Pick a subject, choose your level, and dive in. Each quiz is written and fact-checked by hand, with an explanation after every answer.
236 quizzes · page 9 of 10
Ptolemy, al-Idrisi, portolan charts and the draughtsman who straightened the Underground.
Ptolemy's Geographia, written in the second century, was influential chiefly because it did…
Ten questions on the offices, alliances and civil wars of Rome before the emperors.
How many consuls normally held office in the Roman Republic at the same time?
Athenian politics, a long war with Sparta, and the scholars who worked in the same world.
What was the Greek term for an independent city-state?
Baths, apartment blocks, plumbing and fish sauce — how Romans actually lived day to day.
What were the large Roman public bath complexes called?
Ten fights from Thermopylae to the Milvian Bridge, and what each of them settled.
At which pass did a small Greek force hold up the Persian army in 480 BC?
Ten Greek stories told through the people who lived them, from Pandora to the priestess at Delphi.
In the most common version, who opened the jar that let troubles loose in the world?
Bound wolves, borrowed eyes and a short-handled hammer: ten questions on the myths written down in medieval Iceland.
Which god lost a hand while the gods were binding the wolf Fenrir?
Ten creatures from local storytelling traditions, from a hut on chicken legs to a spider who talks his way out of everything.
In Jewish folklore, what is a golem?
Ten ordinary words and names that turn out to be carrying a god, a Titan or a doomed hero around with them.
The word "panic" comes from which Greek god?
Ten questions on the alliances, campaigns and decisions that shaped the war of 1914 to 1918.
Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire fought the war as which grouping?
From the pact of August 1939 to the fall of Berlin, ten turning points in the European war.
Which agreement of August 1939 committed Germany and the Soviet Union to non-aggression days…
Carriers, codebreakers and island campaigns across the largest theatre of the Second World War.
Which June 1942 battle cost Japan four fleet carriers and reversed the balance in the Pacific?
Rationing, evacuation, codebreaking and the inventions the Second World War pushed forward.
Which country house north of London was the centre of Allied codebreaking work?
Ten questions on how the instruments of an orchestra are grouped and how they actually make their sound.
Which section of a symphony orchestra normally contains the most players?
Notation, intervals, key signatures and time signatures, explained through ten questions with no jargon left unexplained.
How many semitones make up an octave in standard Western tuning?
From tinfoil cylinders to the compact disc, with the genres that grew up alongside each new format.
Who demonstrated the first machine that could both record sound and play it back, in 1877?
Ten pieces of classical music matched to the people who wrote them, from Vivaldi to Ravel.
Who wrote the set of four violin concertos known as The Four Seasons?
Ten everyday words with a Latin, Greek or Arabic ancestor hiding inside them.
The word "muscle" comes from a Latin word meaning what?
Scripts, families and the odd language that refuses to fit anywhere at all.
Which script is used to write Hindi, Marathi and Nepali?
The parts of speech and punctuation marks people use daily and rarely name.
A word such as "heavy" or "blue", which describes a noun, is called what?
Ten common phrases traced back to the law, the navy, the theatre and the hat trade.
To "read the riot act" refers to what?
Ten questions on the silent era, the arrival of sound and the studios that ran Hollywood.
Which 1941 film was Orson Welles's first feature as a director?
The jobs, the jargon and the order of work behind the credits that scroll past at the end.
What is the director of photography responsible for?
How television was invented, paid for and scheduled, from spinning discs to the shape of the screen.
Which Scottish engineer publicly demonstrated a working television system in London in 1926?