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Which Came First?

We give you two things. Guess which one came earlier.
Quiz by WolfCam
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Last updated: February 27, 2019
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First submittedFebruary 2, 2019
Times taken66,085
Average score61.1%
Rating4.29
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1. Tech products
iPhone
Facebook
  • Facebook: 2004
  • iPhone: 2007
2. Independent countries
Mexico
Canada
  • Mexico: 1821
  • Canada: It's complicated. 1867 at the earliest.
3. Surrender in WWII
Germany
Japan
  • Germany: May 8, 1945
  • Japan: August 15, 1945
4. States of the U.S.
Colorado
California
  • California: 1850
  • Colorado: 1876
5. Animals
Insects
Birds
  • Insects: 300 million years ago
  • Birds: 170 million years ago
6. Wars
Thirty Years' War
Hundred Years' War
  • Hundred Years' War: 1337-1453
  • Thirty Years' War: 1618-1648
7. Mountain ranges
Andes
Appalachians
  • Appalachians: 480 million years ago
  • Andes: 25 million years ago
8. Early inventions
Control of fire
The wheel
  • Fire: At least 400,000 years ago
  • Wheel: About 4,000 B.C.
9. U.S. Presidents
James Madison
Andrew Jackson
  • James Madison: 1809-1817
  • Andrew Jackson: 1829-1837
10. Harry Potter books
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
11. Religions
Buddhism
Christianity
  • Buddhism: Around 500 BC
  • Christianity: 1st century AD
12. Kings of England
King James I
King Edward I
  • Edward: 1272-1307
  • James: 1603-1625
13. Chinese dynasties
Qing Dynasty
Han Dynasty
  • Han: 202 BC - 220 AD
  • Qing: 1636-1912
14. Classical composers
J.S. Bach
Ludwig van Beethoven
  • Bach: 1685-1750
  • Beethoven: 1770-1827
15. Geologic periods
Cretaceous
Jurassic
  • Jurassic: 201-145 million years ago
  • Cretaceous: 145-66 million years ago
16. Disney parks
Disneyland
Disney World
  • Disneyland: 1955
  • Disney World: 1971
17. Keanu Reeves movies
The Matrix
Speed
  • Speed: 1994
  • The Matrix: 1999
18. Island chains by earliest human settlement
Hawaii
New Zealand
  • Hawaii: 300 AD
  • New Zealand: 1250 AD
60 Comments
+8
Level 76
Feb 27, 2019
Nice quiz!
+5
Level 66
Feb 27, 2019
Thanks!
+3
Level 68
Feb 28, 2019
For number 5, I am confused to what you are asking
+14
Level 37
Feb 28, 2019
He is asking what came first in history? the birds or the insects
+13
Level 59
Apr 16, 2019
According to Genesis 1:20-25, the birds came first, then the insects.
+26
Level 49
Apr 16, 2019
The bible is a fictional story, not based on fact.
+16
Level 26
Nov 24, 2020
Imagine trusting the Bible more than the Scientists lmao
+3
Level 49
Dec 3, 2021
Funny! Good one
+4
Level 65
Dec 6, 2021
The question should be reworded to something like, "According to the theory of evolution and collected evidence, which is believed to have come first, birds or insects?" If you don't believe the Bible, then there is still no way to say for sure which came first as there is no written history from that time. The theory of evolution is simply scientists answer to how life came to be based on theories, not fact. So the question really should be changed. Scientists have not determined without a doubt how life began, they only have theories.
+7
Level 66
Dec 6, 2021
This is actually a common misconception to say it's "just a theory." In Science, for something to be a theory, it has to have so much evidence backing it up that it essentially will never be disproven. It's the "Theory" of Evolution because we have mountains of evidence that support it. Germs, atoms, and tectonic plates are also subjects of other theories because their existence has been proved over and over.
+5
Level 69
Aug 9, 2022
Written history is by no means the gold standard of knowledge! It is notoriously unreliable, especially in the face of actual evidence-driven science, which the theory of evolution is.
+6
Level 89
Feb 28, 2019
Bach was not a Classical composer - he was a Baroque composer. And Beethoven's early works were Classical, but some of his later works would more appropriately be classified as being in the Romantic period.
+24
Level 70
Feb 28, 2019
"Classical" is being used as an umbrella term here. If you know that about the composers, then you know which one came first and can answer the question.
+5
Level 80
Mar 5, 2019
stevediverse is correct, the use of Classical in this quiz is incorrect. Just having "Composers" would be much better.
+1
Level 69
Dec 3, 2021
I think that Baroque music is a type of Classical music, though I'm not sure.
+1
Level 78
Dec 3, 2021
The common people use "Classical" as an umbrella term. That's wrong in the music world. It would be like calling 90s dance music disco. It might have some similarities, but the era of disco is very specific.
+1
Level 59
Dec 3, 2021
Exactly!!!
+8
Level 25
Feb 28, 2019
I'm shocked that people do not know what period came first: Jurrasic or Cretaceous. Awesome quiz by the way!
+5
Level 71
Feb 8, 2021
sorry I shocked you! I will endeavour to be more careful next time :)
+2
Level 57
Mar 9, 2021
Why? Quite an obscure, unimportant fact to us now, but maybe I'm biased considering I didn't get it. So yeah, sorry to have shocked you!
+1
Level 56
Dec 3, 2021
I even studied the eras of the earth and I have not heard of Cretaceous. Sorry to have shocked you!
+8
Level 78
Dec 3, 2021
@Pokebom... you studied the eras of the earth and haven't even HEARD of cretaceous? That doesn't scan at all.
+6
Level 68
Dec 3, 2021
Fair point. I have known this since being a small child enamoured with dinosaurs.
+2
Level 83
Dec 3, 2021
I'm shocked that you are shocked by this, yet can't spell Jurassic.
+4
Level 62
Dec 3, 2021
Most of us are too young to remember it.
+1
Level 63
Feb 28, 2019
Great quiz, 18/18
+1
Level 35
Feb 28, 2019
13/18 but I still enjoyed the 3 points
+1
Level 55
Feb 28, 2019
Really nice quiz with a good mix of everything! I dug deep in my 'general knowledge' brain part and I got 14/18! I just missed the Facebook (1), California (4), Speed (17) and Hawaii (18) one.
+1
Level 66
Feb 28, 2019
I'm impressed that folks get at least one question right a good bit worse than chance! There are a bunch that most people apparently don't know, but one that most people know wrong.
+2
Level 82
Mar 5, 2019
All but the iPhone and Facebook one, though some were lucky guesses. Really had no idea on Appalachians vs Andes - often it seems lower mountain ranges are older because of gradually eroding away whilst higher ones are the result of more recent tectonic activity pushing them up. In the end I ignored that reasoning and went with Andes, because I have memories of them appearing on deep history maps even before South America had clearly formed. That turned out to be right. Good quiz.
+2
Level 81
Mar 11, 2019
I assumed the Andes came first based solely on the height of their mountains - oh well, learnt something cool!
+8
Level 78
Apr 13, 2019
If you meant based on the fact that they're higher, then it's actually the opposite! High mountains are usually very young, having only recently been pushed up without much time to have been worn away by erosion. Older mountains have been filed down by wind and water, and so are lower and more rounded.
+1
Level 81
Apr 13, 2019
Difficult but good!
+2
Level 70
Apr 14, 2019
Great quiz. One quibble however, Canada became a country in 1867, nothing "complicated" about it.
+6
Level 45
Apr 15, 2019
How about - Chicken v Egg
+2
Level 77
Jun 3, 2021
It's the egg. If you think about it in evolutionary terms, the first proper chicken came out of an egg laid by something that you could call a proto-chicken. Science!
+3
Level 59
Dec 3, 2021
could the first chicken not have come from a proto-egg?
+2
Level 78
Dec 3, 2021
Good point. As always, this debate simply comes down to semantics. Do we define a chicken egg as any egg that comes out of a chicken? If a chicken somehow laid an egg and then hatched a platypus, would you say that it was amazing how a platypus came out of a chicken egg? Or would you say it's amazing how a platypus egg came out of a chicken?
+2
Level 69
Aug 9, 2022
It doesn't come down to semantics. Egg-laying animals obviously came a very very long time before chickens, but even if you restrict the question to chickens: it would be very arbitrary to designate a "first chicken", since evolution happens in populations, not individuals, but even disregarding this, the fact is that the egg is genetically identical to whatever hatches from it, not to whatever lays it. Therefore, a chicken can lay an egg that's slighlty different from a chicken (because of mutations), but a chicken can only hatch from an egg that's 100% chicken.
+1
Level 78
Jun 23, 2023
You're literally just making a semantic assumption. You're saying an egg is a chicken egg so long as a chicken comes out, even if laid by a proto-chicken. But some might define any egg from the keister of a proto-chicken as a proto-chicken egg.
+1
Level 73
May 7, 2019
Very interesting quiz!
+3
Level 75
Jul 28, 2019
Yes I missed the question about the chicken and the egg.
+1
Level 78
Sep 24, 2020
There were only a few that i actually KNEW. One of which was actually Appalachians vs Andes. One way to remember relative ages of mountain ranges is how rounded vs jagged they are. If the range is lower and more rounded (like the Appalachians), they have been weathered over eons. Fun fact...the Appalachian mountains actually precede Pangea. The supercontinent was formed roughly 335 million years ago. The Appalachians are older than that by over 140 million years.
+2
Level 66
Oct 7, 2020
The fact that more people know Harry Potter than Bach is worrying.
+2
Level 26
Nov 24, 2020
What is Bach?
+7
Level ∞
Nov 16, 2021
When feigning ignorance, it's best to do it like this:

"What is a Bach"?

+2
Level 68
Dec 4, 2021
Quizmaster is undefeated.
+2
Level 71
Dec 3, 2021
I find it far more disturbing that a relatively high percentage of people couldn't figure out that the control of fire came before the wheel. The rest of the questions are knowledge so you can lack some, nobody knows it all- but the fire/wheel question is just common sense and understanding the world around you.
+3
Level 78
Dec 3, 2021
You read through the Harry Potter books or see the movies once -- pretty common, considering they're a massive cultural phenomenon from the past twenty years -- and you can probably remember the order of the books. Meanwhile, you could listen to every available recording of every single piece of music Bach and Beethoven ever composed and still have no idea which of the two was born first.
+1
Level 49
Dec 31, 2020
Damn it, i got confused between the Qing and Qin dynaties.
+1
Level 79
Jan 31, 2021
I got 15/18; missed the mountain range, Harry Potter and Keanu Reeves.
+1
Level 23
Jul 4, 2021
Fact: You can tell age of mountains by just looking! Just see how the peaks look. If they're frayed and sharp, they're young, because nature didn't formed them. And if they're smooth they're very old, because nature formed them to this shape.
+1
Level 78
Dec 3, 2021
Of course, when he says "nature didn't form them", he's referring to God's pencil sharpener.
+3
Level 68
Aug 21, 2021
Jurassic Park should have been called Cretaceous Park or should have been marketed as “145 Million Years In The Making”.
+1
Level 68
Dec 4, 2021
I like that slogan, but Jurassic sounds way better than Cretaceous, whether or not it is historically accurate.
+1
Level 79
Dec 3, 2021
I don't think I've ever seen a percentile lower than .5% on a quiz
+1
Level 73
Dec 15, 2021
For some reason I'm really good at getting all but one or two and getting five points on multiple-choice JetPunk quizzes. I'm perpetually surprised by the low percent of people getting 100%, since my general knowledge isn't the most complete.
+1
Level 53
May 31, 2023
I somehow got 100% but I guessed a few
+1
Level 71
Dec 3, 2021
Well, I'm pretty happy I finally can remember the correct Mesozoic periods. Shout out to my great Geomorphology teacher from last semester!
+1
Level 62
Dec 3, 2021
Enjoyed it, although James was the king of Scotland, before becoming king of both countries combined, so, being Scottish myself, seeing him described as king of England grates with me a bit. You could change James I to any pre-1600 English king, ie from before the Union of Crowns.