History rounds in British pub quizzes are more predictable than the subject
deserves. They are dominated by dates, by the two world wars, and by a canon of
perhaps forty events that everyone who has ever set a quiz has in mind. The
questions below are the ones that recur.
Dates first
If you learn nothing else, learn the dates. A large share of history
questions are of the form "in which year did X happen", and the set of X that
gets asked is small: Hastings 1066, Magna Carta 1215, the Armada 1588, the Great
Fire 1666, the Declaration of Independence 1776, Waterloo 1815, the two world
wars, the moon landing 1969. Anything further from that spine is asked
occasionally; those are asked constantly.
The second-order trick is the "year and who" question — a year paired with a
monarch, a general or a leader. British quizzes especially like these, because
they double the difficulty without doubling the obscurity.
Magna Carta is King John at Runnymede;
Hastings is Harold and William;
the Gunpowder Plot is 1605 and James
I. Learn them paired and the question cannot come at you sideways.
Where the interesting questions live
Beyond the spine, setters gravitate to the episodes with a story attached:
the Christmas truce, the
Charge of the Light Brigade,
the deceptions before D-Day,
the Zimmermann telegram,
the defenestrations of
Prague, and
the Emu War, which is asked mainly so
the room can find out it was real. These are worth reading rather than
memorising: the story is the retrieval cue, and it carries the date with it.
Monarchs are a distinct topic with its own logic — see
British monarchs quiz
questions.
Battle of Hastings — year?
Answer 1066
Rome's first emperor, and his adoptive father?
Answer Augustus (Octavian); Julius Caesar
Battle of Stalingrad ended — year?
Answer 1943 (German surrender, February)
Chinese Communist revolution — year and leader?
Answer 1949, Mao Zedong
Cuban Revolution — year and leader?
Answer 1959, Fidel Castro (with Che Guevara)
Battle of Britain — year?
Answer 1940
American Declaration of Independence — year?
Answer 1776
Emperor who legalised Christianity and founded Constantinople?
Answer Constantine
The Industrial Revolution began where and roughly when?
Answer Britain, ~1760s onward
Who was the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe?
Answer Francis Drake (1577–1580)
Great Fire of London — year?
Answer 1666 (started in Pudding Lane)
Which explorer claimed Australia's east coast for Britain (1770)?
Answer James Cook
NHS founded — year?
Answer 1948 (by Aneurin Bevan)
Emperor during the Great Fire of Rome (64 AD)?
Answer Nero
Venetian who travelled to Kublai Khan's China?
Answer Marco Polo (13th century)
Who reached the South Pole first (1911)?
Answer Roald Amundsen (Scott arrived weeks later)
Who reached India by sea around Africa (1498)?
Answer Vasco da Gama
Russian Revolution — year?
Answer 1917
Battle of Agincourt — year and king?
Answer 1415, Henry V
Viking credited with reaching North America ~1000 AD?
Answer Leif Erikson (Vinland)
Iranian Revolution — year and leader?
Answer 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini (Shah deposed)
Roman emperor when the empire reached its greatest extent?
Answer Trajan (d. 117 AD)
Which emperor built the wall across northern Britain (122 AD)?
Answer Hadrian
Battle of the Somme — year?
Answer 1916
Emperor said to have planned to make his horse a consul?
Answer Caligula (the horse: Incitatus)
First confirmed ascent of Everest (1953)?
Answer Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay
French Revolution began — year?
Answer 1789 (storming of the Bastille, 14 July)
Dutch explorer who gave his name to an island state?
Answer Abel Tasman (Tasmania; also charted New Zealand)
Gunpowder Plot — year?
Answer 1605 (Guy Fawkes)
Emperor who split rule via the Tetrarchy (293 AD)?
Answer Diocletian