Test your understanding of the concept of common knowledge with this quiz.

Read each of the following items and determine whether the information is common knowledge or whether it would need to be cited. If it is common knowledge, click on "Common Knowledge." If the information needs to be cited, click on "Should Be Cited."

EXAMPLE

The passenger pigeon, once a common American bird, is now extinct.

__X__ Common Knowledge

_____ Should Be Cited

1		Women and minorities make up 52 percent of the workers in American businesses.
			A)	Common Knowledge
			B)	Should Be Cited
2		Millions of soldiers died in the trenches of the western front during World War I.
			A)	Common Knowledge
			B)	Should Be Cited
3		Six months after hitting the jackpot, state lottery winners typically find their level of happiness no different than it was before their windfall.
			A)	Common Knowledge
			B)	Should Be Cited
4		The whaling industry in nineteenth-century America collapsed when flexible steel hoops replaced whalebone in women's corsets.
			A)	Common Knowledge
			B)	Should Be Cited
5		Mohandas K. Gandhi was assassinated in 1948.
			A)	Common Knowledge
			B)	Should Be Cited
6		Male students in classes at Harvard Medical School in the fall of 1850 objected to the presence of Harriet Hunt, the first female student admitted there.
			A)	Common Knowledge
			B)	Should Be Cited
7		Smoking kills over 418,000 people every year in the United States.
			A)	Common Knowledge
			B)	Should Be Cited
8		Under the Taliban government, playing popular music was illegal in Afghanistan.
			A)	Common Knowledge
			B)	Should Be Cited
9		The cheetah is the fastest-moving land animal.
			A)	Common Knowledge
			B)	Should Be Cited
10		A twenty-year Swiss study of organic farming found that organic farms yielded more produce per unit of energy consumed than farms that did not use organic farming methods.
			A)	Common Knowledge
			B)	Should Be Cited