Can You Pass Thomas Edison’s Employee Quiz?

Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin changed the course of history, speeding up the process of cotton production. The machine helped enable the mass production of textiles during the Industrial Revolution.

“Il Trovatore,” or “The Troubadour,” is a four-act opera by Italian composer Guiseppe Verdi. Based on a Spanish play by Antonio García Gutiérrez, “Il Trovatore” features vengeance, murder, and witchcraft — all the makings of a dramatic opera. But because the opera is so difficult to sing, it used to be said that “all ‘Trovatore’ needs is the four best singers in the world to perform it.”

Born in 1644, Italian luthier Antonia Stradivari opened a violin shop in Cremona, Italy, where some of the world’s most famous — and expensive — instruments were made. Stradivari cemented Cremona as the “city of violins,” and today, a Stradivarius violin can sell at auction for upward of $20 million.

Today, Kenosha is a mid-sized Wisconsin city with a population of around 100,000. But back in the early 1900s, the city was a burgeoning hub of automobile manufacturing. Hudson, Nash, Rambler, and AMC all had factories in Kenosha, which collectively produced millions of cars.

In 1912, the 47th and 48th states were admitted to the Union, when New Mexico and Arizona officially gained statehood. It would take another 47 years before the final two states were added when Alaska and Hawaii gained statehood in 1959.

Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca was Rome’s greatest enemy during the days of the Roman Republic. Throughout the Second Punic War from 218 to 201 BCE, Hannibal beguiled Roman generals and senators alike and even crossed the treacherous Alps before stabbing into Rome’s heartland. After the war, he spent his remaining years in exile around the Mediterranean, until his death by self-poisoning around 183 BCE.

Ipecac is a drug that was once commonly used to help patients throw up. Potassium cyanide, strychnine, and arsenic, meanwhile, can kill you if ingested or inhaled. The most deadly of the trio is cyanide, a chemical asphyxiant that blocks the cells in the human body from processing oxygen. If inhaled, cyanide can kill its victims in a matter of seconds.

In the 1700s, German physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit created his namesake temperature scale, which is based on 32 degrees as the freezing point and 212 degrees as the boiling point of water. A few years later, Anders Celsius invented a simpler scale, which was then adopted by the metric system.

In 1788, 29 fat-tailed sheep arrived on Australia’s shores — the first to ever roam the land Down Under. Turns out, Australia was well suited for them, as wide-open spaces provided plenty of room, and wool’s natural heating and cooling properties held up against the country’s harsh climate. Today, Australia produces around 760 million pounds of wool every year — or one-quarter of the world's supply.

Originally resting atop Auguste Rodin’s sculpture The Gates of Hell, this pensive sculpture likely represents the poet Dante Alighieri as he looks down on the souls in hell as depicted in his epic poem “The Inferno.” The Thinker gained popularity when it was displayed separately in 1888, and years later, Rodin created a larger version of the statue, which now sits in the garden of the Musée Rodin in Paris.

Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables” was inspired by its author’s experience during the June Rebellion, which was ignited in Paris in 1832. Published 30 years after this failed uprising, the novel is now revered and has been adapted into an award-winning musical and several films, with actors such as Liam Neeson (in 1998) and Hugh Jackman (in 2012) portraying the novel’s hero, Jean Valjean.

Although Spain, Belgium, and Germany probably come to mind first when picturing France’s geographic neighbors, the small country of Luxembourg and the microstates of Andorra and Monaco also share borders with the European nation. Although extremely close in a global context, the westernmost border of Austria is around 600 miles from France.

Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés began as a soldier on an expedition led by Diego Velázquez in 1511. Eight years later, he was set to lead his own journey until Veláquez canceled it. Cortés ignored the order, however, and headed to Mexico where he famously overthrew the Aztec emperor, Montezuma II.

The distance between Earth and the sun varies by a million miles or so depending on their orbits, but generally speaking, Earth is roughly 93 million miles away from the sun. This distance is known as an astronomical unit (AU) and is used to measure other objects in the solar system. While Earth is only 1 AU from the sun, far-flung planets like Neptune are a staggering 30 AU from our host star.

Francis Scott Key wrote the lyrics to "The Star-Spangled Banner” and John Stafford Smith composed the original music. The melody was initially called "To Anacreon in Heaven" and was a London drinking tune. Key wrote a poem during the War of 1812 and its words were eventually set to the same tune.

Marie Curie and her husband, Pierre, jointly discovered and named the element radium in 1898. Five years later, the couple won the Nobel Prize in Physics, and eight years after that, Marie was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. The Curies are also credited with the discovery of the element polonium, and in the 1940s, element number 96 was named "curium" in their honor.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s life is bookended by islands. Born on the island of Corsica in 1769, Bonaparte became France’s emperor in 1804 and attempted to conquer all of Europe. After being banished to the island of Elba 10 years later, Napoleon returned to the European continent only to be defeated at Waterloo in 1815. Once again he was banished to an island — Saint Helena in the south Atlantic — but this time he never returned.

Mount Everest is the world’s highest mountain, reaching an elevation of 29,035 feet at its peak. Part of the Great Himalayas mountain range, it sits on the border of Nepal and Tibet, and was first designated Earth’s highest point in 1852 by the governmental Survey of India. In 1953, mountaineers Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made history by reaching Everest’s summit.

At just under 2,000 square miles, Delaware is the second smallest state in the U.S. Its total area is also roughly one half the size of the third smallest state, Connecticut. Delaware became the nation’s official first state when it ratified the U.S. Constitution in December 1787.

The moon’s gravitational pull is the primary tidal force, with the sun and Earth also dictating the ocean’s movement. During high tide, the moon’s gravity is pulling the ocean towards it, while during low tide, the Earth is pulling towards the moon.

The Volga is the longest river in Europe, flowing more than 2,000 miles through the forests and steppes of western Russia. If this seems like an inconsequential piece of trivia, you’re not alone. After Edison’s 146-question potential employee test leaked to the press, “The New York Times” called it “a test of man’s memory, rather than of his knowledge, reasoning power, or intelligence.”