Historical Coincidences Quiz – Printable Version
20 multiple-choice questions with an explained answer key, ready to print.
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- Who saved Robert Lincoln, the president's son, from falling between a platform and a train around 1864?
- A. Ulysses Grant
- B. Mark Twain
- C. Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln's future assassin
- D. Thomas Edison
- What prediction did Mark Twain make about his own death, which came true in 1910?
- A. That he would die on a Mississippi steamboat
- B. That he would go out with Halley's Comet, under which he was born in 1835
- C. That he would die on Christmas Day
- D. That he would live to 100
- Which two British pop-culture milestones happened on the same day, 5 October 1962?
- A. The release of the first James Bond film and the Beatles' first single
- B. The Rolling Stones' first gig and the launch of BBC2
- C. Concorde's first flight and the first 'Doctor Who'
- D. The first Harry Potter and Churchill's death
- Which historical figure was born on exactly the same day as Charles Darwin, 12 February 1809?
- A. Napoleon III
- B. Victor Hugo
- C. Abraham Lincoln
- D. Karl Marx
- What do Anne Frank and Martin Luther King Jr. have in common?
- A. They were born in the same year, 1929
- B. They were born on the same day
- C. They met in Amsterdam
- D. They won the Nobel Prize in the same year
- On which animated short did Walt Disney and Salvador Dalí collaborate from 1945?
- A. 'Fantasia'
- B. 'Destino', only completed in 2003
- C. 'Alice in Wonderland'
- D. 'Un Chien Andalou'
- Which famous Van Gogh painting dates from 1889, the same year as the Eiffel Tower?
- A. 'Sunflowers'
- B. 'The Starry Night'
- C. 'Mona Lisa'
- D. 'The Scream'
- Which European institution was already over two centuries old when the Aztecs founded Tenochtitlan around 1325?
- A. The Palace of Versailles
- B. Today's Sorbonne
- C. The University of Oxford
- D. The European Parliament
- Did Tyrannosaurus rex live closer to our time or to the Stegosaurus's?
- A. Closer to the Stegosaurus
- B. At exactly the same time as Stegosaurus
- C. Closer to our time
- D. Equally far from both
- Which famous biscuit was launched in 1912, the year the Titanic sank?
- A. The KitKat
- B. The LU Petit Beurre
- C. The Oreo
- D. The Jaffa Cake
- Did Orville Wright, who with his brother made the first powered flight in 1903, live to see the atomic age?
- A. No, he died in 1912
- B. Yes: he lived until 1948
- C. No, he died during the First World War
- D. Yes, and he flew the Hiroshima plane
- Which aviation feat did Orville Wright live to see, 44 years after his first flight?
- A. Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier in 1947
- B. The first step on the Moon
- C. Concorde's first flight
- D. The launch of Sputnik
- Buffalo Bill, a Wild West figure, died in 1917. Which singer had already been born?
- A. Elvis Presley
- B. Bob Dylan
- C. Frank Sinatra
- D. Johnny Hallyday
- Which actor, famous as Captain Kirk in 'Star Trek', was born in 1931, the year Thomas Edison died?
- A. Patrick Stewart
- B. George Takei
- C. Chris Pine
- D. William Shatner
- How long before the Eiffel Tower opened did the murders attributed to Jack the Ripper take place in London?
- A. About a year: in autumn 1888
- B. A century before
- C. Fifty years after
- D. On the same day
- Which fictional detective first appeared in 1887, a year after Coca-Cola was launched?
- A. Hercule Poirot
- B. Sherlock Holmes
- C. Arsène Lupin
- D. Inspector Maigret
- Was Concorde already carrying passengers when the first 'Star Wars' came out in 1977?
- A. Yes, since January 1976
- B. No, it entered service in 1990
- C. No, it never carried passengers
- D. Yes, since 1950
- What was the very first message sent over ARPANET, the forerunner of the internet, in October 1969, three months after Apollo 11?
- A. 'HELLO WORLD'
- B. 'LO': the system crashed before the word 'LOGIN' was finished
- C. 'SOS'
- D. 'ONE SMALL STEP'
- What was the very first website, put online in 1991, the year the USSR was dissolved, about?
- A. The fall of the Berlin Wall
- B. An online bookshop
- C. Sports results
- D. The World Wide Web project itself: how to create pages and a browser
- Which major political event took place in 1994, the year the Channel Tunnel opened?
- A. The fall of the Berlin Wall
- B. The creation of the euro
- C. Nelson Mandela's election as President of South Africa
- D. The end of the Cold War
Answer key — Historical Coincidences Quiz
- C. Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln's future assassinOn a crowded New Jersey platform, Robert Lincoln slipped into the gap between the platform and a moving train; a man pulled him out by the collar.
- B. That he would go out with Halley's Comet, under which he was born in 1835'I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it,' he said in 1909.
- A. The release of the first James Bond film and the Beatles' first singleThat day, 'Dr. No' opened in UK cinemas and the Beatles released 'Love Me Do'.
- C. Abraham LincolnOne would revolutionise biology with 'On the Origin of Species', the other abolish slavery in the United States.
- A. They were born in the same year, 1929Anne Frank was born in June 1929 in Frankfurt, Martin Luther King in January 1929 in Atlanta.
- B. 'Destino', only completed in 2003Dalí spent several months at Disney's studios on surrealist drawings, but the project was shelved for financial reasons.
- B. 'The Starry Night'Van Gogh painted it from his room in the Saint-Rémy-de-Provence asylum, recreating the night landscape from memory.
- C. The University of OxfordTeaching took place at Oxford from the late 11th century. Tenochtitlan, the future Mexico City, was founded around 1325 and the Aztec Empire fell in 1521.
- C. Closer to our timeStegosaurus lived about 150 million years ago, in the Jurassic; T.
- C. The OreoThe first Oreo was sold in New York in March 1912, a month before the Titanic struck an iceberg.
- B. Yes: he lived until 1948In barely 45 years, Orville Wright saw aviation go from a 12-second flight to bombers able to cross the Pacific and the atomic bomb.
- A. Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier in 1947On 14 October 1947, Yeager passed Mach 1 at the controls of the Bell X-1.
- C. Frank SinatraFrank Sinatra was born in December 1915. Buffalo Bill, a former scout and bison hunter, had turned the West into a touring show that went as far as Europe.
- D. William ShatnerWilliam Shatner was born in March 1931, and Edison died in October.
- A. About a year: in autumn 1888The Whitechapel murders were concentrated between August and November 1888; the tower opened in March 1889.
- B. Sherlock HolmesHolmes debuted in Arthur Conan Doyle's 'A Study in Scarlet'.
- A. Yes, since January 1976Air France and British Airways flew the first commercial services on 21 January 1976.
- B. 'LO': the system crashed before the word 'LOGIN' was finishedFrom UCLA, a student tried to log in to a computer at Stanford.
- D. The World Wide Web project itself: how to create pages and a browserHosted on a NeXT computer at CERN, near Geneva, the page explained what the Web was and how to take part.
- C. Nelson Mandela's election as President of South AfricaIn April 1994, South Africa's first multiracial elections brought Mandela to power after 27 years in prison.