Akron, Ohio
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40 free Akron, Ohio trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Akron spent most of the twentieth century as the Rubber Capital of the World, the city where America's tires were made and where fortunes, mansions and labor battles followed. It is also a place of unlikely firsts and famous exports: world-changing movements, chart-topping bands and some of the biggest names in basketball all trace back to this corner of northeast Ohio. This quiz covers the whole story. You will find questions on the city's founding and its early days as a frontier boomtown, the tire companies and the people who ran them, local landmarks and food, the University of Akron and the city's teams, and the athletes, musicians and writers who grew up here. It works as a ready-made round for a trivia night in Akron, a classroom warm-up on local history, or a quick test for anyone who has ever called the Rubber City home. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will learn something even when you guess.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which worldwide recovery fellowship began in Akron in 1935, when a visiting New York businessman met a local surgeon?
Alcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous dates its birth to 10 June 1935, the day surgeon Bob Smith took his last drink. Members mark the anniversary in Akron each June as Founders Day.
Q 02Which youth championship moved its national finals from Dayton to Akron in 1935?
Soap Box Derby
The Soap Box Derby held just one national final in Dayton before Akron's central location and hilly terrain won it over. Its purpose-built track, Derby Downs, has hosted the finals since 1936.
Q 03Which NBA superstar opened the I Promise School for at-risk children in his hometown of Akron in 2018?
LeBron James
LeBron James backs the public school through his family foundation, and its graduates are promised free tuition at the University of Akron.
Q 04Which future NBA MVP, raised in Charlotte, was born in Akron in 1988 while his father played for Cleveland?
Stephen Curry
Stephen Curry was born during his father Dell's single season with the Cavaliers. Months later an expansion draft sent the family to the brand-new Charlotte Hornets.
Q 05Which Akron tire giant is named after the inventor of vulcanized rubber, who died decades before it was founded?
Goodyear
Goodyear was founded by Frank Seiberling in 1898, 38 years after Charles Goodyear's death, and flew its first advertising blimp in 1925.
Q 06What kind of Navy craft was the USS Akron, which was lost in a thunderstorm off New Jersey in 1933?
An airship
An airship built in its namesake city, the USS Akron could launch and recover fighter planes in mid-flight. The 1933 crash killed 73 of the 76 people aboard.
Q 07Which new wave band from Akron, named for a theory that humanity is regressing, had a 1980 hit with Whip It?
Devo
Devo grew out of a joke among Kent State art students that turned serious after the 1970 campus shootings. Whip It was the band's only top 40 hit.
Q 08Which formerly enslaved abolitionist gave her best-known speech on women's rights at an 1851 convention in Akron?
Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth spoke without notes at Akron's Old Stone Church. The version most people know was published 12 years later by convention organizer Frances Gage.
Q 09Which Ohio-born actor, later crowned the King of Hollywood, worked in an Akron tire factory as a teenager?
Clark Gable
Clark Gable quit his father's farm for the tire plant. At 17, a performance of the play The Bird of Paradise convinced him to become an actor.
Q 10Which Akron-born Pretenders frontwoman wrote the 1982 song My City Was Gone about the changes to her hometown?
Chrissie Hynde
Chrissie Hynde returned to find old South Howard Street, the historic heart of downtown, leveled for skyscrapers and parking decks. The song first appeared as a B-side.
Q 11Which blues-rock duo recorded the 2004 album Rubber Factory inside a former tire plant in their hometown of Akron?
The Black Keys
The Black Keys, guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney, grew up a couple of houses apart and both dropped out of the University of Akron.
Q 12Which abolitionist, later the leader of the raid on Harpers Ferry, managed sheep flocks in Akron during the 1840s?
John Brown
John Brown moved to Akron in 1844 and earned a reputation as an expert in fine sheep and wool. His house is preserved as a city landmark.
Q 13Which famous inventor became the son-in-law of Akron industrialist Lewis Miller by marrying his daughter Mina in 1886?
Thomas Edison
Q 21What kind of animal is Zippy, the University of Akron mascot adopted by the student council in 1953?
A kangaroo
A kangaroo represents the Zips, whose name is short for Zippers, a brand of rubber overshoes once made in the city.
Q 22Akron tire maker Harvey Firestone spent years vacationing as one of the self-styled Vagabonds with which carmaker?
Henry Ford
Henry Ford had chosen Firestone to supply tires for his cars in 1906. Their traveling party also included naturalist John Burroughs and, at times, presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover.
Q 23America's first astronauts traveled to Akron to be fitted for silver spacesuits made by which tire company?
BFGoodrich
Thomas Edison's father-in-law was an inventor himself: Lewis Miller devised the Akron Plan for Sunday school buildings and co-founded the Chautauqua Institution.
Q 14Akron-born astronaut Judith Resnik, the second American woman in space, died aboard which space shuttle in 1986?
Challenger
Challenger was only her second shuttle. Her first flight, in 1984, was the maiden voyage of Discovery, on which she operated the robotic arm.
Q 15Which language gave Akron its name, taken from a word for the high point the city sits on?
Greek
Greek was a learned choice for a frontier town: the founders laid Akron out in 1825 at the highest point on the new waterway's route.
Q 16Which river, notorious for catching fire in Cleveland in 1969, turns sharply north near Akron on its crooked course?
Cuyahoga
The Cuyahoga flows south toward Akron before doubling back north. Its 1969 fire helped spur the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Q 17Which small toy did Samuel Dyke's Akron factory become the first in America to mass-produce, using clay?
Marbles
Marbles became an Akron specialty: in 1903 local inventor Martin Christensen turned out the first machine-made glass ones on a machine he patented.
Q 18The famous logo of Akron's best-known tire company was inspired by a statuette of which Roman god?
Mercury
Mercury's winged foot became the emblem after founder Frank Seiberling was inspired by a statuette of the messenger god, patron of travel and commerce.
Q 19The Akron Pros went unbeaten in 1920 to become the first champions of which major American sports league?
NFL
The NFL began in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, and the minutes of its founding meeting were kept on Akron Pros stationery.
Q 20Akron hosted the World Series of which sport from 1962, when only three star players were invited to compete?
Golf
Golf's Big Three of Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player made up the entire first field. Nicklaus, then 22, took home a then-staggering $50,000.
BFGoodrich engineer Russell Colley, saluted as the father of the spacesuit, had built a pressure suit back in 1934 for record-chasing pilot Wiley Post.
Q 24Guests at Akron's former Quaker Square hotel slept in round rooms carved out of which old industrial structures?
Grain silos
Grain silos built by Quaker Oats in 1932, 36 of them and each 120 feet tall, were converted into a Hilton that opened in 1980 with 196 completely round rooms.
Q 25On which waterway did the first boat leave Akron in 1827, passing through 41 locks to reach Cleveland?
Ohio and Erie Canal
The Ohio and Erie Canal carried that first boat 37 miles and over three aqueducts in two days. By 1832 the route reached the Ohio River at Portsmouth.
Q 26Akron is the seat of which Ohio county, formed in 1840 from pieces of three older neighboring counties?
Summit
Summit County was named for the highest elevation on the old waterway that built the city. Its land was carved out of Medina, Portage and Stark counties.
Q 27Akron lies within the Western Reserve, frontier land that was once claimed by which New England state?
Connecticut
Connecticut held on to a strip of what is now northeast Ohio after the Revolution, then sold most of it to a company of land speculators for $1,200,000.
Q 28Which name did Akron's minor-league baseball team, long known as the Aeros, adopt in 2013 to honor local industry?
RubberDucks
The RubberDucks name salutes the city's days as the Rubber Capital of the World. The franchise had moved up the road from Canton in 1997.
Q 29In which sport did the University of Akron Zips win the NCAA Division I national championship in 2010?
Soccer
Soccer had already made the Zips the first Mid-American Conference team in any sport to be ranked number one in the nation.
Q 30Which Akron mansion, built for tire magnate Frank Seiberling, ranks among the largest houses in the United States?
Stan Hywet Hall
Stan Hywet Hall takes its name from Old English words for stone quarry, a nod to the abandoned quarries on the estate grounds.