Birmingham, England Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
39 free Birmingham, England trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Birmingham calls itself England's second city, and it has the receipts: the Industrial Revolution was argued into being at its dinner tables, its workshops turned out everything from buttons to Spitfires, and its canal network outruns a famous Italian rival's. It is also one of the youngest big cities in Europe, with four in ten residents under 25. These 39 questions cover the Bull Ring and the buildings around it, the Lunar Society and the Cadbury family, Villa and Blues, the real gang behind Peaky Blinders, the bands that made the city the home of heavy metal and reggae alike, the sauces, curries and chocolate it gave the nation, Brummie words, and the writers, politicians and stars who grew up here. Each answer comes with a one-line explanation worth repeating at the bar. Play it on your phone for instant answers, or print it for a pub quiz round, a classroom or a long crawl round the Inner Ring Road.
30 of 39 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Birmingham's well-worn boast is that it has more miles of canal than which famous canal city?
Venice
Venice has about 26 miles of canal to Birmingham's 35, but the boast flatters: Birmingham is a far bigger city, so its canals are spread much more thinly.
Q 02Alfred Bird, a Birmingham chemist, invented his custard powder because which ingredient disagreed with his wife?
Eggs
Eggs thicken a traditional custard, so Bird built his powder on cornflour instead; he went on to devise a baking powder too, for making bread without yeast.
Q 03George Cadbury, a Quaker, kept which business out of Bournville, his model village beside the chocolate works?
Pubs
Pubs have never been built in Bournville, a legacy of George Cadbury's temperance beliefs, although Rowheath Pavilion, built for the works' sports fields, now has a bar of its own.
Q 04The 'ring' in Birmingham's Bull Ring was an iron hoop to which bulls were tied for what, before slaughter?
Baiting
Baiting took place on the green of the medieval Corn Cheaping market, which gave the Bull Ring its name; the 1964 Bull Ring Centre that later replaced it was the UK's first indoor city-centre shopping centre.
Q 05Duran Duran, formed in Birmingham in 1978, took their name from a villain in which 1968 science-fiction film?
Barbarella
Barbarella's villain Dr. Durand Durand, played by Milo O'Shea, gave the band its name, and O'Shea returned the compliment by playing the part again in their concert film Arena.
Q 06Legend says the real Peaky Blinders of 1890s Birmingham stitched what into the peaks of their flat caps?
Razor blades
Razor blades in the cap are probably a myth, says historian Carl Chinn: the blades were then a costly novelty, and 'peaky' was simply slang for the gang's peaked flat caps.
Q 07Which American author wrote 'Rip Van Winkle' overnight while staying with his sister in Birmingham, England?
Washington Irving
Washington Irving was bankrupt and stuck for ideas when an evening of nostalgic talk with his brother-in-law, a Birmingham merchant, set the story off, and he wrote until morning.
Q 08Birmingham's Assay Office, won by Matthew Boulton's lobbying in 1773, marks silver with which hallmark symbol?
An anchor
An anchor for landlocked Birmingham and a crown for Sheffield are said to come from the Crown and Anchor tavern in London, where the two towns' campaigners met, with chance deciding who took which.
Q 09Aston Villa's European Cup triumph of 1982, a 1-0 win in Rotterdam, came against which German club?
Bayern Munich
Bayern Munich were beaten by a Peter Withe goal in the 67th minute, with Villa's reserve keeper Nigel Spink, making only his second first-team appearance, keeping them out after Jimmy Rimmer was hurt.
Q 10Aston Villa's founders in 1874 were cricketers from what kind of institution at Villa Cross, Handsworth?
A Wesleyan chapel
A Wesleyan chapel's cricketers started the club as a winter pastime, taking the name of a nearby Georgian villa; within 14 years a Villa director, William McGregor, had founded the Football League.
Q 11Obafemi Martins' 89th-minute goal won Birmingham City the 2011 League Cup final at Wembley against which club?
Arsenal
Arsenal's keeper Wojciech Szczęsny and defender Laurent Koscielny got in a tangle under a long ball, leaving Martins to score into an empty net and earn Birmingham City a place in the Europa League.
Q 12Under what name was Birmingham City founded in 1875, before becoming plain 'Birmingham' in 1905?
Small Heath Alliance
Small Heath Alliance was started by a cricket team that wanted something to do in the winter months; the club dropped the 'Alliance' in 1888 and the 'Small Heath' in 1905.
Q 13Which Australian bowler trod on a stray ball before the 2005 Edgbaston Test, which England won by two runs?
Glenn McGrath
Q 21BSA, founded by Birmingham gunsmiths in 1861, was the world's top maker of what after buying Triumph?
Motorcycles
Motorcycles made BSA the biggest name in its trade in the 1950s, yet by 1973 its shares had collapsed and what was left was sold off in a government-backed rescue.
Q 22Alexander Parkes of Birmingham showed cellulose-based 'Parkesine' at London's 1862 exhibition: the first what?
Plastic
Plastic's birth is usually dated to Parkesine, yet Parkes made nothing from it: the stuff was dear to produce and prone to cracking, and his company closed in 1868.
Q 23Which typeface is named after an 18th-century Birmingham printer, an atheist whose corpse was later put on show?
Baskerville
Glenn McGrath tore ankle ligaments in the warm-up and missed the match; the man who took his place, Michael Kasprowicz, was the last batsman out, with Australia three runs from victory.
Q 14Birmingham took the 2022 Commonwealth Games after which South African city was stripped of them in 2017?
Durban
Durban lost the Games over financial problems, and Birmingham saw off Liverpool in a relaunched bid; the Games went on to add an estimated £1.2 billion to the UK economy.
Q 15Birmingham 2022's mascot, a multicoloured bull named after the Alexander Stadium's district, was called what?
Perry
Perry takes his name from Perry Barr, home of the Alexander Stadium, and is a bull because of the Bull Ring market; his hexagon-patterned hide was designed by a ten-year-old competition winner.
Q 16Which nickname did the Birmingham Evening Mail coin in 1965 for the unbuilt Gravelly Hill Interchange?
Spaghetti Junction
Spaghetti Junction began as a headline: reporter Roy Smith wrote that the plans looked like 'a cross between a plate of spaghetti and an unsuccessful attempt at a Staffordshire knot', and a sub-editor did the rest.
Q 17Birmingham's Lunar Society of Boulton, Watt and Erasmus Darwin met when, so that members could get home safely?
At the full moon
At the full moon the extra light made the journey home easier and safer before street lighting, and the members, who cheerfully called themselves 'lunaticks', met at Boulton's home among other venues.
Q 18Which Lunar Society chemist, who isolated oxygen, fled Birmingham after a 1791 mob burned his home and laboratory?
Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley, who also invented soda water, was a target twice over, as a religious Dissenter and as a supporter of the French Revolution; after the riots he never lived in Birmingham again, and he died in America.
Q 19Birmingham's gilded 'Golden Boys' statue shows Boulton, Watt and which pioneer of gas lighting?
William Murdoch
William Murdoch, the Boulton & Watt engine erector who built a model steam carriage in 1784, joins his employers poring over an engine plan, which earned the 1956 statue its other nickname, 'The Carpet Salesmen'.
Q 20In Victorian times Birmingham was the world's chief maker of which writing item, successor to the quill?
Steel pen nibs
Steel pen nibs, stamped out cheaply by a workforce of some 8,000, most of them women, put writing within reach of people who had never been able to afford a pen.
Baskerville wanted burial in a conical mill on his own land rather than consecrated ground, but a canal cut through it in 1821 and the landowner displayed the body until friends moved it to a church crypt.
Q 24Over half of all Spitfires came from a 'shadow factory' at which Birmingham site, later a Jaguar plant?
Castle Bromwich
Castle Bromwich had not finished a single Spitfire by May 1940, when the minister Lord Beaverbrook took the plant out of the hands of Lord Nuffield's car men; it went on to build well over 10,000.
Q 25Which Alec Issigonis-designed car, launched in 1959, was built at Birmingham's Longbridge plant for four decades?
Mini
Mini design began with a fuel crisis: after Suez in 1956 petrol was rationed and big cars stopped selling, so the British Motor Corporation ordered a tiny one, and 5.38 million were built by 2000.
Q 26Which Black Sabbath singer from Aston did six weeks in Winson Green Prison at 17 for robbing a clothes shop?
Ozzy Osbourne
Ozzy Osbourne's father refused to pay the fine to teach him a lesson; the future 'Prince of Darkness' had already worked as a trainee plumber, car-horn tuner and slaughterhouse worker before Black Sabbath.
Q 27Which store's 2003 Bullring building, designed by Future Systems, is clad in 15,000 anodised aluminium discs?
Selfridges
Selfridges wanted its third store outside London to be an instantly recognisable signpost for the brand, and the curved blue shell studded with discs duly became a landmark of 'blobitecture'.
Q 28Which 1965 tower beside Birmingham's Bullring was listed, then turned into 232 flats by Urban Splash?
The Rotunda
The Rotunda, 81 metres tall, was listed in 2000 and reopened as flats in 2008; in 1974 a pub at its foot was one of the targets of the Birmingham pub bombings.
Q 29Birmingham Town Hall, opened in 1834, was modelled on the Roman Forum temple of which twin gods?
Castor and Pollux
Castor and Pollux's temple gave its proportions to Hansom's design, and Hansom, of Hansom cab fame, went bankrupt building it; Mendelssohn's 'Elijah' had its premiere in the hall in 1846.
Q 30Dhruva Mistry's fountain 'The River' in Birmingham's Victoria Square is known to locals by what nickname?
The Floozie in the Jacuzzi
The Floozie in the Jacuzzi spent years without her jacuzzi: a leak shut the fountain off in 2013, the pool was filled with soil and bedding plants, and the water came back only in 2022.