Which came first?
Two events. Tap the one that happened earlier. The pairs start centuries apart and finish within a few decades of each other. You see both dates after every answer.
Tap the earlier event.
Knowing the order is the start. Proving it is the game.
This page is from the team behind PastRush: History Detective for iPhone and iPad. This quick game is about dates. According to its App Store listing, PastRush gives you the evidence and asks what it shows:
- 12 investigations built from labelled exhibits, six of them free: the Rosetta Stone, Pompeii, the Grand Canyon's rock layers, Ötzi the Iceman, continental drift and the Norse in Vinland
- Five kinds of puzzle: chronology, comparing sources, cause and consequence, time and place, and what the evidence can and cannot prove
- A Which Came First? mode that leaves out dates historians still debate
- Where in the World?: drop a pin on a real map, and score by how close you are
- 245 globe stories to collect as cards, earned by playing and never sold
Scores on this page are not saved and do not transfer to the app.
How to get better at this
Hang events on a few fixed pegs. You only need a dozen dates you are sure of: 1066, 1215, 1492, 1776, 1789, 1914, 1945, 1969. Everything else is "before" or "after" one of them.
Think in technology. If one event needs printing, steam, electricity or flight and the other does not, you usually have your answer without knowing either date.
Watch for the long nineteenth century. The telephone, the Eiffel Tower, the Suez Canal and the first modern Olympics all sit within thirty years of each other. That is where the last three rounds like to live.
Read the miss list. Getting one wrong and then seeing the right order straight away is how most people end up remembering it.
About the dates
Every event here has a single, well-documented year. Events whose dating is still argued over are left out, so each pair has one correct answer. Years before year 1 are shown as BC.
Questions
How does the game choose the pairs?
Each game picks ten random pairs from forty events. The first three pairs are at least 300 years apart, the next four are between 40 and 300 years apart, and the last three are less than 40 years apart.
Is this suitable for children?
Yes. There is nothing to sign up for and nothing is stored. Most of the events are covered in school history from around age nine upwards.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. It is built for one-handed tapping and runs in any modern browser.
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- Roman Numeral Converter: Numbers, Years and Dates to Roman NumeralsConvert any number from 1 to 3,999 to Roman numerals and back, with the working shown. Also converts dates for engravings and tattoos. Free, instant, no sign-up.
- Which came first? Daily history pairsTwo events, one question: which happened first? Ten new pairs every day, the same for everyone, with the years shown after each pick.