JFK Assassination
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50 free JFK Assassination trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Few moments in modern history have been studied as closely as the shooting of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Within days the accused gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, was dead too, and the arguments about what really happened have never stopped. This quiz walks through the whole story: the trip to Texas, the motorcade, the frantic hours that followed, the Warren Commission and the later inquiries, the state funeral, and the films, photographs and theories that have kept the case open in the public mind. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you learn something even when you miss. It suits history buffs, students revising the 1960s, and anyone who wants a serious set of questions for a quiz night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who shot Lee Harvey Oswald on live television in the basement of Dallas police headquarters?
Jack Ruby
Jack Ruby was sentenced to death for the killing, but the conviction was overturned on appeal and he died of illness in 1967 before a new trial could begin.
Q 02From which Dallas building, his own workplace, did investigators conclude Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy?
Texas School Book Depository
The Texas School Book Depository now houses The Sixth Floor Museum, named for the corner window from which investigators concluded the shots came.
Q 03Where did Lyndon B. Johnson take the presidential oath about two hours after Kennedy was shot?
Aboard Air Force One
Aboard Air Force One, 27 people squeezed into a stateroom at Love Field to watch. It is the only time a US president has taken the oath on an airplane.
Q 04Aldous Huxley and which other British author died on the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated?
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis collapsed at home about an hour before the shots in Dallas, so news of the Narnia author's death was largely overshadowed.
Q 05A week after the assassination, Jacqueline Kennedy compared her husband's presidency to which musical?
Camelot
Camelot was the Lerner and Loewe show whose cast album the president liked to play before bed, she told an interviewer. The name has stuck to the Kennedy years ever since.
Q 06What gesture did John F. Kennedy Jr. make toward his father's casket on the day he turned three?
A salute
A salute from the three-year-old, prompted by a whisper from his mother outside the cathedral, became one of the defining images of the 1960s.
Q 07Where was John F. Kennedy buried, on a hillside above Washington he had admired months earlier?
Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington National Cemetery was a late change: early press reports had him going to a family plot in Brookline, Massachusetts, where his infant son Patrick lay.
Q 08Which news anchor took off his glasses on live television to announce that President Kennedy had died?
Walter Cronkite
Walter Cronkite read out the wire flash, paused, put his glasses back on and swallowed hard before he could carry on with the broadcast.
Q 09Which long-running British television series began the day after John F. Kennedy was assassinated?
Doctor Who
Doctor Who launched on 23 November 1963, and the BBC repeated the first episode a week later because the news from Dallas had overshadowed it.
Q 10Up which Dallas landmark did police and bystanders run to look for a gunman after Kennedy was shot?
The grassy knoll
The grassy knoll, a small slope to the right of the limousine, became the heart of later conspiracy theories, though no gunman was found behind its picket fence.
Q 11In which Dallas park, sometimes called the birthplace of the city, was John F. Kennedy shot?
Dealey Plaza
Dealey Plaza is named for George Dealey, a longtime publisher of The Dallas Morning News, and was made a National Historic Landmark in 1993, thirty years after the shooting.
Q 12Where was President Kennedy rushed after the shooting and pronounced dead about thirty minutes later?
Parkland Memorial Hospital
Parkland Memorial Hospital also received Lee Harvey Oswald two days later, and the man who shot him died in the same hospital in 1967.
Q 13Which Texas governor, riding in President Kennedy's limousine, was also hit by gunfire in Dallas?
John Connally
Q 21Which future US president, then a Michigan congressman, sat on the Warren Commission?
Gerald Ford
Gerald Ford was assigned to prepare the commission's biography of Lee Harvey Oswald, and when he died in 2006 he was its last surviving member.
Q 22Earl Warren led the official inquiry into the Kennedy assassination while holding which high office?
Chief Justice
Chief Justice was a post he thought ruled him out: he at first refused to lead the inquiry, arguing that a judge should not serve the executive branch.
Q 23Jacqueline Kennedy wanted the East Room arranged as it had been for which earlier president's funeral?
Abraham Lincoln
John Connally recovered from his wounds, served as Richard Nixon's Treasury secretary while still a Democrat, and became a Republican in 1973.
Q 14Which director's 1991 film JFK helped push Congress to order the release of assassination records?
Oliver Stone
Oliver Stone built the film around a Louisiana prosecutor played by Kevin Costner, and a review board later partly credited it for the 1992 law that opened the files.
Q 15To which country did Lee Harvey Oswald defect, returning to Texas in 1962 with a wife and baby daughter?
Soviet Union
Soviet Union officials turned down his wish to study in Moscow and sent him to Minsk, where he worked as a lathe operator in an electronics factory.
Q 16In which branch of the US military did Lee Harvey Oswald enlist a week after his seventeenth birthday?
Marines
Marines are all tested in shooting, and he first qualified as a sharpshooter before a later score dropped him to marksman, the lowest passing grade.
Q 17Which US coin has carried John F. Kennedy's portrait since Congress approved it weeks after his death?
The half dollar
The half dollar was hoarded as a keepsake as soon as it appeared in March 1964, so the new coin was seldom seen in circulation.
Q 18Which president, shot at a world's fair in Buffalo, was the last to be assassinated before John F. Kennedy?
William McKinley
William McKinley died in 1901, and Congress responded by asking the Secret Service to take on the job of protecting presidents.
Q 19Which Dallas dress manufacturer filmed the assassination of John F. Kennedy with a home-movie camera?
Abraham Zapruder
Abraham Zapruder had left his camera at home because of the morning rain, and only went back for it when his assistant insisted.
Q 20In what kind of building did Dallas police arrest Lee Harvey Oswald about eighty minutes after the shooting?
A movie theater
A movie theater, the Texas Theatre, was showing War Is Hell when he slipped in without paying and a nearby shoe-store manager had the police called.
Abraham Lincoln's catafalque, the platform that had held his coffin, was brought out again to carry the Kennedy casket.
Q 24Which Florida landmark was renamed for John F. Kennedy six days after his death, then changed back in 1973?
Cape Canaveral
Cape Canaveral became Cape Kennedy after his widow suggested naming the space facility for him; the new president went further and renamed the whole cape.
Q 25In which country was Lee Harvey Oswald's rifle manufactured in 1940, as a standard infantry weapon?
Italy
Italy's Royal Arms Factory at Terni built the Carcano rifle, which reached America years later as cheap military surplus.
Q 26Which Dallas police officer was shot dead in Oak Cliff less than an hour after President Kennedy?
J. D. Tippit
J. D. Tippit's murder, not the president's, was the crime Lee Harvey Oswald was first arrested for that afternoon.
Q 27What feature did Jacqueline Kennedy request for her husband's grave, inspired by one she had seen in Paris?
An eternal flame
An eternal flame burns at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe, which the Kennedys saw in 1961. Army engineers built hers overnight from a gas torch.
Q 28Which Texas judge, appointed to the federal bench by Kennedy, gave Lyndon B. Johnson the presidential oath in Dallas?
Sarah T. Hughes
Sarah T. Hughes became the first woman to administer the presidential oath, with Jacqueline Kennedy standing at the new president's side.
Q 29Lyndon B. Johnson took the presidential oath in Dallas with his hand on what book, mistaken for a Bible?
A Catholic missal
A Catholic missal found on a side table among Kennedy's belongings was grabbed in the rush, though the new president was not Catholic himself.
Q 30What was New York's international airport called before it was renamed for John F. Kennedy?
Idlewild
Idlewild was the name of a beachside golf course the airfield displaced, and the common name stuck until Christmas Eve 1963.