History questions are where a confident guess gets you in trouble, because the wrong answers are often deliberately close. The upside is that history is easy to verify in seconds if you know what to check. This page covers the kinds of history questions Bing favours and how to nail the dates.

Common history themes

Bing leans on famous events, ancient sites, anniversaries, inventions, rulers, and cultural traditions, frequently tied to the day's image or a notable date. When the homepage marks an anniversary, expect a question about the year, the people, or the place involved.

Dates are a trap worth slowing for

If the options are 1963, 1964 and 1965, your memory is not your friend. Close years are the single most common way people lose a history question. Take the extra few seconds to search the event and confirm the exact year from a solid source rather than trusting a gut feeling.

Mind the qualifier

Words like "first," "oldest," "originally," and "largest" decide the answer. "Which empire originally built this" is not "which country controls it now." Read the whole sentence, find the category being asked, and answer that specific thing.

How to verify fast

Search the subject plus the precise detail, and favour primary-ish sources: a museum page, a UNESCO listing, an encyclopedia entry. For ancient sites the caption often gives the name, after which one search settles the date or the civilisation behind it.