtook the Model T as the best-selling car in history in 1972?
Volkswagen Beetle
The Volkswagen Beetle passed the Model T's total in February 1972. Conceived in 1930s Germany as Hitler's affordable 'people's car', it outlived that origin and was built in Mexico until 2003.
Q 04The first Shinkansen line opened in October 1964, shortly before which event?
The Tokyo Summer Olympics
The Tokyo Summer Olympics opened nine days after the first bullet trains ran on 1 October 1964, a launch timed for the Games; the fastest services linked Tokyo and Osaka in four hours.
Q 05How many passengers died in Shinkansen derailments or collisions during its first 50 years?
Zero
Zero: from the 1964 opening through 2014 the Shinkansen carried billions of passengers without a single passenger death from a derailment or collision, despite a 2004 earthquake derailment near Niigata.
Q 06Edward Johnston's 1916 sans-serif alphabet was drawn for which network's signs?
London Underground
The London Underground commissioned the alphabet for its signs and publicity; modelled on classical Roman capitals, it became the forerunner of many modern sans-serif typefaces, including his pupil Eric Gill's Gill Sans.
Q 07Which country began building the Panama Canal in the 1880s before abandoning the project?
France
France started digging in the early 1880s through a private company; engineering problems, malaria and yellow fever ended the effort in 1889, and the United States took over in 1904 and opened the canal in 1914.
Q 08Ships transiting the Panama Canal are lifted by locks 26 metres up into which artificial reservoir?
Gatun Lake
Gatun Lake sits 26 metres above sea level; it was created by damming the Chagres River so ships could cross much of the isthmus afloat instead of through a dug channel.
Q 09Which two airlines owned and operated Concorde fleets in scheduled service?
British Airways and Air France
British Airways and Air France were the only airlines to buy Concorde; other carriers dropped their options, so just 14 of the 20 aircraft built ever flew passengers, from 1976 until 2003.
Q 10Concorde's cruising speed was held to about Mach 2 because its skin was made mainly of which metal?
Aluminium
Aluminium alloy was light and easy to work, but air friction heated Concorde's nose to about 127°C at Mach 2, close to the most the metal could bear over years of service, so flying faster was ruled out.
Q 11J. K. Starley's company, maker of the 1885 'safety bicycle', later became which British car brand?
Rover
Rover was the name of J. K. Starley's 1885 safety bicycle, whose two similar-sized wheels and chain drive replaced the high-wheeler; his firm began building cars in 1904, and 'rower' became the Polish word for bicycle.
Q 12The Segway self-balancing transporter was invented by whom?
Dean Kamen
Dean Kamen built the Segway on the gyroscopic balancing of his stair-climbing iBOT wheelchair; unveiling it in December 2001, he claimed it would make cars unnecessary in cities.
Q 13The Hindenburg burst into flames in 1937 while docking at a naval air station in which US state?
New Jersey
Q 21Nils Bohlin developed the modern three-point seat belt for which car maker, which made it standard in 1959?
Volvo
Volvo made Nils Bohlin's three-point belt standard from 1959, first on cars for its home market, then gave the patent to rival makers for free, so the design spread across the industry.
Q 22Which US president signed the 1956 act that created the Interstate Highway System?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act on 29 June 1956; as a wartime general he had been deeply impressed by how the German Autobahn moved troops and supplies quickly.
Q 23Trucking boss Malcom McLean changed world trade in 1956 by loading a tanker with 58 of what?
Shipping containers
Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey was the landing site on 6 May 1937; Herbert Morrison's anguished radio report, recorded there, was broadcast the next day and became one of the century's most famous recordings.
Q 14What gas filled the Hindenburg?
Hydrogen
Hydrogen filled the Hindenburg's 16 gas cells because the United States, the only large helium producer, would not export helium to Nazi Germany; the flammable gas made the 1937 fire catastrophic.
Q 15Which airline put the Boeing 747 into commercial service in January 1970?
Pan Am
Pan Am's chief Juan Trippe had pushed Boeing to build the jumbo to ease airport congestion; his airline flew the first 747 passengers from New York to London on 22 January 1970.
Q 16Why does the Boeing 747 have its famous hump?
To allow a nose cargo door
To allow a nose cargo door: Boeing expected supersonic jets to take over passenger travel, so the 747 was designed to convert into a freighter, with the cockpit raised above the main deck.
Q 17The Channel Tunnel runs from Folkestone to a terminal beside which French port?
Calais
Calais is the nearest port: the French terminal sits at Coquelles on its outskirts. Crews digging from the two coasts met under the sea in December 1990, and the tunnel opened in May 1994.
Q 18The Trans-Siberian Railway runs from Moscow to which Pacific port?
Vladivostok
Vladivostok lies about 9,300 km and a week's train ride from Moscow; early through trains cut across Chinese Manchuria until an all-Russian route along the Amur was finished in 1916.
Q 19The world's first traffic lights, installed in December 1868, stood outside which building?
The Houses of Parliament in London
Railway engineer J. P. Knight's signal outside the Houses of Parliament in London used semaphore arms by day and red and green gas lamps by night, worked by a policeman; it exploded within a month, injuring its operator.
Q 20Which inventor of an early gas mask also patented a three-position traffic signal in 1923?
Garrett Morgan
Garrett Morgan's T-shaped signal added a third position that halted traffic in every direction before the flow changed, a forerunner of the amber light; his smoke hood had been used in a 1916 tunnel rescue under Lake Erie.
Shipping containers slashed the cost of moving cargo by sea; watching the Ideal X sail from Newark, a dockworkers' union official said he would like to sink it.
Q 24Which crossing took the Golden Gate's title as the world's longest suspension span in 1964?
Verrazzano-Narrows
The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge between Staten Island and Brooklyn beat the Golden Gate's main span by 18 metres; its official name was misspelled with one 'z' until New York corrected it in 2018.
Q 25Which diplomat formed the company that built the Suez Canal, opened in 1869?
Ferdinand de Lesseps
Ferdinand de Lesseps owed the canal to an old friendship: when Said Pasha became ruler of Egypt in 1854, he invited the former diplomat over and granted him the right to dig it.
Q 26Stephenson's Rocket won which 1829 locomotive competition?
The Rainhill Trials
The Rainhill Trials of October 1829 were staged by the Liverpool and Manchester Railway to settle whether locomotives, rather than stationary engines hauling ropes, could work its line; Rocket was the clear winner.
Q 27Whose wife, Bertha, made the first long car journey in his Patent-Motorwagen in 1888?
Benz
Karl Benz had patented the car in 1886; Bertha set off from Mannheim for Pforzheim without telling him, with their two teenage sons aboard, and bought fuel at a pharmacy along the way.
Q 28Which airline took the first delivery of the Airbus A380 in October 2007?
Singapore Airlines
Singapore Airlines flew the first A380 passengers from Singapore to Sydney on 25 October 2007; airlines later turned to smaller jets, and Airbus delivered the last superjumbo in December 2021.
Q 29Which liner steamed through an ice field to rescue the survivors in Titanic's lifeboats?
Carpathia
RMS Carpathia raced through the ice at top speed after Titanic's distress call and arrived more than an hour after she sank; Titanic's 20 lifeboats, more than the law required, had room for only 1,178 people.
Q 30In which city was the Titanic built?
Belfast
Belfast's Harland and Wolff yard launched Titanic on 31 May 1911; her stern carried the name of Liverpool, her port of registry, a city she never visited.