Test Your Knowledge: 25 Trivia Questions Spanning History and General Facts

Every date on the calendar, if examined closely enough, reveals itself as a palimpsest — layer upon layer of human endeavor, folly, and genius written over the same patch of time. Mental Floss has chosen August 25 as its occasion to remind readers of this, launching a daily trivia series that uses a single date as a doorway into the broader archive of civilization. The exercise is modest in form but quietly ambitious in purpose: to restore, through play, our sense of connection to the accumulated past.