General knowledge quiz

Leonardo da Vinci (accept Leonardo or da Vinci) The painting was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 by Vincenzo Peruggia and wasn't recovered until 1913.

Tokyo Until 1868 the city was called Edo; its new name means "eastern capital."

366 Century years only get a leap day if they divide by 400, so 2000 had a February 29 but 1900 did not.

Giraffe Despite that enormous neck, a giraffe has just seven neck vertebrae, the same number as a human.

Woody (accept Sheriff Woody) Tom Hanks has voiced Woody in the Toy Story feature films since the first one in 1995.

Portuguese Brazil is the world's largest Portuguese-speaking country, home to far more Portuguese speakers than Portugal itself.

Hydrogen It is the most plentiful element in the universe, and it is colorless, odorless and tasteless.

Hazelnut (accept hazelnuts) It grew out of a hazelnut paste Pietro Ferrero made in Piedmont in 1946, when cocoa was scarce after World War II; the Nutella name arrived in 1964.

Golf The trophy is named after Samuel Ryder, an English seed merchant, and the first official Ryder Cup was played in 1927.

Sorcerer's (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) The US publisher feared "philosopher" sounded too obscure; J.K. Rowling suggested "Sorcerer's" and later said she regretted the change.

Cygnet An adult male swan is called a cob, and an adult female is called a pen.

Liver It weighs about 3 to 5 pounds (1.4 to 2.3 kg) and is one of the only organs that can regenerate itself.

Albert Einstein (accept Einstein) The prize was awarded for his explanation of the photoelectric effect, not for his theory of relativity.

Andy Warhol (accept Warhol) The series has 32 canvases, one for each soup variety Campbell's sold at the time, and was his first solo Pop art show, at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles.

Fencing Fencing has been part of every modern Summer Olympics since 1896, and the saber is the only weapon contested at every one.

Marco Polo He dictated the book while a prisoner of war, to a fellow captive, the writer Rustichello of Pisa.

Adriatic Sea (accept Adriatic) It is about 500 miles (800 km) long and joins the Ionian Sea through the Strait of Otranto.

Richard Wagner (accept Wagner) It opens Act III of Die Walküre, part of Wagner's epic four-opera Ring cycle.

Great Expectations Miss Havisham still wears her wedding dress, and the clocks in her house are stopped at twenty minutes to nine.

Filo (accept phyllo) Its name comes from the Greek word for "leaf."

Elephant African elephants carry their calves for up to about 22 months; the long wait is thought to give the calf's large, highly developed brain time to form before birth.

A turkey Four strikes in a row is sometimes nicknamed a "hambone."

Johannes Vermeer (accept Vermeer) Nobody knows who the girl was: the painting is a "tronie," a study of an imaginary figure rather than a portrait, and it hangs in the Mauritshuis in The Hague.

His childhood sled (accept sledge) One of the surviving Rosebud sleds from the film sold at auction in 2025 for $14.75 million.

Event horizon In 2019 the Event Horizon Telescope released the first image of a black hole, showing a glowing ring around the one at the center of galaxy M87.

Challenger Deep (accept Mariana Trench) Lying in the Mariana Trench in the Pacific, it is about 10,935 meters (35,876 feet) deep.

Ampersand When the alphabet was recited, & came last, said as "and per se and" ("& by itself is 'and'"), and that phrase was slurred into "ampersand."

Spain It traces back to a bugle call published in 1761 and is one of only four wordless national anthems.

Hyoid (accept hyoid bone) Held in place by muscles and ligaments, it helps you speak, swallow and breathe, and its name comes from the Greek for U-shaped.

Treaty of Tordesillas It moved the pope's 1493 dividing line much farther west, to 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands, and Pope Julius II formally approved it in 1506.