General Knowledge Quiz: Trivia on History, Science & Geography

This general knowledge quiz asks one question from each of ten subjects, from the Pacific Ocean and the fall of the Berlin Wall to van Gogh, photosynthesis and the origins of judo. Ten questions, 90 seconds, and every answer is explained below.

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🎯 Daily Trivia Challenge • 🧠 10 Questions • ⏱️ 90 Seconds

Question 1 / 10 Time: 90s

Science
Which gas do plants take in from the air for photosynthesis?
Geography
What is the largest hot desert in the world?
History
In which year did the Berlin Wall fall?
Language
Which language has the most native speakers in the world?
Art
Which painter cut off part of his own ear in 1888?
Human Body
What is the largest organ of the human body?
Math
How many sides does a hexagon have?
Music
How many keys does a standard modern piano have?
Space
Roughly how long does sunlight take to reach Earth?
Sports
In which country did the martial art of judo begin?

Explanations: answer key for all 10 questions

Q1: Which gas do plants take in from the air for photosynthesis?
Answer: Carbon dioxide
Plants take in carbon dioxide through tiny pores in their leaves and use sunlight to turn it into sugar. Oxygen is released as a by-product, which is one reason forests matter so much for the air we breathe.
Q2: What is the largest hot desert in the world?
Answer: Sahara
The Sahara covers about 9 million square kilometers across North Africa, close to the size of the United States. Antarctica is technically a bigger desert, because deserts are defined by how little rain or snow they get, not by heat.
Q3: In which year did the Berlin Wall fall?
Answer: 1989
The Berlin Wall opened on the night of November 9, 1989, after East German officials announced that the border crossings were open. Germany reunified less than a year later, on October 3, 1990.
Q4: Which language has the most native speakers in the world?
Answer: Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin Chinese has roughly 940 million native speakers, more than any other language. English has more speakers in total, but only once people who learned it as a second language are counted.
Q5: Which painter cut off part of his own ear in 1888?
Answer: Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh injured his left ear in December 1888 in Arles, in the south of France, after an argument with the painter Paul Gauguin. He painted a famous self-portrait with a bandaged ear soon afterward.
Q6: What is the largest organ of the human body?
Answer: Skin
The skin is the body's largest organ and makes up about 15 percent of an adult's body weight. It keeps out germs, helps control body temperature and lets us feel touch, heat and pain.
Q7: How many sides does a hexagon have?
Answer: Six
A hexagon has six sides and six angles. Bees build their honeycomb cells as hexagons because the shape fits together with no gaps and uses the least wax.
Q8: How many keys does a standard modern piano have?
Answer: 88
A standard piano has 88 keys, 52 white and 36 black, covering just over seven octaves. The range runs from a very low A to a very high C.
Q9: Roughly how long does sunlight take to reach Earth?
Answer: 8 minutes
Light from the Sun takes about 8 minutes and 20 seconds to cross the roughly 150 million kilometers to Earth. If the Sun suddenly went dark, we would not notice for more than eight minutes.
Q10: In which country did the martial art of judo begin?
Answer: Japan
Judo was created in Japan in 1882 by Kanō Jigorō, who built it from older jujutsu fighting styles. It became an Olympic sport at the 1964 Tokyo Games.

General Knowledge Quiz – Ten Subjects in Ten Questions

General knowledge is the broad mix of facts people pick up from school, books, travel and the news: a little history, a little science, some geography and a few things about art, music and sport. It is the backbone of pub quizzes, TV game shows and school competitions, and it is what makes a good trivia player hard to beat.

This quiz is built to be fair. Each question comes from a different subject, so nobody wins just because they love one topic. Some questions are easy warm-ups, most sit in the middle, and two are there to separate strong players from the rest. The explanations matter as much as the answers, because each one adds a fact you can use in the next quiz.

If you score highly, it usually means you read widely and remember what you read. If you miss a few, that is the point of a quiz like this: the questions you get wrong are the facts you are most likely to remember tomorrow. Try it again in a week and see how many of the ten you still know without guessing.

What This Quiz Teaches

The quiz suits students revising for a school quiz, adults who enjoy trivia nights and anyone who wants a quick daily brain workout. It also makes a good starting point for longer quizzes, because each question opens a whole topic you can explore further on BingQuiz.

How plants use carbon dioxide and sunlight to make food
Which desert is the largest hot desert, and why Antarctica counts as a desert too
When and how the Berlin Wall came down
Which language has the most native speakers, and why English still reaches more people
How long sunlight takes to travel from the Sun to Earth
Where judo comes from and when it joined the Olympics

Quick Facts for Trivia Fans

Honey never really spoils: jars of edible honey have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs.
An octopus has three hearts and blue blood.
The Eiffel Tower can grow about 15 centimeters taller in summer, because its iron expands in the heat.
Botanically, bananas count as berries, but strawberries do not.
Scotland's national animal is the unicorn.
The Great Wall of China is not visible to the naked eye from the Moon, despite the popular myth.
The shortest war on record, between Britain and Zanzibar in 1896, lasted less than an hour.