Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
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80 free True or False trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
True or false trivia works best when the false answers are things everybody believes. These 80 questions are built from the most widely repeated myths in history, science, nature, food, sport and pop culture: bulls and the color red, the memory of a goldfish, Napoleon's height, the wooden teeth of George Washington, the shelf life of a Twinkie, and whether lightning really strikes twice. In each set you are shown four claims and asked to find the one that is true (or, now and then, the one that is false). It is a good format for a mixed crowd, because nobody needs specialist knowledge to have an opinion, and the answers tend to start arguments. Use it as a pub quiz round, a classroom warm-up, a road-trip game or a solo test of how much of what you "know" is actually so. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's documented lists of common misconceptions or the relevant encyclopedia article, and each question shows the sentence that backs it up once you have answered.
30 of 80 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which of these claims about lightning is TRUE?
It often strikes the same place twice
The Empire State Building is hit about 23 times a year, because tall conductive things are exactly what lightning prefers.
Q 02Which statement about the Great Wall of China is TRUE?
Even orbiting astronauts need magnification to see it
No Apollo astronaut reported seeing any specific human-made object from the Moon; the myth predates spaceflight entirely.
Q 03Which claim about Napoleon Bonaparte is TRUE?
He was not especially short for his era
His "shortness" is partly a confusion between French and English inches, and partly British caricature.
Q 04Which claim about camels is TRUE?
Their humps store fat, not water
The water a camel banks is carried in its bloodstream; the hump is a calorie reserve.
Q 05Which statement about Viking warriors is TRUE?
There is no evidence they wore horned helmets
The horns were a 19th-century costume idea, popularised by opera productions of Wagner.
Q 06Which of these is a TRUE statement about bats?
All species have eyes and can see
Only about 70% of bat species echolocate; the big fruit bats mostly do not, and have excellent night vision.
Q 07Which claim about goldfish is TRUE?
Their memory lasts much longer than a few seconds
Goldfish can be trained to respond to sounds and colours weeks after learning them.
Q 08Which claim about Albert Einstein is TRUE?
He said, "I never failed in mathematics"
He did fail an entrance exam to the Zurich Polytechnic at 16, but he aced the maths and science sections.
Q 09Which claim about Marie Antoinette is TRUE?
Rousseau wrote the cake line when she was nine
Rousseau attributed the line only to "a great princess"; the queen was a child in Vienna at the time.
Q 10Which claim about the Salem witch trials is TRUE?
Nobody accused was burned at the stake
Nineteen people were hanged and one was pressed to death with stones; burning was a European practice.
Q 11Which claim about George Washington is TRUE?
He never had wooden teeth
His dentures used ivory, metal and human teeth; stained ivory may be why they looked like wood.
Q 12Which claim about the US Declaration of Independence is TRUE?
Congress voted for it on July 2
John Adams predicted July 2 would be the great anniversary festival; the printing date won instead.
Q 13Which claim about Benjamin Franklin is TRUE?
His proposal for the seal was an image of Moses
Q 21Which claim about hippos is TRUE?
A red skin secretion works as their sunscreen
Hipposudoric acid is the red pigment; hippos' nearest living relatives are actually whales.
Q 22Which claim about lemmings is TRUE?
A 1958 Disney film faked the cliff-jumping
White Wilderness won an Oscar; its lemmings were pushed off a cliff by the crew.
Q 23Which claim about ostriches is TRUE?
They do not bury their heads in sand
His turkey remarks were a private joke in a letter to his daughter about the eagle's character.
Q 14Which claim about Isaac Newton is TRUE?
He said the idea was "occasioned by the fall of an apple"
He watched an apple fall in his mother's garden; nothing suggests it landed on him.
Q 15Which claim about Julius Caesar is TRUE?
His mother was alive when he was 45
Such surgery was fatal to the mother in his day, so a living Aurelia rules the story out.
Q 16Which claim about the Egyptian pyramids is TRUE?
They were not built with slave labor
The idea of slave labour started with Herodotus; the workers' villages found at Giza suggest paid crews.
Q 17Which claim about Cinco de Mayo is TRUE?
It marks a victory over the French at Puebla
Mexico celebrates independence on September 16; Puebla was a battle in 1862.
Q 18Which claim about the Gettysburg Address is TRUE?
It was mostly finished before Lincoln left Washington
The two-hour speech that day belonged to Edward Everett; Lincoln's took about two minutes.
Q 19Which claim about bulls and bullfighting is TRUE?
Red does not stand out as bright to cattle
Cattle are dichromats; it is the movement and the threat of the fighter that provokes the charge.
Q 20Which claim about dogs is TRUE?
They sweat mainly through their footpads
Panting does most of the cooling; the paw pads handle the actual sweating.
Pliny the Elder probably started it; ostriches lower their heads to the ground when they feel threatened.
Q 24Which claim about a duck's quack is TRUE?
It does echo
The echo is just hard to hear because the quack fades gradually; a British panel show still took the myth as its name.
Q 25Which claim about sharks is TRUE?
They can get cancer
The myth was spread by a 1992 book used to sell shark-cartilage pills.
Q 26Which claim about chameleons is TRUE?
They change colour mostly for mood and heat
Colour is a social signal and a thermostat first; camouflage is a side benefit.
Q 27Which claim about the "boiling frog" story is TRUE?
It will try to escape water that is warmed up
The boiling-frog story survives as a metaphor, not as biology.
Q 28Which claim about houseflies is TRUE?
They live around 20 to 30 days
The 24-hour idea belongs to mayflies, some of which really do live for less than a day as adults.
Q 29Which claim about earthworms is TRUE?
Only a few species can regrow their front end
Most halved worms simply die; a handful of species can regenerate a head.
Q 30Which claim about mature sunflowers is TRUE?
The heads face one fixed direction
Young buds do track the Sun; once the flower opens it locks in place, usually facing east.