🔬 Discoveries Trivia Questions

Which British archaeologist discovered the largely intact tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1922?

• Howard Carter
• Flinders Petrie
• Zahi Hawass
• Arthur Evans

Which ancient Roman city, buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, was rediscovered and excavated starting in the 18th century?

• Pompeii
• Ostia
• Herculaneum
• Ravenna

Which German-born archaeologist is credited with rediscovering the site believed to be the ancient city of Troy in the 1870s?

• Heinrich Schliemann
• Arthur Evans
• Austen Henry Layard
• Max Mallowan

Which American historian and explorer brought the Inca site of Machu Picchu to international attention in 1911?

• Hiram Bingham
• John Lloyd Stephens
• Percy Fawcett
• Alfred Kidder

Which slab, inscribed in three scripts and found by French soldiers in 1799, provided the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs?

• The Rosetta Stone
• The Behistun Inscription
• The Code of Hammurabi
• The Nag Hammadi Codex

Which French scholar is credited with finally deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs in the 1820s, using the Rosetta Stone?

• Jean-Francois Champollion
• Thomas Young
• Auguste Mariette
• Gaston Maspero

Ancient scrolls found in caves near the Dead Sea in the late 1940s, containing some of the oldest known biblical manuscripts, are known as what?

• The Dead Sea Scrolls
• The Nag Hammadi Library
• The Codex Sinaiticus
• The Book of Kells

Which English naturalist developed the theory of evolution by natural selection, published in 'On the Origin of Species' in 1859?

• Charles Darwin
• Alfred Russel Wallace
• Gregor Mendel
• Thomas Huxley

Which Augustinian friar's experiments with pea plants in the 1860s laid the foundation for the modern science of genetics?

• Gregor Mendel
• Charles Darwin
• Louis Pasteur
• Robert Hooke

Which two scientists are most credited with determining the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953, building on X-ray data from Rosalind Franklin?

• James Watson and Francis Crick
• Fred Sanger and Maurice Wilkins
• Linus Pauling and Erwin Chargaff
• Har Gobind Khorana and Marshall Nirenberg

Which scientist took the X-ray diffraction image known as 'Photo 51', crucial evidence in identifying the structure of DNA?

• Rosalind Franklin
• Dorothy Hodgkin
• Barbara McClintock
• Lise Meitner

Which French chemist and microbiologist developed the process of heating liquids to kill harmful microbes, now known by his name?

• Louis Pasteur
• Robert Koch
• Alexander Fleming
• Joseph Lister

Which English physician is credited with developing the first vaccine, using cowpox to protect against smallpox in 1796?

• Edward Jenner
• Louis Pasteur
• Jonas Salk
• Robert Koch

Which physicist's observations of a falling apple are traditionally linked to his formulation of the theory of gravity?

• Isaac Newton
• Galileo Galilei
• Johannes Kepler
• Robert Hooke

Which Italian astronomer, using an improved telescope, discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter in 1610?

• Galileo Galilei
• Johannes Kepler
• Nicolaus Copernicus
• Tycho Brahe

Which German astronomer formulated the laws of planetary motion, describing orbits as ellipses rather than perfect circles?

• Johannes Kepler
• Galileo Galilei
• Tycho Brahe
• Nicolaus Copernicus

Which Polish astronomer proposed the heliocentric model, placing the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the universe?

• Nicolaus Copernicus
• Johannes Kepler
• Galileo Galilei
• Giordano Bruno

Which American astronomer discovered Pluto in 1930 while working at the Lowell Observatory?

• Clyde Tombaugh
• Percival Lowell
• Edwin Hubble
• Vesto Slipher

Which astronomer's observations of distant galaxies in the 1920s provided key evidence that the universe is expanding?

• Edwin Hubble
• Clyde Tombaugh
• Carl Sagan
• Fred Hoyle

Which German meteorologist proposed the theory of continental drift in 1912, suggesting the continents were once joined in a single landmass?

• Alfred Wegener
• Alexander von Humboldt
• Charles Lyell
• James Hutton