Battles and Blunders Trivia Quiz

Answer: 1815

The Battle of Waterloo took place in Belgium, pitting Napoleon's army against the British, led by the Duke of Wellington and the Prussian army, led by the Prince of Wahlstatt. Napoleon's defeat spelled the end of the French Empire.

Answer: 490BC

King Darius I of Persia tried to subjugate Greece in 490 BC. His army was defeated by a Greek army from Athens, marking a turning point in the Greco-Persian Wars.

Answer: 1588

The Spanish sent a fleet of 130 ships to support an invasion of England to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I. Superior English ships and weaponry plus some bad weather caused the Spaniards to lose half their ships and about 15,000 men. The victory made England a world sea power.

Answer: 1781

In Yorktown, Virginia, a combined force of American and French soldiers defeated a British army under the command of General Charles Cornwallis. It was the last major land battle in the American Revolutionary War and caused the British government to look for ways to end the war.

Answer: 1789

The Bastille was a fort and prison in Paris. During the reign of Louis XVI, the French economy was in shambles and the population believed they were overtaxed. The storming of the Bastille marked the beginning of the French Revolution.

Answer: 480BC

In the second Persian invasion of Greece, under King Xerxes I, an army of 100,000 Persians was stopped at Thermopylae by 6,000 Greek soldiers led by King Leonidas of Sparta. The Greeks kept the Persians from advancing through the Thermopylae pass for two days until they were betrayed by someone who showed the Persians a secret path around Thermopylae.

Answer: 1805

Considered one of the British navy's most important battles, the battle of Trafalgar was fought off the coast of Spain against a French and Spanish force. Led by Admiral Horatio Nelson, the British won the battle, though Nelson was killed. The British were never seriously challenged again by the French.

Answer: 1863

The turning point of the American Civil War came at the battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in July, 1863. It was one of the bloodiest battles of the war. The Union army, under the command of General George Meade defeated the Confederate army of General Robert E. Lee. The war continued for almost two more years before the Confederates finally surrendered.

Answer: 1944

The largest amphibious invasion in history occurred in 1944 when the Allied armies landed in France to establish a Western Front against Nazi Germany. With the Soviet Army pressing from the east and other Allied armies moving north through Italy, the German forces were finally overwhelmed and forced to surrender.

Answer: 1916

Fought off the Jutland Peninsula of Denmark, the battle of Jutland was the first major battle of steel-hulled battleships. It involved 250 ships of the British Royal Navy and the German High Seas Fleet. It was the only large naval battle of World War I. The British did not have a clear victory, so the blunting of Germany's naval force wasn't appreciated until years later.