Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
All 10 questions with answers and explanations. Play this daily
Q 01Which pop star was handed a key to the city of Chicago by Mayor Eugene Sawyer in April 1988?
Michael Jackson
Jackson collected Chicago's key in 1988 and, fifteen years later, keys to his Indiana hometown of Gary from Mayor Scott King.
Q 02Which rapper did Memphis and Shelby County officials honour with a key for his music and generous spirit?
Drake
Drake. His father, drummer Dennis Graham, is from Memphis, and Drake spent childhood summers there.
Q 03Which pilot got the key to New York City after ditching an airliner in the Hudson?
Chesley Sullenberger
Chesley Sullenberger. Mayor Michael Bloomberg called him 'Captain Cool' and handed keys to all five crew members of US Airways Flight 1549.
Q 04Which Olympic swimmer's key to the city of Baltimore, given after London 2012, was revoked in 2014?
Michael Phelps
Baltimore handed keys to eight local Olympians in September 2012, then took Phelps's back in 2014 after his second drunk-driving arrest.
Q 05The Beatles were handed a key to which American city in August 1965 after a fan petitioned its mayor?
San Diego
Fan Susan Clark took the idea to Mayor Frank Curran, and four teenage girls made the presentation on 28 August 1965.
Q 06Chicago's mayor flew abroad in May 2026 to present a key to the city to which head of state?
Pope Leo XIV
Pope Leo XIV. The Chicago-born pope met Mayor Brandon Johnson at the Vatican, where the mayor also invited him home to say Mass in Grant Park.
Q 07Which South African leader rode in a New York ticker-tape parade in June 1990?
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela. Barely four months out of prison, he rode through lower Manhattan beside Mayor David Dinkins, yet New York's key to the city only came in 2005.
Q 08In 1984 Seattle's mayor said the city does not award keys, and instead gave Bob Hope what?
A Space Needle quiche
Seattle has a history of not following through: in 1968 officials planned to give Jimi Hendrix the keys to his hometown, then cancelled the event.
Q 09To which group did Bernadette Devlin pass on her key to New York City in solidarity?
The Black Panthers
The Black Panthers. Devlin was dismayed that Irish Americans would not see Black Americans' struggle as a parallel to Northern Ireland's, so she sent the key up to Harlem.
Q 10Which civil rights leader received a key to the city of Dayton, Ohio in 1964?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. He received it the night he spoke at the University of Dayton Fieldhouse, the year he won the Nobel Peace Prize.