History -Then and Now Trivia Quiz

Answer: removes seeds from cotton

The 1793 invention by Eli Whitney mechanically removed seeds from a cotton bloom without harming its fiber. Previously, seeds had to be removed laboriously by hand. The invention led to an economic boom for the South by increasing the amount of cotton the southern states could provide to textile manufacturers. It also cemented Southern dependence on the slaves who picked the raw cotton.

Answer: Yes, there was

In 1839 he invented the steel plow, which, along with Cyrus McCormick's 1834 invention, the reaper, changed the face of American agriculture.

Answer: 1844

Invented by Samuel F. B. Morse and completed in 1844, the first telegraph line ran from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore, Maryland. The first message, telegraphed on May 24, 1844, was "What hath God Wrought!"

Answer: Pennsylvania,1859

The first petroleum well was dug by American railway conductor Edwin L. Drake on August 28, 1859, at Titusville in western Pennsylvania. Kerosene for lamps was the first product to be refined from oil; gasoline did not become important until the development of the internal combustion engine in the 1880s and '90s.

Answer: The Civil War

The precursor of the modern machine gun, the rapid-firing weapon saw limited action during the Civil War, specifically in the Petersburg Campaign in 1864. The hand-crank-operated gun, capable of firing hundreds of rounds per minute, was patented by Richard J. Gatling in 1862.

Answer: Charles F. Richter

Charles F. Richter of the California Institute of Technology developed the scale in 1935 as a mathematical device to compare the sizes of earthquakes. Each whole number increase in the scale corresponds to a tenfold increase in the amplitude of waves measured by a seismograph -- or an increase of about 31 times the energy of a quake that is one number smaller.

Answer: Philadelphia,1876

Alexander Graham Bell first displayed his electronic telephone in 1876 at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Answer: bowls

The first game on record was a game of bowls played in the streets of Jamestown, Virginia, in 1611.

Answer: a Civil War marching song

"Goober Peas" was the name and the subject of a southern Civil War marching song. At times, Confederate soldiers had to rely heavily on peanuts for food.

Answer: they used whatever paper was available

Corncobs and pages torn from newspapers and magazines were commonly used in the early American West. Until the late 19th century, Americans used sales catalogues, newspapers, pamphlets, fliers, or whatever other paper they could find. The materials were kept in the bathroom or outhouse, where they provided reading matter as well as sanitation. Toilet paper in rolls, sold in plain brown rappers, were first marketed in the U.S. in the 1880s by Edward and Clarence Scott of Philadelphia.