American History Trivia

American history spans revolutions, migrations, and reinventions, from the muskets of 1776 to the moon landing in 1969. This quiz moves through the decades to test how well you know the turning points.

Founding a Republic

The United States began as an idea before it became a country: a Declaration in 1776, a war that dragged on for years, and a Constitution in 1787 that tried to answer the question of how a republic should actually run itself. Barely two decades later, the Louisiana Purchase nearly doubled the young nation's size overnight.

• The Treaty of Paris in 1783 formally ended the Revolutionary War.
• Marbury v. Madison, decided in 1803, established the Supreme Court's power of judicial review.
• The 16th Amendment, ratified in 1913, created the federal income tax still in use today.

A Nation Tested and Transformed

The 20th century tested the country's institutions and its conscience. The 1929 stock market crash triggered the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor pulled the U.S. into World War II, and the civil rights movement, capped by Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 speech, pushed the country toward living up to its founding promises. Six years later, Apollo 11 put the first human footprints on the Moon.