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Famous Inventions and Discoveries

From burrs on a dog's coat to scrolls in a desert cave, see how many of the world's cleverest finds you can trace back to where they began.

🧠 General Knowledge medium 20 questions ~7 min

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What this quiz asks

What kept sticking to his dog's fur and inspired George de Mestral to invent Velcro?
Chemist Stephanie Kwolek invented which super-strong fibre, now used in bulletproof vests?
China's Terracotta Army was discovered by farmers digging a well.
Art Fry dreamed up the Post-it Note while looking for a bookmark that would stay put in what?
Select ALL of these that belong to China's traditional 'Four Great Inventions'.
Elisha Otis won public trust at New York's Crystal Palace by having the rope of a raised platform cut. What was he showing off?
In what year did four teenagers stumble on the painted Lascaux cave in France?
King C. Gillette made his fortune in the early 1900s selling what?
Put these inventions in order of when they appeared, earliest first.
Which French doctor invented this instrument in 1816, starting with a rolled-up tube of paper?
Englishman Percy Shaw patented which road-safety invention in 1934?
Was the coelacanth, a fish known from fossils and thought long extinct, found alive in the 20th century?
Which vehicle, riding on a cushion of air, did British engineer Christopher Cockerell invent in the 1950s?
Select ALL of these planets that were discovered with the help of a telescope.
Karl Landsteiner's 1901 discovery made blood transfusions far safer. What did he find?
Teflon was discovered by accident when a gas cylinder that seemed empty turned out to hold a slippery white powder.
Charles Goodyear made rubber tough and weatherproof by heating it with which element?
Louis Braille's raised-dot alphabet simplified a 'night writing' code devised by whom?
Who stumbled on the first Dead Sea Scrolls in a cave near Qumran in the 1940s?
What was the Antikythera mechanism, recovered from an ancient Greek shipwreck?