Seven Wonders
Match each ancient wonder to the place it stood, in a free timed browser game. The list every schoolchild learns.
HistoryWho Invented It
Some inventions have one clean answer and some have a committee. Below: the inventions with a textbook name attached, and the ones where the textbook is a simplification.
Choose your difficulty
Pick a level to start playing. You can switch at any time.
How to play
Read the invention, then tap the inventor.
Tip: your progress and best score are saved in this browser only.
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HistoryWhat you are actually practicing
Inventors are the easiest history facts to remember, because each one is attached to a single object: the telephone belongs to Bell, the printing press to Gutenberg, the dynamite to Nobel.
The interesting cases are the ones the textbook simplifies. Edison did not invent the light bulb, and the Wright brothers did not invent the first powered flight — they made it work reliably, and that is a different kind of claim.
How the game works
You are shown an invention and four names. Pick the inventor. A wrong pick reveals the answer immediately.
Easy uses the household names. Medium widens the set. Hard uses the full list, including the ones where the straightforward answer is wrong.
The names worth knowing
Bell the telephone, Gutenberg the printing press, Wright brothers the aeroplane, Franklin the lightning rod.
Watt the practical steam engine, Nobel dynamite, Fleming penicillin, Curie radioactivity.
Edison the phonograph and the practical light bulb, Marconi the radio, Faraday the electric motor and generator.
Strategies that actually raise your score
Match the object to the field, not the name. The telephone is communication, so think of the communications family; the dynamite is chemistry and explosives, so think Nobel.
Use the national cue. Ask where the person was from. Italian names point to Galvani and Marconi, German names to Gutenberg and Siemens, Swedish names to Nobel.
Know the two famous over-claims. Edison did not invent the light bulb, and the Wrights did not invent flight. If an option offers "Edison" for a bulb question, it is a distractor designed for that trap.
Remember the exceptions to the rule. Gutenberg's press moved type but not paper, and Franklin's lightning rod was cheap, simple and dangerous — the three things that make an invention stick.