The Big Book of American Trivia
Page 8
12. What state, purchased from Russia in 1867, was called “Seward’s Icebox”? [Answer]
Little Egypt, Big Muddy, and Other Place Nicknames
Great cities, states, and other locales are sometimes as well known by nicknames as by their proper names.
1. “The Old North State” is actually in the South. What state is it? [Answer]
2. What famous baseball stadium is “the House That Ruth Built”? [Answer]
3. What humid southern state calls itself the “Sportsman’s paradise”? (Hint: crawdads) [Answer]
4. What state’s unofficial nickname is “Little Rhody”? [Answer]
5. “America’s Most Historic Square Mile” is the Independence National Historical Park in what city? [Answer]
6. Idaho’s “River of No Return” is actually named for an edible fish. What? [Answer]
7. If you are in the “Buckeye State,” where are you? [Answer]
8. Which southern state is the “Peach State”? [Answer]
9. If you are visiting a downtown area called the Loop, what metropolis are you in? [Answer]
10. One southern state was known as the “Land of the Four Cs,” referring to its four Native American tribes (Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, and Choctaw). Which state? [Answer]
11. Which highly urbanized eastern state is the “Garden State”? [Answer]
12. What southern state is home to a farming area known as the “Sugar Bowl of America”? [Answer]
13. What southern state earned the nickname “Volunteer State” by sending so many soldiers to fight in the War of 1812? [Answer]
14. What midwestern state’s southern tip is known as Little Egypt? [Answer]
15. What state’s nickname comes from the early lead miners who lived in their mining holes? [Answer]
16. What state calls itself the “Land of Opportunity” (a name that supposedly should apply to the whole U.S.)? [Answer]
17. What state, site of a famous gold rush, is the “Golden State”? [Answer]
18. What famous southern highway was called the “Devil’s Backbone”? [Answer]
19. Which southern state is the “Old Dominion”? [Answer]
20. The five-mile Mackinac Bridge connecting Michigan’s Upper and Lower Peninsulas has what nickname? [Answer]
21. What picturesque southwestern state is the “Land of Enchantment”? [Answer]
22. “Old Ab,” the Absecon Lighthouse, is a landmark at what New Jersey resort town? [Answer]
23. What, appropriately enough, is the nickname of the flat-landed state of Illinois? [Answer]
24. What major river is called the “Big Muddy”? (Hint: not the Mississippi) [Answer]
25. What Pacific Northwest state is the “Evergreen State”? [Answer]
26. Pennsylvania’s “Land between the Mountains” is what popular resort area? [Answer]
27. What New York canal, finished in 1825, was called the “Gateway to the West”? [Answer]
28. Faneuil Hall, built in 1742, has been called the “Cradle of Liberty.” What historic city is it in? [Answer]
29. What name was given to New England’s forty-foot granite likeness of a man’s face, formed by nature? [Answer]
30. Its state flower is red clover, but it’s known as the “Green Mountain State.” What is it? [Answer]
31. America’s “Fourth Coast” is the Great Lakes, connected by the St. Lawrence Seaway. What nation shared this project with the U.S.? [Answer]
32. What Deep South state is the “Heart of Dixie”? [Answer]
33. What southern state is the “Pelican State”? [Answer]
Scraping the Sky: Tall Buildings
As much as we love small towns and the country, we have to go to big cities to see really tall buildings. The world has changed a lot since the day when a ten-story building was called a “skyscraper.”
1. Little Rock, Arkansas’s tallest building was named for what yogurt company? [Answer]
2. You couldn’t “copy” the tallest building in Rochester, New York. What company owns it? [Answer]
3. What northeastern university has twenty-two “nationality classrooms,” each furnished by local ethnic communities, in its forty-two-story Cathedral of Learning? [Answer]
4. The tallest building in Salt Lake City, Utah, belongs (not surprisingly) to what large religious group? [Answer]
5. The forty-eight-story TransAmerica Pyramid is a landmark (and the tallest building) in what Pacific metropolis? [Answer]
6. According to D.C. law, what is the maximum height of a building? [Answer]
7. The Nauru Tower, the Ala Moana Hotel, and the Royal Iolani are tall buildings in what city? [Answer]
8. The tallest building in Richmond, Virginia, is named for the country’s fifth president. Who was he? [Answer]
9. The sixty-story John Hancock Tower is, appropriately, in what New England state? [Answer]
10. One Liberty Place, at sixty-one stories, is the tallest building in what historic metropolis? [Answer]
11. What Manhattan skyscraper was scaled by King Kong (in a movie, that is)? [Answer]
12. Pittsburgh’s tallest building, the sixty-four-story USX Tower, is owned by what metals company? [Answer]
13. What name is given to the 630-foot stainless steel arc on the riverfront at St. Louis? [Answer]
14. The highest point in Washington, D.C., is in what famous church? [Answer]
15. What company’s Pittsburgh headquarters is a thirty-story skyscraper draped in aluminum waffle? [Answer]
16. What 1,454-foot Manhattan building, built in 1931, is at 350 Fifth Avenue? [Answer]
17. The sixty-three-story Peachtree Center is in what southern capital (with a lot of “Peachtree” addresses)? [Answer]
18. Sacramento, California’s tallest building is the thirty-story center of a famous cargo and armored car company. What? [Answer]
19. The tallest buildings in Las Vegas are (as you might assume) what type of building? [Answer]
20. What famous New York statue is 152 feet high and covered with copper? [Answer]
More Funny Names on the Map
1. The town of Jackpot is in what appropriate western state? [Answer]
2. If you are on Bathhouse Row, what national park are you visiting? [Answer]
3. “Rat’s Mouth” is the name of a Florida town, but the name is usually given in its Spanish form. What is it? [Answer]
4. Mexico is in what state? [Answer]
5. If you are in Shark Valley, what popular Florida region are you in? [Answer]
6. What Washington town is named for the hero of a Shakespearian tragedy? [Answer]
7. Possum Kingdom State Park is in what southwestern state? [Answer]
8. What resort town got its name as the California equivalent of Saratoga? [Answer]
9. Manitou Springs, Colorado, is named for whom? [Answer]
10. If you visit the Superstition Mountains, what southwestern state are you in? [Answer]
11. Rolla, Missouri, was named for what southern capital? [Answer]
12. Goblin Valley State Park, with fantastic sandstone formations, is in what western state? [Answer]
13. What California city’s original name was El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula? [Answer]
14. Bottineau, North Dakota, has the Four Chaplains Monument, a memorial to four men whose ship was torpedoed in 1943. What did the four men do to be so honored? [Answer]
15. What northeastern state capital originally had the Dutch name Beverwyck? [Answer]
16. What oddly named New Jersey city was originally called New Barbados? [Answer]
17. What Pennsylvania town was named for a European king? [Answer]
18. Taum Sauk is the highest mountain in what state? (Hint: Mark Twain) [Answer]
19. Passengers aboard the Tweetsie Railroad can experience mock robberies and Native American attacks. Where could you ride the Tweetsie? [Answer]
Replicas: When You Can’t Have the Real T
hing . . .
1. What Las Vegas hotel has replicas of the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building? [Answer]
2. What famous temple of ancient Greece would you find in Nashville, Tennessee? [Answer]
3. The Arkansas capitol in Little Rock is a replica of what famous government building? [Answer]
4. “The Holy Land of America,” with replicas of famous sites in the Holy Land, is in what major city? [Answer]
5. If you are touring the tiny ships Discovery, Godspeed, and Susan Constant, where are you? [Answer]
6. In what state would you see replicas of the Wright brothers’ work shed and living quarters? [Answer]
7. The Biblical Art Center, with a replica of Christ’s tomb, is in what Texas metropolis? [Answer]
8. Brackettville, Texas, has a replica of what ill-fated battle site? [Answer]
9. In Concord, Massachusetts, you can see a replica of Henry David Thoreau’s house on what famous pond? [Answer]
10. You could see a replica of a Gutenberg printing press at what religious group’s New York headquarters? [Answer]
11. Odessa, Texas, has a replica of what famous Shakespearian theatre of England? [Answer]
12. What three tiny ships were sent by the government of Spain on a tour of U.S. ports in 1992? [Answer]
13. In Lima, Ohio, you could see a ten-by-fifteen-foot scale model of what famous presidential home? [Answer]
14. Where in the U.S. are the walls of Jerusalem? [Answer]
Happy Trails to You
1. What two-thousand-mile hiking trail extends from Mount Katahdin in Maine to Mount Oglethorpe in Georgia? [Answer]
2. What name was given to the relocation of southern Native American tribes to lands beyond the Mississippi River? [Answer]
3. Who were the chief travelers on the old Chisholm Trail from the Mexican border to Abilene? [Answer]
4. What historic five-hundred-mile road connected the Mississippi River with Nashville, Tennessee? [Answer]
5. What famous pioneer trail took its name from a southwestern state capital? [Answer]
6. The Oregon Trail ended in what state? [Answer]
7. And began in what state? [Answer]
8. What wagon trail led many immigrants from Pennsylvania to the South? [Answer]
9. The Mormon Trail led to what state? [Answer]
10. The Old Spanish Trail ran from Los Angeles to what historic city in New Mexico? [Answer]
Big Waters: America’s Rivers
1. What big river’s name means “big river”? [Answer]
2. What midwestern metropolis has a river that flows backward? [Answer]
3. What mighty river begins at Point Park in Pittsburgh? [Answer]
4. What famous river is seen in New York’s Whirlpool State Park? [Answer]
5. What eastern metropolis is situated on the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers? [Answer]
6. What name is given to the dikes that keep the Mississippi from flooding the streets of New Orleans? [Answer]
7. Yonkers, New York, has a museum devoted to what historic river? [Answer]
8. Riverfest is the chief festival of what riverside Ohio city? [Answer]
9. What river (appropriately named) flows through Rockford, Illinois? [Answer]
10. What river, famous in a Stephen Foster song, originates in the Okefenokee Swamp? [Answer]
11. What metropolis would you enter if you crossed the Delaware River via the Benjamin Franklin Bridge? [Answer]
12. The “Grand Canyon of the East” is the Genesee River Gorge in what northeastern state? [Answer]
13. John Wesley Powell, who explored the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon in the 1860s, had what notable handicap? [Answer]
14. What federal organization was formed to control the flood-prone Tennessee River? [Answer]
15. In the 1960s the U.S. and Mexico built an artificial riverbed to prevent what river from shifting course? [Answer]
16. What appropriately named river flows through the capital of Kentucky? [Answer]
17. What river becomes very scenic as it passes through Great Falls Park in Virginia? [Answer]
18. What name is given to the imaginary line that separates the Atlantic coastal plain from the Appalachian Mountains? [Answer]
19. The Murderkill River (which isn’t at all dangerous) is in what Atlantic Coast state? [Answer]
20. What Oklahoma metropolis sits astride the Arkansas River? [Answer]
21. Itasca State Park in Minnesota is built around Lake Itasca, the source of what important river? [Answer]
22. Grand Lake, Colorado, is beside a glacial lake that is the source of what major river? [Answer]
23. On what river’s banks would you find Savannah, Georgia? [Answer]
24. What mighty river forms the entire eastern boundary of Missouri and Arkansas? [Answer]
Beasts and Zoos and Such
1. What sea mammal’s oil was burned in colonial lamps? [Answer]
2. What ring-tailed animal’s name is from a Native American word meaning “he who scratches his hands”? [Answer]
3. Shamu and other killer whales can be seen at what Orlando, Florida, attraction? [Answer]
4. What night creatures by the thousands make their home under Austin, Texas’s Congress Avenue bridge? [Answer]
5. What other name is given to the sea cow, which now lives almost solely in the waters off Florida? [Answer]
6. What prickly mammal is also known as a quill pig? [Answer]
7. At what California national park could you see gray whales, harbor seals, and sea lions? [Answer]
8. What famous dog of the movies was found in a foxhole in World War I? [Answer]
9. What wild canine found throughout the South and West is also called a prairie wolf? [Answer]
10. Florida is home to the key whitetail, an animal about the size of a large dog. What sort of animal is it? [Answer]
11. What four-legged animals do we associate with Kentucky? [Answer]
12. What famous pair of explorers sent back a live prairie dog to Thomas Jefferson? [Answer]
13. If you wanted to visit a large (and free) zoo in Chicago, where would you go? [Answer]
14. What type of sea creatures are often sighted off the coast of San Diego, California? [Answer]
15. If you spotted a javelina in the Southwest, what kind of animal would you have seen? [Answer]
16. Fort Bragg, California, has a March festival for watching what sort of sea creatures? [Answer]
17. What name is given to the Florida park where visitors drive among free-roaming lions, ostriches, and other African animals? [Answer]
18. Ruidoso, New Mexico, has a museum devoted to what useful and much loved animal? [Answer]
19. If you are viewing the animals at the Audubon Park Zoo, what southern metropolis are you in? [Answer]
20. What sort of creatures could you see in the Prehistoric Zoo in Ossineke, Michigan? [Answer]
21. The Detroit Zoo is in what city? [Answer]
22. The wild ponies of Chincoteague are found on the island of what state? [Answer]
23. What type of wild animal congregates in herds at the Hardware Ranch in Logan, Utah? (Hint: antlers) [Answer]
24. Waynesboro, Georgia, is known as the “________ Capital of the World.” What is it the capital of? [Answer]
Every Bloomin’ Thing
1. The Tournament of Roses is held in what southern California city? [Answer]
2. What lovely blooming trees were introduced to D.C. by First Lady Helen Taft after she visited Japan? [Answer]
3. On what spring holiday do many people wear carnations? [Answer]
4. What rose variety, a rich purplish red, has a patriotic name? [Answer]
5. What two southern states’ flower is the very southern magnolia blossom? [Answer]
6. What boutonniere flower is second in commercial value in the U.S.? [Answer]
7. The Cherokee rose is the state flower of which large southern state? [Answer]
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br /> 8. Norfolk, Virginia, has an international festival honoring what lovely spring-blooming shrub? [Answer]
9. What southwestern state has the cactus wren and the cactus blossom as state emblems? [Answer]
10. The Tyler, Texas, area is the source of more than half of the U.S. supply of what popular flower? [Answer]
11. What New England state’s flower isn’t really a flower at all, but a pinecone? [Answer]
12. San Francisco’s annual Cherry Blossom Festival highlights what ethnic community? [Answer]
13. What state’s official flower is, appropriately, the orange blossom? [Answer]
14. What flower is honored at a spring festival in Holland, Michigan? [Answer]
15. What southern state changed its state flower from golden- rod to camellia because so many allergy sufferers complained? [Answer]
16. The yellow rose is a symbol for what Texas city, whose name means “yellow”? [Answer]
17. What Pacific state has a grape as its state flower? [Answer]
18. What attractive summer flower of many colors is the center of an annual festival in Santa Cruz, California? [Answer]
19. What many-colored autumn flower is the focus of a festival in Bristol, Connecticut? [Answer]
20. What lovely field flower is the state flower of Texas? (Hint: margarine) [Answer]
21. The town of Lompoc produces 75 percent of the world’s flower seed. What state is it in? [Answer]
22. San Francisco, California, has the world’s largest nursery for what elegant flower? (Hint: purple) [Answer]
23. What welcome spring flower is the center of a festival in Meriden, Connecticut? [Answer]
24. What state’s flower is, appropriately, the mayflower? [Answer]
25. Lombard, Illinois, has the lovely Lilacia Park. What shrubs bloom there? [Answer]
26. What major East Coast city has a Cherry Blossom Festival every April? [Answer]
27. Sacramento, California, is known to flower-lovers as the “________ Capital of the World.” What flower? [Answer]