Simple mysqli_query SELECT returns false

Question

i seriously dont understand why the following dumps me bool(false)

// Create connection
$conn = mysqli_connect($servername, $username, $password);

// Check connection
if (!$conn) {
    die("Connection failed: " . mysqli_connect_error());
}
echo "Connected successfully";


$sql = "SELECT id FROM maxims ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1";
var_dump(mysqli_query($conn, $sql)) or die(mysql_error());

Answer 1

 mysqli_connect("myhost","myuser","mypassw","mydb");

 e.g

 $conn = mysqli_connect('localhost','user','password','database1');

http://php.net/manual/en/function.mysqli-connect.php