Americana Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
70 free Americana trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
64 free Americana trivia questions with answers. Americana is the stuff of road trips and small-town nostalgia: neon diners, drive-in movies, a Wurlitzer in the corner, a Coke for a nickel and a Model T in the driveway. This quiz rounds up the icons that make up that picture, from Route 66 and Burma-Shave signs to Rosie the Riveter, Smokey Bear, Cracker Jack prizes and the Cadillacs buried nose-first outside Amarillo. The easy questions ask what the national bird is and who painted American Gothic. The harder ones want the town where the word 'motel' was coined, the year the Liberty Bell was ordered, why the Marlboro Man was invented and which state never got Burma-Shave signs. It suits a Fourth of July party, a classroom unit on US culture or anyone who has ever pulled over for the World's Only Corn Palace. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the object, brand or landmark in question, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Route 66 ran from Chicago to which West Coast city?
Santa Monica
Santa Monica: the highway reached the Pacific at Santa Monica after a 1936 extension from downtown Los Angeles, having crossed eight states over about 2,448 miles.
Q 02Which novel popularised Route 66's nickname 'the Mother Road'?
The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath (1939): Steinbeck called Route 66 'the mother road, the road of flight' as the Joads and other Dust Bowl migrants followed it west to California.
Q 03Which Pixar film's plot centres on a small town bypassed by the interstate that replaced Route 66?
Cars
Cars (2006): Radiator Springs, the town Lightning McQueen is stranded in, was modelled on real Route 66 towns left fading after Interstate 40 bypassed them.
Q 04In what year was Route 66 officially removed from the US Highway System?
1985
1985: the last stretch, at Williams, Arizona, had been bypassed by Interstate 40 the year before, and AASHTO decertified US 66 on 27 June 1985.
Q 05The 1960s TV series Route 66 followed two young men travelling the country in which car?
Chevrolet Corvette
A Chevrolet Corvette convertible, a new model each season thanks to Chevrolet's sponsorship, carried Tod Stiles and Buz Murdock across the country from 1960 to 1964.
Q 06The word 'motel' was coined for a 1925 lodging in which California town?
San Luis Obispo
San Luis Obispo: architect Arthur Heineman's Milestone Mo-Tel opened there in December 1925, blending 'motor' and 'hotel' into a new word.
Q 07The Holiday Inn motel chain took its name from what?
A 1942 musical film
A 1942 musical film: draftsman Eddie Bluestein wrote 'Holiday Inn', the Bing Crosby movie he had just seen, on the plans; Kemmons Wilson opened the first in Memphis in 1952.
Q 08The first drive-in theater opened in 1933 in which state?
New Jersey
Richard Hollingshead patented the idea in Camden; his first screen had speakers on the tower, so people at the back heard a delay.
Q 09Where were the earliest coin-operated phonographs, the ancestors of the jukebox, first installed in 1889?
A San Francisco saloon
A San Francisco saloon: Louis Glass installed a coin-operated Edison phonograph at the Palais Royale on 23 November 1889; patrons listened through listening tubes.
Q 10The word 'jukebox' derives from a Gullah word meaning what?
Bawdy
Bawdy: Gullah 'juke' or 'joog' meant disorderly and wicked, hence the rowdy juke joints where the machines played; makers shunned the word for years because of that reputation.
Q 11The 1946 Wurlitzer Model 1015 jukebox is better known by what nickname?
The Bubbler
The Bubbler, named for the bubble tubes in its illuminated arches; Paul Fuller's design sold more than 56,000 units and offered 24 selections.
Q 12The first crude 'diner' of 1872 was a horse-drawn wagon serving newspaper workers in which city?
Providence, Rhode Island
Walter Scott sold food through windows on both sides of the wagon to Providence Journal employees.
Q 13Which painter's canvas Nighthawks shows late-night customers at a diner counter?
Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper's Nighthawks shows three customers and a counterman in an all-night diner seen through a wide plate-glass window, with no visible door to the street.
Q 21By 1914, assembly lines had cut Model T build time from twelve and a half hours to how long?
93 minutes
93 minutes: by 1914 the moving line at Highland Park had cut chassis assembly from more than twelve hours to 93 minutes, with cars rolling off every three minutes.
Q 22Which car surpassed the Model T's sales record in 1972?
Volkswagen Beetle
The Volkswagen Beetle passed the Model T's total on 17 February 1972, when the 15,007,034th car left the Wolfsburg line.
Q 23The Ford Mustang was introduced in April 1964 at which event?
The New York World's Fair
The New York World's Fair: Ford unveiled the Mustang there on 17 April 1964, selling more than 400,000 in the first year and naming the 'pony car' class.
Q 14Coca-Cola was first sold in 1886 at a pharmacy in which city?
Atlanta
Atlanta: it went on sale at Jacobs' Pharmacy on 8 May 1886 for five cents a glass, a nickel price that lasted until 1959.
Q 15John Pemberton created his famous 1886 soft drink as a non-alcoholic version of what earlier product?
A French coca wine
Local prohibition laws forced the switch away from wine.
Q 16Coca-Cola launched the design competition that produced its famous contour bottle in what year?
1915
1915: Coca-Cola asked glassmakers for a bottle recognisable by touch in the dark or from a broken shard; the Root Glass Company of Terre Haute won with the contour design, patented that November.
Q 17Levi Strauss's partner in the 1873 riveted-jeans patent, Jacob Davis, was a tailor in which city?
Reno, Nevada
Reno, Nevada: Jacob Davis ran a tailoring shop there and in 1872 wrote to his cloth supplier, Levi Strauss, unable to afford the patent fee alone.
Q 18What did Levi's copper rivets originally reinforce?
Pocket corners
Pocket corners: Davis hammered copper rivets into the corners of the pockets and the base of the fly, the points where miners' trousers tore.
Q 19What lot number was assigned in 1890 to Levi's famous copper-riveted waist overalls?
501
501: Levi Strauss & Co. gave its riveted waist overalls the lot number 501 in 1890, the year the rivet patent expired and competitors could copy it.
Q 20What was the Ford Model T's popular nickname?
Tin Lizzie
Tin Lizzie: the Model T's nickname, 'Lizzie' being a common name for a horse or a maid; about 15 million were built between 1908 and 1927.
Q 24Grant Wood's American Gothic depicts a farmer and his daughter in front of a house in which state?
Iowa
Iowa: the pointed-arch window belongs to a small white house in Eldon, Iowa, which Wood sketched in 1930 and painted back in Cedar Rapids.
Q 25Who modelled for the man in American Gothic?
The Wood family dentist
The Wood family dentist: Byron McKeeby of Cedar Rapids posed for the farmer, while Wood's sister Nan, in a colonial-print apron, was the woman.
Q 26Norman Rockwell painted covers for which magazine for nearly five decades?
The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post ran more than 300 Rockwell covers across 47 years, the last in 1963; his later civil-rights paintings appeared in Look instead.
Q 27Rockwell's The Problem We All Live With shows which six-year-old walking to school past federal marshals?
Ruby Bridges
Ruby Bridges, escorted by US marshals into William Frantz Elementary in New Orleans in November 1960; Rockwell painted it for Look in 1964.
Q 28The 'We Can Do It!' poster later associated with Rosie the Riveter was originally made for which company?
Westinghouse
It was shown only to Westinghouse workers for two weeks in 1943, then vanished for nearly forty years.
Q 29Uncle Sam's famous 'I Want You' recruiting poster of 1917 was drawn by whom?
James Montgomery Flagg
James Montgomery Flagg drew it, using his own face for Uncle Sam; it had first appeared as a Leslie's Weekly cover the year before, and over four million were printed in 1917-18.
Q 30Before Uncle Sam, which male figure personified the American populace?
Brother Jonathan
Brother Jonathan, a lanky New Englander in striped trousers, stood for the American people in cartoons from the Revolution until Uncle Sam displaced him after the Civil War.