True or False History Facts

Explore true or false facts about the ancient world, the Middle Ages, explorers and everyday life in the past. Read a statement, then open its answer and explanation

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The first passengers in a hot-air balloon were a sheep, a duck and a rooster
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True
The Montgolfier brothers sent the 3 animals up at Versailles in 1783, before any person made a flight
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Farmers digging a well found China's Terracotta Army by accident
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True
In 1974 farmers sinking a well near Xi'an hit the clay soldiers buried with Qin Shi Huang, China's first emperor
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Vikings reached North America around 500 years before Columbus
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True
Norse settlers built a camp at L'Anse aux Meadows in Canada around the year 1000, and wood there is dated to 1021
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Viking warriors wore helmets with horns in battle
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False
Viking Age helmets that survive have no horns, and the horned image spread in the 1800s, partly through Wagner's operas
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Columbus sailed west in 1492 mainly to prove that the Earth is round
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False
Educated Europeans already knew the Earth is a sphere, and the dispute was about its size, which Columbus underestimated
Source: en.wikipedia.org
An ancient Greek geared device could predict eclipses and the Moon's phases
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True
The Antikythera mechanism, raised from a shipwreck in 1901, modeled the movements of the Sun and Moon with gears
Source: en.wikipedia.org
The Eiffel Tower was built as a temporary structure meant to be torn down
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True
It was made for the 1889 World's Fair and slated for removal in 1909, but its use as a radio mast saved it
Source: en.wikipedia.org
The first known woman to sail around the world did it disguised as a man
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True
Jeanne Baret signed on as a male valet to the botanist Philibert Commerson and completed a French voyage around the globe
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Medieval cooks used spices mainly to hide the taste of rotten meat
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False
Spices were very expensive, and anyone who could afford them could also buy fresh meat
Source: en.wikipedia.org
The Great Wall of China is one continuous wall built by a single dynasty
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False
It is a series of walls and fortifications that many states and dynasties built over more than 2,000 years
Source: en.wikipedia.org
The Colosseum was the biggest place for public shows in ancient Rome
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False
The Circus Maximus, the chariot-racing stadium, held about 150,000 people, far more than the Colosseum's 50,000 to 80,000
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Stonehenge was built about 2,000 years ago by the druids of Iron Age Britain
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False
Building ran from about 3100 to 1600 BCE, over 1,000 years before druids are first mentioned in writing
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Cleopatra lived closer in time to the Moon landing than to the Great Pyramid's building
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True
The Great Pyramid dates to about 2600 BCE, Cleopatra died in 30 BCE, and the Moon landing came about 2,000 years after her
Source: en.wikipedia.org
The University of Oxford is older than the Aztec Empire
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True
Teaching at Oxford is recorded as early as 1096, while the Aztecs founded Tenochtitlan in 1325 and formed their empire in 1428
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Medieval European courts held trials of animals such as pigs and rats
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True
Animal trials took place from about the 13th to the 18th century, and a lawyer once defended the rats of Autun
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Julius Caesar once ordered a single Roman year of more than 14 months
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True
To fix the calendar, Caesar made 46 BCE last 445 days, a year later nicknamed the year of confusion
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Wealthy Romans often used a special room called a vomitorium to vomit during banquets
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False
A vomitorium was a passage that let crowds leave an arena quickly, and the feast story is a misunderstanding
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Napoleon's soldiers shot the nose off the Great Sphinx with a cannon in 1798
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False
Drawings from 1737 already show the nose missing, decades before Napoleon's army arrived in Egypt in 1798
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Tulips, the famous flowers of Holland, come originally from the Netherlands
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False
Tulips grow wild from Southern Europe to Central Asia and were first cultivated in Persia and Turkey, long before the Dutch
Source: en.wikipedia.org
Hadrian's Wall, built by the Romans, marks the border between England and Scotland
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False
The wall lies entirely within England and has never formed the Anglo-Scottish border
Source: en.wikipedia.org

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