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Three Real and One Fake - U.S. History

For each category, we give you three things that belong – and one that doesn't. Can you guess the imposter?
Quiz by Quizmaster
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Last updated: December 28, 2020
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First submittedDecember 28, 2020
Times taken22,328
Average score60.0%
Rating4.32
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1. Inventions of Thomas Edison
Cotton gin
Lightbulb (practical)
Movie camera
Phonograph
The cotton gin was invented by Eli Whitney
2. Prohibition-era gangsters
Al Capone
Baby Face Nelson
John Dillinger
Lead Belly
Lead Belly was a blues singer
3. Automobile makers that existed in 1950
Ford
Packard
Studebaker
Union Carbide
Union Carbide is a former chemical company, most remembered for the Bhopal disaster of 1984
4. 1950s sitcoms
Duck Soup
Father Knows Best
The Honeymooners
Leave It to Beaver
"Duck Soup" was a 1933 movie starring the Marx Brothers
5. Vice Presidents
Aaron Burr
Dan Quayle
Richard Nixon
William Gladstone
William Gladstone was a Prime Minister of the U.K.
6. Oscar-winning directors
Edsel Ford
John Ford
Francis Ford Coppola
Robert Redford
Edsel Ford was the son of Henry Ford, namesake of a poorly-received automobile
7. Union generals of the Civil War
Ambrose Burnside
Obadiah Stane
Ulysses S. Grant
William Tecumseh Sherman
Obadiah Stane is a villain that appeared in "Iron Man"
8. Female authors
Harper Lee
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Louisa May Alcott
Mata Hari
Mata Hari was an exotic dancer and probable German spy
9. Elvis songs
All Shook Up
Heartbreak Hotel
Suspicious Minds
Under Pressure
"Under Pressure" is by Queen & David Bowie
10. Confederate states
Arkansas
Kentucky
North Carolina
Texas
11. Old West frontier towns
Deadwood
Dodge City
Harper's Ferry
Tombstone
Harper's Ferry is in West Virginia
12. "Beat Generation" authors
Allen Ginsberg
Georgia O'Keeffe
Jack Kerouac
William S. Burroughs
Georgia O'Keeffe was an early 20th-century painter
13. Pacific theater battles of WWII
Guadalcanal
Midway
Okinawa
San Juan Hill
The Battle of San Juan Hill was fought in Cuba in 1898
14. 1960s fashion
Bell-bottoms
Bloomers
Miniskirts
Tie-dye
Bloomers were most popular in the 1800s
15. Signers of the Declaration of Independence
Benjamin Franklin
Christopher Marlowe
John Hancock
Samuel Adams
Christopher Marlowe was an English playwright of the 1500s
+3
Level 72
Dec 29, 2020
Brit here, in 5 of them I managed to narrow down to an ‘either or’ and in every case I picked the wrong one. I had no idea on sitcoms, I had never heard of any of them.
+2
Level 70
Dec 29, 2020
If you've ever seen the Flintonstones, it's a pretty shameless rip-off (albeit a cartoon rip-off) of The Honeymooners. It's just set in the stone-age. Apparently, it's not so easy to recreate the famous bird whistle.
+1
Level 70
Dec 29, 2020
I feel like we can confer honorary Confederate status to Kentucky like luminaries who receive bogus doctorates from universities for life achievements. You've earned it Kentucky.
+22
Level 85
Dec 29, 2020
I don't think so. The course of history is different because the Border States didn't secede. In the words of Lincoln: "I *hope* to have God on my side, but I *must* have Kentucky."
+25
Level ∞
Dec 29, 2020
That's a little disrespectful to the Kentuckians who gave their lives fighting for the Union.

According to Wikipedia, an estimated 125,000 Kentuckians served as Union soldiers with 35,000 serving in the Confederate armies.

+3
Level 60
Jan 15, 2021
One of the counties of Tennessee seceded from Tennessee and joined the Union!
+10
Level 75
Jan 15, 2021
It's not so cut-and-dried as some would make it for those in the border states. I get so tired of people condemning the South because they had slaves while conveniently forgetting all the northern states also had slavery except Massachusetts. In Brooklyn nearly a third of the residents were African-American slaves in the 1820 census, and even after New York finalized emancipation in 1827 some continued to hold their slaves into the 1840s, less than twenty years before the Civil War. There were also groups of Copperheads in northern states who were against fighting the south. Missouri was a slave state but two of my direct ancestors from here fought for the Union Army. There were many skirmishes in the border states and companies from both armies would march through the countryside pillaging and plundering all they could get, leaving the people to starve. It didn't much matter to those people whether it was the Union or Confederate troops which had taken all their food and livestock.
+1
Level 52
Feb 7, 2021
Slight correction - Massachusetts did originally have slavery as well. However, it and a few other northern states (such as Pennsylvania with its large Quaker population) were pretty quick to ban it.
+1
Level 90
Dec 29, 2020
At the beginning of the Civil War, states chose sides, and Kentucky chose to be neutral - which, since they didn't secede, means that they remained in the Union. ...however... There were confederate sympathizers in Kentucky that formed a Confederate Kentucky and on December 10, 1861, the Confederacy acknowledged the Confederate "Shadow Government" and admitted Kentucky to the Confederacy.

It was Kentucky versus Kentucky, because the Confederate government never replaced the official, elected government, and I don't think Kentucky ever official seceded from the Union.

+1
Level 84
Dec 29, 2020
Similar in some ways to Maryland, which never seceded, despite being a slave state.
+1
Level 76
Dec 29, 2020
Yeah, exactly why I don't think this is the best question. Also, the flag of the CSA had 13 stars with one of them representing Kentucky. I was able to get the right answer through clear elimination of the other choices but I suggest changing it to a more obvious answer like Delaware or Maryland for those who aren't history nerds.
+8
Level ∞
Dec 31, 2020
The question is not ambiguous in any way. Kentucky never seceded. Furthermore, about 75% of Kentuckians who fought in the war fought for the Union, so it's not like they were "unofficial" Confederates either.
+3
Level 45
Dec 29, 2020
Quizmaster, do you have any quizzes that haven't been featured?
+14
Level ∞
Dec 29, 2020
It's my site so I get to indulge myself and feature all my own quizzes. That said, I have defeatured many throughout the years, in which case they are deleted or moved to other accounts.
+2
Level 45
Dec 29, 2020
Makes sense!
+1
Level 57
Jan 15, 2021
You also dont need to confirm any of your own sources, like if you might have to check others that you feature
+1
Level 57
Jan 15, 2021
Are basketballPunk and most of the other ___punk accounts yours? I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure johnnyaitch is your brother's username
+1
Level 37
Dec 29, 2020
Ha I guessed 13 of them and still got 10/15!!
+2
Level 70
Dec 29, 2020
Thank you for spelling Lead Belly correctly!
+2
Level 74
Dec 29, 2020
I thought the exact same thing!
+1
Level 84
Dec 30, 2020
I like the concept of this and look forward to the next one, maybe a bit harder version.
+1
Level 75
Jan 6, 2021
easier*
+1
Level 84
Dec 31, 2020
I would have enjoyed seeing some "spoilers" to the female authors question. George Eliot and Evelyn Waugh come to mind as examples.
+1
Level ∞
Dec 31, 2020
Good ideas for the world history version (coming soon).
+1
Level 78
Jan 15, 2021
Nice quiz QM, I like this format.
+2
Level 71
Jan 15, 2021
I enjoyed the inclusion of Obadiah Stane... even though I knew he was from "Iron Man," his name legitimately sounds like it could be the name of a Civil War general and for a while I genuinely thought I was misremembering "Iron Man." Luckily, I ended up getting it right!

And the sitcom one for me was a complete guess. I just chose the one that sounded least 50s and somehow got it right.

+1
Level 67
Jan 15, 2021
The Honeymooners and Leave It to Beaver are very famous (although I imagine they are fading with time). Duck Soup is the most famous Marx Brothers film (again, very famous, but fading with time). That movie has the original "mirror gag" in which a character thinks he is looking in the mirror, but it's really someone dressed up as him, mimicking his movements. Animation uses it a lot, but to see two flesh-and-blood men pull it off is pretty impressive.
+1
Level 75
Jan 15, 2021
I remember when Lucille Ball reenacted it with Harpo Marx - I think it was an I Love Lucy episode. That was great, too.
+1
Level 72
Dec 18, 2022
I was sitting next to my father when we saw "Duck Soup" in the theater 55 years ago. He laughed so hard at that scene that he couldn't breathe for a few seconds. A happy memory.
+1
Level 69
Jan 15, 2021
12/15 using process of elimination, better then I expected!
+1
Level 57
Jan 15, 2021
Idk if it really fits “History,” a lot of the questions are more pop culture related.
+1
Level 77
Dec 18, 2022
So does Mozart count as part of history?
+1
Level 58
Apr 8, 2021
Umm excuse me, Obadiah Stane... well then! lmao
+1
Level 82
Dec 18, 2022
pretty easy
+1
Level 66
Dec 21, 2022
smug
+1
Level 92
Dec 19, 2022
I happen to think that the statistics for this quiz are pretty depressing. Perhaps there are a lot of non-U.S. folks taking the quiz, but for a U.S. resident to get a low score is sad. And the fact that the Elvis question has the most correct answers is even sadder. And I hope that the 28% of quiz takers that think Christopher Marlowe signed the D of C are not Americans or English.
+1
Level 66
Dec 21, 2022
Wait why do you hope English people got it right? I've never heard of half of this!
+1
Level 92
Dec 21, 2022
Because Christopher Marlowe was a pre-eminent English playwright and poet who was a contemporary of Shakespeare. He greatly influenced the latter and might have become even more famous if not for his unfortunate premature demise.
+1
Level 66
Dec 21, 2022
Wait I knew Duck Soup was the Marx Brothers film but I didn't realise the others were all TV shows.

Can a film not be a sitcom?

+1
Level 77
Dec 22, 2022
Not really. Situation comedy means that a recurring cast of characters encounter new comedic situations. The humour lands particularly well because you get to know the characters and how they react. Chaplin’s Tramp was maybe in a sitcom series of movies, but it usually refers to tv
+1
Level 62
Dec 25, 2022
I mean... none of those are Edison inventions. The three are Edison patents, but only because he bought the patents from the inventors.