This Alabama trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers the Yellowhammer State from Mobile's 1703 Mardi Gras to Huntsville's rockets: the state symbols and nicknames, the capitals it has had, why a town built a monument to a beetle, and the people who came from here, from Helen Keller, Rosa Parks and Hank Aaron to Harper Lee, Nat King Cole and W. C. Handy. It takes in the civil rights landmarks of Montgomery, Selma and Birmingham, Muscle Shoals and 'Sweet Home Alabama', the Iron Bowl, Talladega and Bear Bryant. Easy questions open it (what is the capital?) and the later ones will test people who grew up here (which town was the capital before Montgomery?), so it works for a classroom, a family reunion, a road trip or a bar quiz anywhere in the state. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia entry on the place, person or event, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Alabama's nickname, the Yellowhammer State, comes from what?
Its official bird
The bird is the northern flicker, a woodpecker with more than 100 folk names including yellowhammer.
Q 02Which of these is NOT one of Alabama's nicknames?
Magnolia State
Magnolia State belongs to neighbouring Mississippi.
Q 03Alabama joined the Union as which number state?
22nd
It was admitted on December 14, 1819, and Huntsville hosted the first constitutional convention.
Q 04Which Alabama city, the state's oldest, was founded in 1702 as capital of French Louisiana?
Mobile
It also claims the oldest organised Mardi Gras in the United States, dating from 1703.
Q 05Which US city holds the country's oldest official Carnival celebration, begun in 1703?
Mobile
Frenchman Nicholas Langlois started it when the town was the capital of Louisiana.
Q 06Which city served as Alabama's capital from 1826 to 1846?
Tuscaloosa
It is now home to the University of Alabama and Bryant-Denny Stadium.
Q 07Montgomery was the first capital of what?
The Confederate States of America
The Confederate capital moved to Richmond later in 1861; Jefferson Davis's First White House still stands a block from the Capitol.
Q 08Which state does NOT border Alabama?
Arkansas
Florida and the Gulf of Mexico form its southern edge.
Q 09What is the highest natural point in Alabama?
Mount Cheaha
It rises to 2,413 feet, about 735 metres.
Q 10The name Alabama comes from a Muskogean-speaking tribe who lived near the meeting of which two rivers?
Coosa and Tallapoosa
Some scholars trace the word to Choctaw roots meaning 'plants' and 'to cut', and it first appears in accounts of de Soto's 1540 expedition.
Q 11Which explorer's 1540 expedition produced the first written versions of the name Alabama?
Hernando de Soto
Three chroniclers spelled it three ways, including Alibamu and Limamu.
Q 12Alabama's 1901 constitution, replaced in 2022, was notable for what?
Being by some accounts the world's longest
With over 850 amendments and nearly 87,000 words it ran roughly forty times the length of the US Constitution.
Q 13Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery on December 1, 1955, sparking a bus boycott that lasted how long?
381 days
It ran from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, when the Browder v. Gayle ruling took effect.
Q 21Which NASA centre, established in Huntsville in 1960, designed the Saturn V Moon rocket?
Marshall Space Flight Center
Wernher von Braun was its first director.
Q 22Alabama's most visited attraction, with about 850,000 visitors a year, is what?
U.S. Space & Rocket Center
It is home to Space Camp and a full-scale Saturn V.
Q 23Which Alabama city is nicknamed 'The Peanut Capital of the World'?
Dothan
About a quarter of the US peanut crop is grown nearby.
Q 14Which 15-year-old was arrested for keeping her Montgomery bus seat, before Rosa Parks?
Claudette Colvin
Several Black Montgomerians had been arrested for the same refusal before Parks.
Q 15The 'Bloody Sunday' attack on the first Selma to Montgomery march happened on which structure?
Edmund Pettus Bridge
State troopers charged about 600 unarmed marchers on March 7, 1965; the Voting Rights Act followed that year.
Q 16Which Alabama governor famously resisted federal desegregation demands in the 1960s?
George Wallace
The state was also the scene of the 1961 Freedom Rides.
Q 17Which artist, also known for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, designed Montgomery's Civil Rights Memorial?
Maya Lin
It sits near the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Q 18Helen Keller was born in West Tuscumbia. How old was she when illness left her deaf and blind?
19 months
Her home, Ivy Green, is now a museum, and she met teacher Anne Sullivan at age seven.
Q 19Booker T. Washington became the first leader of which Alabama institution in 1881?
Tuskegee Institute
George Washington Carver later taught there, urging poor farmers to grow peanuts and sweet potatoes.
Q 20The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II formed which fighter group?
332nd
All Black US military pilots trained at fields around Tuskegee.
Q 24The town of Enterprise, Alabama, erected a 1919 monument in tribute to what?
An insect
The boll weevil destroyed the cotton crop and forced farmers to diversify into peanuts, which made them richer.
Q 25Birmingham's giant Vulcan, its city symbol, holds which world record?
Largest cast iron statue
Giuseppe Moretti made it as the city's entry for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.
Q 26Which two nicknames did Birmingham earn from its industrial boom between 1881 and 1920?
The Magic City and the Pittsburgh of the South
It was founded in 1871 by merging three smaller communities.
Q 27Which carmaker opened Alabama's first auto plant near Vance in 1997?
Mercedes
Its first vehicle was an ML320; Hyundai later built in Montgomery and Honda in Lincoln.
Q 28Talladega Superspeedway, opened in 1969, holds what distinction on the NASCAR calendar?
Longest oval
It was called Alabama International Motor Speedway until 1989.
Q 29Bear Bryant won how many national championships in 25 years coaching Alabama?
Six
He retired in 1982 with a then-record 323 wins and a trademark houndstooth hat.
Q 30The Alabama-Auburn football rivalry is better known by what name?
The Iron Bowl
Both are charter members of the SEC and the game was long played at Legion Field in Birmingham.