Berkeley Trivia
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48 free Berkeley trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
43 free Berkeley trivia questions with answers. Berkeley is a city of 124,000 on the east shore of San Francisco Bay and the home of the University of California's founding campus, and it is impossible to quiz one without the other. This Berkeley trivia quiz covers both: how the town got its name from an Anglo-Irish bishop, the Ohlone shellmound and the Peralta rancho, the 1878 incorporation, the failed 1908 vote to make it the state capital, the 1923 fire, and the 1960s upheavals from the Free Speech Movement to People's Park. On the campus side there are questions on the 1868 founding, the Campanile, Memorial Stadium and the fault that runs through it, the Golden Bears and the Big Game, Ernest Lawrence's cyclotron, the sixteen elements discovered there, and Berkeley Unix. The city's food and culture get their turn too: Chez Panisse, Peet's, the Gourmet Ghetto, 924 Gilman, the first curbside recycling in America and Green Day's frontman. All answers were checked against Wikipedia's articles on the city and the university.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Berkeley, California is named after an 18th-century bishop and philosopher from which country?
Ireland
Ireland: George Berkeley, the Anglo-Irish Bishop of Cloyne, wrote 'westward the course of empire takes its way', the line trustee Frederick Billings recalled in 1866 when proposing the name.
Q 02In which California county is Berkeley located?
Alameda
Alameda County, which contains Berkeley, moved its county seat to Oakland after an 1868 earthquake destroyed its courthouse in San Leandro.
Q 03Which chain's founders learned roasting from Berkeley's Alfred Peet?
Starbucks
Starbucks cofounder Jerry Baldwin later bought Peet's itself, several years after Alfred Peet sold the company in 1979.
Q 04Which Native people lived on the site of Berkeley, leaving a shellmound at Strawberry Creek?
The Chochenyo Ohlone
The Chochenyo Ohlone's sacred shellmound area regained a Fourth Street parking lot in 2024, after the developer that had fought to build there agreed to sell it to an Ohlone land trust.
Q 05Which Spanish soldier received the land grant, Rancho San Antonio, that included present-day Berkeley?
Luis Peralta
Luis Peralta never lived on Rancho San Antonio himself; he divided it among his four sons, and Berkeley grew mostly on son Domingo's share.
Q 06Which Intel co-founder transferred to UC Berkeley to study chemistry?
Gordon Moore
Gordon Moore studied chemistry at Berkeley and Caltech before co-founding Intel, and his forecast that chip transistor counts keep doubling became Moore's law.
Q 07What was the name of the waterfront settlement of saloons and industry that became West Berkeley?
Ocean View
Ocean View's working-class voters helped Denis Kearney's anti-Chinese Workingman's Party win Berkeley's first town elections after incorporation in 1878.
Q 08A 1908 statewide referendum rejected moving what to Berkeley?
The state capital
The state capital bid failed, but Northbrae's developers had already named its streets after California counties, and those names remain.
Q 09In 1992, 500 years after Columbus's first voyage, Berkeley renamed Columbus Day as what?
Indigenous Peoples' Day
Indigenous Peoples' Day began in Berkeley as a counter-protest to Columbus Day, pushed by local activists who won over the city council.
Q 10What land-use rule did Berkeley pioneer in 1916 to keep minorities out of white neighbourhoods?
Single-family zoning
Single-family zoning was championed by Berkeley developer Duncan McDuffie, whose own neighbourhoods already kept out non-white residents through private deed restrictions.
Q 11Which 1964 university action sparked the Free Speech Movement?
Banned distribution of political literature on campus
'Banned distribution of political literature on campus' sums up the September 1964 rule that barred advocacy tables at the campus's main southern entrance; the arrest of a former student at one table set off the sit-ins.
Q 12Which governor sent the National Guard to occupy Berkeley during the 1969 People's Park fight?
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan declared a state of emergency after 'Bloody Thursday', when police fired shotguns at protesters and killed an onlooker, James Rector.
Q 13Which Berkeley street became the focal point of the hippie movement in the late 1960s?
Q 21Which element, first made at Berkeley, fuelled the Nagasaki atomic bomb?
Plutonium
Plutonium was named after Pluto, then counted as a planet, because uranium and neptunium, the two elements before it, were named after Uranus and Neptune.
Q 22Which president signed the Morrill Act behind UC Berkeley's founding?
Lincoln
Lincoln signed the Morrill Act in 1862, letting states sell grants of federal land to fund public colleges such as the University of California.
Q 23Which Berkeley professor invented the cyclotron and won the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics for it?
Ernest Lawrence
Ernest Lawrence's Radiation Laboratory grew into Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and element 103, discovered there in 1961, was named lawrencium in his honour.
Telegraph Avenue
Telegraph Avenue carried marching crowds toward People's Park in May 1969, after the university had fenced the park off.
Q 14Which Berkeley restaurant is credited with launching California cuisine?
Chez Panisse
Chez Panisse's founder, Alice Waters, went on to start the Edible Schoolyard in 1995, turning a vacant lot at a Berkeley middle school into a garden classroom.
Q 15What did Berkeley's Ecology Center launch in 1973, among the first of its kind nationally?
A curbside recycling program
A curbside recycling program: the Ecology Center's 1973 pickup was the first in the US, and the nonprofit later won a city contract to keep running Berkeley's curbside service.
Q 16What nickname did North Berkeley's famous food district carry for decades?
The Gourmet Ghetto
The Gourmet Ghetto nickname, credited to comedian Darryl Henriques in the 1970s, drew complaints in 2019, and the business association voted to drop it.
Q 17Which legendary all-ages punk venue in West Berkeley helped launch Green Day?
924 Gilman
924 Gilman, a volunteer-run, all-ages club that opened on Gilman Street in 1986, hosted Green Day's early shows; its no-major-labels rule later kept the band out after they signed.
Q 18Which seismic zone runs through Berkeley, straight down the middle of the university's stadium?
The Hayward Fault
The Hayward Fault runs under Memorial Stadium's field nearly goalpost to goalpost, so the stadium needed a major seismic retrofit, completed in 2012.
Q 19Which East Bay parkland occupies the upper reaches of Wildcat Canyon east of the city?
Tilden
Tilden Regional Park, opened in 1936 and named for park-district founder Charles Lee Tilden, fills upper Wildcat Canyon with a steam train, a carousel, a botanic garden and Lake Anza.
Q 20On which body of water does Berkeley's western shoreline lie?
San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay's Berkeley shoreline includes César Chávez Park, a former city landfill whose methane is burned off at a flare station.
Q 24Which Berkeley chemist shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for CRISPR gene editing?
Jennifer Doudna
Jennifer Doudna has said The Double Helix, James Watson's book about discovering DNA's structure, was a major early influence on her.
Q 25Sather Tower on the Berkeley campus is nicknamed after which Venetian landmark?
St Mark's Campanile
St Mark's Campanile in Venice was the model for Sather Tower, completed in 1914 and known on campus simply as the Campanile; it stands 307 feet tall with a 61-bell carillon.
Q 26What is the name of Cal's costumed bear mascot, introduced in 1941 to replace live bears?
Oski
Oski shares his name with the old Oski Wow Wow yell, and the secretive Oski Committee guards the identity of whoever wears the suit.
Q 27What trophy has gone to the winner of Cal's Big Game against its arch-rival since 1933?
The Stanford Axe
The Stanford Axe, stolen by Cal students in 1899 soon after its debut, became the Big Game trophy in 1933, three years after Stanford's 'Immortal 21' took it back.
Q 28What were the university's first school colours, chosen by students in 1873?
Yale Blue and gold
Yale Blue and gold were chosen in 1873, the blue honouring Yale, alma mater of several founders, and the gold standing for the Golden State.
Q 29Which league did Cal's teams join in 2024 after the collapse of the Pac-12?
The ACC
The ACC took in Cal for the 2024-25 season, but Cal reportedly accepted only about 30% of a full member's share of league revenue at first.
Q 30The California Victory Cannon fires after every Cal score from which spot overlooking Memorial Stadium?
Tightwad Hill
Tightwad Hill got its name because fans there can watch Cal games for free, right beside the platform the Victory Cannon fires from.