American History
This president was the first to live in the White House, moving into the unfinished building in November 1800.
Answer: Who was John Adams?
Explanation: John Adams, the second U.S. president, moved into the White House before construction was complete. George Washington selected the site but never lived there.
This European capital is divided by the Danube River into two historic sections that were officially united in 1873.
Answer: What is Budapest?
Explanation: Buda and Óbuda, on the western side of the Danube, united with Pest on the eastern side to form Budapest, the capital of Hungary.
This actress won an Academy Award for portraying Scarlett O'Hara in the 1939 film Gone with the Wind.
Answer: Who was Vivien Leigh?
Explanation: Leigh won Best Actress for her performance opposite Clark Gable. She later won a second Oscar for portraying Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.
Known as the Red Planet, this planet gets its reddish appearance from iron oxide, commonly known as rust, on its surface.
Answer: What is Mars?
Explanation: Mars has large amounts of iron-rich minerals in its soil. These minerals have oxidized, giving the planet its distinctive reddish color. Mars is also home to Olympus Mons, the tallest known volcano in our solar system.
This American author wrote The Grapes of Wrath, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the Joad family's struggles during the Great Depression.
Answer: Who was John Steinbeck?
Explanation: Published in 1939, The Grapes of Wrath follows a family of Oklahoma tenant farmers who migrate to California during the Dust Bowl. Steinbeck later received the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Completed in 1825, this artificial waterway connected the Hudson River to Lake Erie, transforming New York into a major commercial center.
Answer: What is the Erie Canal?
Explanation: The Erie Canal dramatically reduced transportation costs between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean. Its success helped make New York City the nation's leading commercial port.
The ancient city of Petra, famous for its elaborate buildings carved into rose-colored sandstone cliffs, is located in this Middle Eastern country.
Answer: What is Jordan?
Explanation: Petra was the capital of the Nabataean Kingdom and an important trading center. Its most famous structure, Al-Khazneh, or the Treasury, was carved directly into the rock face.
Before becoming one of Hollywood's most famous leading men, this actor worked as a circus stilt walker and performed under his birth name, Archibald Leach.
Answer: Who was Cary Grant?
Explanation: Grant was born in Bristol, England, in 1904. He began his entertainment career performing in a traveling acrobatic troupe before becoming a Hollywood star known for films such as North by Northwest and Bringing Up Baby.
This organ is the largest internal organ in the human body and performs more than 500 vital functions, including filtering toxins from the blood.
Answer: What is the liver?
Explanation: The liver helps digest food, stores vitamins and minerals, processes nutrients, and removes harmful substances from the blood. It also has an incredible ability to regenerate after being damaged
This British novelist created the fictional village of St. Mary Mead and its famous amateur detective, Miss Marple.
Answer: Who was Agatha Christie?
Explanation: Christie introduced Miss Marple in short stories before featuring her in novels such as The Murder at the Vicarage. Christie also created Hercule Poirot and is among the bestselling novelists of all time.
This woman, born enslaved, served as a Union spy and scout during the Civil War and helped lead a raid along South Carolina's Combahee River.
Answer: Who was Harriet Tubman?
Explanation: In 1863, Tubman helped lead the Combahee River Raid, which destroyed Confederate supplies and liberated more than 700 enslaved people. She is also famous for guiding people to freedom through the Underground Railroad.
This African country, formerly known as Abyssinia, successfully resisted Italian colonization at the Battle of Adwa in 1896.
Answer: What is Ethiopia?
Explanation: Ethiopia's victory at Adwa became an important symbol of African independence. Although Italy later occupied Ethiopia from 1936 to 1941, the country had successfully defended its sovereignty in the nineteenth century.
Released in 1950, this Billy Wilder film stars Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, a forgotten silent-film star desperate to make a comeback.
Answer: What is Sunset Boulevard?
Explanation: Sunset Boulevard is a dark examination of Hollywood fame and obsession. It won three Academy Awards, including Best Original Screenplay, and features the famous line about being ready for a close-up.
This scientist developed the three laws of motion and famously described the force of gravity in his 1687 book Principia Mathematica.
Answer: Who was Isaac Newton?
Explanation: Newton's three laws explain how objects move and respond to forces. His law of universal gravitation explains the attraction between objects with mass. According to a famous story, he began thinking about gravity after watching an apple fall from a tree.
Published in 1855, this poetry collection by Walt Whitman included the poem that would later become known as "Song of Myself."
Answer: What is Leaves of Grass?
Explanation: Whitman originally published Leaves of Grass with just 12 poems. He continued expanding and revising the collection throughout his life, making it one of the most influential works in American poetry.
Ratified in 1913, this constitutional amendment established the direct election of United States senators by popular vote.
Answer: What is the 17th Amendment?
Explanation: Before the 17th Amendment, state legislatures selected U.S. senators. Reformers supported direct elections to reduce corruption and increase democratic accountability.
This narrow strait separates the European and Asian portions of Istanbul and connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara.
Answer: What is the Bosporus?
Explanation: The Bosporus is one of the world's most strategically significant waterways. Along with the Dardanelles, it provides the only sea passage between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.
This legendary actress holds the record for the most competitive Academy Awards won by a performer, receiving four Best Actress Oscars.
Answer: Who was Katharine Hepburn?
Explanation: Hepburn won for Morning Glory, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter, and On Golden Pond. She received 12 acting nominations during her career.
This natural phenomenon occurs when sunlight passes through water droplets in the atmosphere, separating white light into its different colors.
Answer: What is a rainbow?
Explanation: Rainbows form when sunlight is refracted, reflected and dispersed inside water droplets. The traditional seven colors are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. A rainbow is actually a full circle, although we usually see only an arc from the ground.
This 1847 novel, originally published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, tells the turbulent story of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw.
Answer: What is Wuthering Heights?
Explanation: Emily Brontë published her only novel under a male pseudonym because women writers often faced prejudice. Its dark themes, unreliable narrators and complicated relationships initially shocked some Victorian readers.
During the 1876 presidential election, this Republican candidate became president after a controversial compromise that helped bring Reconstruction to an end.
Answer: Who was Rutherford B. Hayes?
Explanation: Hayes lost the popular vote to Samuel J. Tilden, but disputed electoral votes were awarded to him. The political settlement of 1877 was associated with the withdrawal of remaining federal troops from the South, hastening the end of Reconstruction.
This independent country, entirely surrounded by South Africa, has the distinction of having its lowest point more than 4,500 feet above sea level.
Answer: What is Lesotho?
Explanation: Lesotho is often called the Kingdom in the Sky because of its mountainous terrain. It is the only independent country in the world whose entire territory lies above 1,000 meters in elevation.
This 1948 Alfred Hitchcock thriller, filmed to appear as though it consists of one continuous shot, features James Stewart as a professor who suspects two former students of murder.
Answer: What is Rope?
Explanation: Hitchcock used carefully concealed cuts and unusually long takes to create the illusion of uninterrupted action. The film was inspired by a stage play and was Hitchcock's first Technicolor movie.
This naturally occurring mineral ranks 10 on the Mohs hardness scale and is commonly used in jewelry and industrial cutting tools.
Answer: What is diamond?
Explanation: Diamond is the hardest naturally occurring mineral on the Mohs scale. It forms under extreme heat and pressure deep within the Earth and is made entirely of carbon. Interestingly, graphite, the material used in pencils, is also made of carbon but is much softer.
This Irish author published his famously difficult modernist novel Ulysses in 1922. The novel takes place over a single day in Dublin: June 16, 1904.
Answer: Who was James Joyce?
Explanation: Joyce's Ulysses parallels Homer's ancient epic The Odyssey and follows the ordinary experiences of Leopold Bloom and other Dublin residents. June 16 is now celebrated by literature enthusiasts as Bloomsday.