Shared quiz
Which Came First?
Ten pairs where almost everybody guesses wrong. Nobody can revise for this one, which makes it the safest quiz to put in front of a room that does not know each other.
- Questions
- 10
- Time to play
- about 6 min
- Category
- General knowledge
- Language
- English
- history
- icebreaker
- trivia
- surprising
How to use this quiz
- Make a copy — it lands in your own quizzes, where you can edit every question. The original is untouched.
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- Players join from any phone browser, answer on their own device, and the scores update live.
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The questions
Correct answers are shown below, so you can check the quiz before you use it.
Which was patented first -- the fax machine or the telephone?
- The fax machinecorrect
- The telephone
- The same year
- Neither -- radio came before both
Why
Alexander Bain patented an image-sending telegraph in 1843, the ancestor of the fax. Bell's telephone patent came in 1876.
20 seconds to answer
Which company was founded first -- Nintendo or Ford?
- Nintendocorrect
- Ford
- The same decade
- Neither existed before 1920
Why
Nintendo was founded in Kyoto in 1889 to make playing cards. The Ford Motor Company was founded in 1903.
20 seconds to answer
Cleopatra lived closer in time to the building of the Great Pyramid than to the Moon landing.
- True
- Falsecorrect
Why
The Great Pyramid was built around 2560 BC. Cleopatra died in 30 BC, about 2,500 years later, and the Moon landing in 1969 came about 2,000 years after her.
20 seconds to answer
Teaching began at Oxford before the Aztec Empire was founded.
- Truecorrect
- False
Why
Teaching at Oxford is documented in 1096. The Aztec Empire arose from the Triple Alliance formed in 1428, more than three centuries later. Tenochtitlan itself had been founded earlier, traditionally in 1325.
20 seconds to answer
Which came first -- Coca-Cola or the Eiffel Tower?
- Coca-Colacorrect
- The Eiffel Tower
- The same year
- Neither is that old
Why
Coca-Cola was first sold in Atlanta in 1886. The Eiffel Tower opened in Paris in 1889.
20 seconds to answer
Woolly mammoths were still alive when the Great Pyramid was already standing.
- Truecorrect
- False
Why
The Great Pyramid was finished around 2560 BC. A population of woolly mammoths survived on Wrangel Island, in the Arctic, until about 2000 BC.
20 seconds to answer
Which came first: the founding of Harvard University or Newton and Leibniz's development of calculus?
- Harvardcorrect
- Calculus
- The same decade
- Calculus came centuries earlier
Why
Harvard was founded in 1636. Newton and Leibniz each developed calculus independently in the 1660s and 1670s.
25 seconds to answer
Order these by when they were first sold, earliest first.
Correct order
- The bicycle
- The telephone
- Sliced bread
- The ballpoint pen
Why
Early two-wheeled bicycles were sold from the 1810s, the telephone from the late 1870s, sliced bread from 1928, and the first ballpoint pens in the 1940s.
45 seconds to answer
Which is older -- the shark or the tree?
- Sharkscorrect
- Trees
- Roughly the same age
- Neither is older than dinosaurs
Why
Sharks and their ancient relatives predate trees. Shark-like teeth date to about 410 million years ago, while the oldest known fossil forests are about 390 million years old. Possible shark-ancestor scales are older still, around 450 million years.
25 seconds to answer
Which of these surprised you most?
Poll — no right answer, players just vote.
- Sharks older than trees
- Cleopatra closer to us than to the pyramids
- Nintendo older than Ford
- Mammoths and pyramids overlapping
20 seconds to answer