Trivia Mama

 

American Trivia Questions & Answers

Here you can find trivia questions and answers on American topics.

American Trivia
American Trivia
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World Trivia
World Trivia
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American Trivia

What two states produce the greatest number of Christmas trees?
A: Oregon and Michigan.

What creature serves as the mascot of the University of California at Santa Cruz?
A: The banana slug.

What was the name of Yale University's original bulldog mascot--and all namesakes that have followed?
A: Handsome Dan.

What did philanthropist Andrew Carnegie contribute to Princeton University in 1906?
A: A 3-1/2 mile-long lake to "take the young men's minds off football," a game he detested.

With what word did most people answer the telephone when it was first introduced at the end of the nineteenth century?
A: "Ahoy." Thomas Edison later suggest4ed replacing it with a simple "Hello."

What is May Day known as in Hawaii?
A: Lei Day. Ever since 1928, Hawaiians have dedicated the day to the garland of flowers that is their symbol of friendship--celebrating with Polynesian songs and pageantry.

The name of what Florida city means "rodent mouth" in Spanish?
A: Boca Raton. The name is believed to come from the shape of the city's Atlantic ocean shoreline.

Before it got its present name in 1847, what American city was known as Yerba Buena--"good herb" in Spanish--for an aromatic herb that grew in the area?
A: San Francisco.

What monument is the tallest in the United States-- at 630 feet?
A: The Gateway Arch, in St. Louis, Missouri.

Where ws the first library in North America established in 1638?
A: At Harvard College. The initial collection consisted of 329 religious and philosophical texts.

What percentage of the United States is officially designated wilderness?
A: 3.8 percent.

How long did America's first space flight, made by astronaut Alan Shepard Jr., last?
A: Shepard's suborbital flight in a 6-by-9-foot capsule lasted 15 minutes and 22 seconds.

Who wrote "Fish and visitors smell in three days"?
A: Benjamin Franklin, in his wisdom-packed "Poor Richard's Almanac."

What was the name of the huge Newfoundland dog that accompanied explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on their famous expedition to the Pacific northwest in the early nineteenth century?
A: Scammon.

What did Thomas Jefferson smuggle out of Italy in 1784 to help boost America's post-Revolution economy?
A: Jefferson snuck out two sacks of an improved strain of rice--despite a ban on its export from Italy--to help revitalize the Georgia and Carolina rice crops destroyed by the British during the Revolution.

How many states were created--in part or in their entirety--from the Louisiana Territory, purchased from France in 1803?
A: Thirteen: the entire states of Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska; and pars of Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota.

How many cherry tees had to be cut down to prepare the site for the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., in 1938?
A: 171.

Who gained fame as Richard Saunders during America's colonial days?
A: Benjamin Franklin, Richard Saunders was the pen name he used in his "Poor Richard's Almanack" between 1732 and 1757.

Who was the last man on the moon.
A: Astronaut Eugene Cernan, commander of Apollo 17--in December 1972.

How many chests of tea were dumped overboard at the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773?
A: 342.