49 Fun Facts About Mormonism

Joseph Smith founded the movement during which period of American religious revival?

Second Great Awakening. Rival preachers competing for converts around his home in western New York left the teenage Smith troubled over which denomination was right.

In which US state was Joseph Smith born in 1805?

Vermont. A run of failed harvests drove his family west to Palmyra, New York, in 1816; Brigham Young was born in Vermont too.

In his First Vision at age 14, Joseph Smith said God told him to do what?

Join none of the churches. He said he had gone into the woods to pray over which sect was right and was told that all of them had strayed from the truth.

Witnesses said Joseph Smith dictated the Book of Mormon while looking at a seer stone placed in what?

A hat. He pressed his face into it to shut out the light and spoke the words aloud to a scribe, rather than reading directly from the plates.

Latter-day Saints call the New York hill where Smith said he dug up the golden plates by what name?

Cumorah. Smith said he was turned away on his first visit and had to come back to the hill on the same September day each year for four years before he could take the plates.

What did Joseph Smith say became of the golden plates after he finished translating them?

He returned them to the angel. So nobody can examine them today, though witnesses who said they had handled them described thin metal leaves bound by three rings.

The Book of Mormon says it was written in which otherwise unknown script?

Reformed Egyptian. A follower took a copied sample of the characters to the Columbia scholar Charles Anthon, who later denied that he had ever vouched for them.

The Book of Mormon's story opens around 600 BC with which prophet leading his family out of Jerusalem?

Lehi. Told in a dream to flee before the city is destroyed, he takes his family into the wilderness and on to the Americas by ship; his son Nephi narrates the journey.

Which prosperous neighbour helped pay for Joseph Smith's 1827 move to Pennsylvania?

Martin Harris. He later borrowed the first 116 pages of the manuscript to win over his doubting wife and lost them, and that part of the book was never translated again.

Who were the Three Witnesses to the golden plates?

Cowdery, Harris and Whitmer. All three later broke with Smith and left his church, yet each was still affirming his testimony of the plates late in life.

How was the first printing of the Book of Mormon paid for in 1830?

A follower mortgaged his farm. Copies sold slowly around Palmyra at first, and he ended up selling off farmland to clear the $3,000 debt.

Which American author mocked the Book of Mormon as 'chloroform in print'?

Mark Twain. He carried a copy away from Salt Lake City on his stagecoach journey west and reviewed it in Roughing It as 'such an insipid mess of inspiration'.

In which town did the Latter-day Saints dedicate their first temple in 1836?

Kirtland. Members built the Ohio temple with their own labour, and children collected broken china and crockery to be ground into the stucco on its walls.

What did a mob do to Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon on 24 March 1832?

Tarred and feathered them. The mob pulled both men from their beds at night and beat them; Rigdon, dragged by his heels over frozen ground, was raving when Smith found him the next morning.

Governor Lilburn Boggs's 1838 'extermination order' was meant to drive the Mormons out of which state?

Missouri. The order said Mormons 'must be exterminated or driven from the State', and it stayed on the books until another governor formally rescinded it in 1976.

By 1844 the Mormon river city of Nauvoo had grown to rival which other city in size?

Chicago. Smith's followers had bought swampy Mississippi bottomland around a village called Commerce only five years earlier; two years later most of them were gone.

As head of the Nauvoo Legion, Joseph Smith took the rank of lieutenant general, last held in the US Army by whom?

George Washington. Illinois let the city raise its own militia, and once its first mayor was expelled from the church Smith was mayor and commanding general at once.

Which newspaper's press did Joseph Smith and his city council order destroyed in June 1844?

Nauvoo Expositor. Its only issue, put out by former followers, accused Smith of secretly practising polygamy, and wrecking the press brought the charges that put him in jail.

In which Illinois town's jail was Joseph Smith killed by a mob in 1844?

Carthage. He was awaiting trial on a treason charge when an armed mob stormed the jail; shot as he reached an upstairs window, he fell to the ground outside.

What office was Joseph Smith campaigning for at the time of his death?

The US presidency. He ran after five likely candidates would not promise to protect his followers, on a platform that included freeing enslaved people with money from federal land sales.

Which of Joseph Smith's brothers was killed with him in 1844?

Hyrum. As assistant president he was the man many expected to lead the church next, so the same attack left it with no agreed successor.

After Joseph Smith's death in 1844, Brigham Young claimed leadership of the church as head of which body?

Quorum of the Twelve. Smith had named no clear successor, and Young persuaded most of the Saints in Nauvoo that the apostles should lead; three years later he was church president.

When Brigham Young's wagons reached the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, which country claimed the land?

Mexico. The Saints had gone looking for a home beyond the borders of the United States, but within months the treaty ending the Mexican-American War handed the region to the US.

On first seeing the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, Brigham Young is said to have declared what?

This is the right place. Laid low by mountain fever, the leader of the trek reached the valley on 24 July, days behind his own advance party; the date is still a state holiday, Pioneer Day.

Which nickname likens Brigham Young to a biblical leader?

American Moses. It fits a man who led his people across a wilderness to a promised land of their own; his other nickname was the Lion of the Lord.

Brigham Young was the first governor of which territory?

Utah. Congress turned down the settlers' own proposed state and made a territory instead, and full statehood then waited until 1896, after the church had given up polygamy.

The 1857 killing of the Baker–Fancher wagon train by Mormon militia is known by what name?

Mountain Meadows Massacre. The emigrants gave up their guns to militiamen who came under a white flag, and about 120 were then killed; only one man, John D. Lee, was ever tried for it.

The Salt Lake Temple took 40 years to build; why were its foundations buried in 1858?

To hide them from the Army. With federal troops approaching, the Saints covered the site to look like a ploughed field; when it was dug out again, damaged stone had to be replaced.

Pioneer tradition says which birds saved the Saints' 1848 crops in the Salt Lake Valley by devouring swarms of crickets?

Seagulls. Farmers at first feared the flocks were a second plague, then watched them gorge on crickets, drink, bring up the husks and come back for more; the story became the miracle of the gulls.

Whose statue stands atop the Salt Lake Temple's central east spire?

The angel Moroni. The gilded copper figure with a trumpet went up in 1892, and statues of the same angel now top most of the church's temples.

Brigham Young recalled that the Word of Wisdom followed Emma Smith's trouble scrubbing what from her floor?

Tobacco spit. Men at a church school held in the Smiths' rooms smoked pipes and chewed through their lessons, and the health code Joseph Smith dictated in 1833 told them to give the habit up.

The Word of Wisdom's ban on 'hot drinks' is understood to mean which two beverages?

Tea and coffee. The 1833 text says only 'hot drinks', and for decades many members kept the rule loosely; strict abstinence became the church-wide standard only in 1921.

Which church president issued the 1890 Manifesto ending plural marriage?

Wilford Woodruff. Congress had dissolved the church as a legal body and moved to seize its property; even so, a few plural marriages went on quietly until a second manifesto in 1904.

Groups that kept practising polygamy after 1890 are known collectively as what?

Mormon fundamentalists. The mainstream church began excommunicating anyone who entered a new plural marriage in the early 1900s, so the groups that carry on the practice stand wholly outside it.

The Community of Christ, unlike the LDS Church, affirms which doctrine?

Trinitarianism. The church grew from Saints who rejected Brigham Young and polygamy and chose Joseph Smith's eldest son to lead them; it was called the Reorganized Church until 2001.

Which church president announced the 1978 revelation that opened the LDS priesthood to Black men?

Spencer W. Kimball. The bar he lifted went back to Brigham Young rather than to the church's founder: in Joseph Smith's lifetime a few Black men had been ordained.

What share of their income are Latter-day Saints expected to donate to the church?

One-tenth. The gift is called tithing, from the Old English word for a tenth, and paying it in full is one of the conditions for entering the church's temples.

As of 2025, about how many members did the LDS Church count worldwide?

18 million, by the church's own rolls. Fewer than half of them live in the United States, where the faith began, after nearly two centuries of sending missionaries abroad.

Young men serving as Latter-day Saint missionaries are addressed by which title?

Elder. It is a priesthood office a man can receive at 18, which is why teenagers carry a title that sounds like grey hair; women missionaries are addressed as Sister.

Which book joins the Bible, the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants in the LDS Church's scriptures?

Pearl of Great Price. It began as a pamphlet printed in Liverpool in 1851 for British converts who wanted to know more about their new church, and was made scripture in 1880.

Why does the LDS Church encourage members to do genealogical research?

To perform temple ordinances for the dead. Living members are baptised as stand-ins for ancestors who died outside the faith, and the church teaches that the dead stay free to accept or refuse.

Joseph Smith published the Book of Abraham in 1842 from what source?

Egyptian papyri. A travelling showman sold the scrolls to church members along with four mummies in 1835; the fragments that survive have since been identified as ordinary funerary texts.

At which sporting event did the Tabernacle Choir sing in 2002?

Winter Olympics. Salt Lake City was the host, and the choir's unpaid volunteers sang at the opening ceremony and kept on performing throughout the Games.

In 2018 the Mormon Tabernacle Choir renamed itself the Tabernacle Choir at what?

Temple Square. The church's president had asked that year that 'Mormon' no longer be used as a name for the church, so its best-known choir took the name of its home instead.

The Tabernacle Choir won a Grammy for its 1959 recording of which song?

Battle Hymn of the Republic. The single, made with the Philadelphia Orchestra, crossed over to the pop charts and became the most popular recording the choir had made.

From 1856, Mormon emigrants too poor to buy ox teams crossed the plains pulling what?

Handcarts. They cost far less than wagons, and most companies got through safely, but two that set out late in 1856 were trapped by early snow in Wyoming and more than 200 people died.

Winter Quarters, where Mormon exiles camped in 1846–47 on their way west, lies in what is now which city?

Omaha. Thousands of Saints dug in there in log cabins and dugouts on Omaha tribal land, and hunger and crowding spread disease through the camp before the trek west resumed.

Brigham Young Academy, forerunner of BYU, was founded in 1875 in which city?

Provo. Its principal from 1876, the German immigrant Karl Maeser, was told that not even the alphabet or the multiplication tables should be taught without the Spirit of God.

The LDS Church owns a chain of bookstores under what name?

Deseret Book. Deseret is the Book of Mormon's word for honeybee; the pioneers proposed it as the name of their state and took the beehive as their emblem.