Calvin Coolidge Trivia
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48 free Calvin Coolidge trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Calvin Coolidge is the only president born on the Fourth of July, the only one sworn in by his own father, and the one who supposedly answered a dinner-party bet with "You lose" — a story he personally denied. The Vermont lawyer rose through every rung of Massachusetts politics, became a national figure overnight by breaking the 1919 Boston police strike, and was nominated for vice president by a convention that ignored its own bosses. When Warren Harding died in 1923, Coolidge took the oath by kerosene lamp in a farmhouse with no telephone and went back to bed. These 48 questions cover the whole arc: Amherst and Northampton, Grace Goodhue and her raccoon Rebecca, the death of Calvin Jr. from a tennis blister, Andrew Mellon's tax cuts, the McNary-Haugen vetoes, the Indian Citizenship Act, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the first presidential radio address, the trip to Havana and the twelve-word statement that ended his career. Easy questions stick to the nickname and the dates; the expert tier asks about convention delegates, Supreme Court picks and the man who said Coolidge was "weaned on a pickle". Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Calvin Coolidge's presidency is identified with which boom era?
The Roaring Twenties
The Roaring Twenties: Coolidge left office in March 1929 still popular, with the boom intact. The stock market crashed that October, and the Depression took his reputation with it.
Q 02What nickname did Coolidge earn on Washington's dinner-party circuit?
Silent Cal
Silent Cal earned the name by saying little at Washington dinners. Yet much of the reputation was cultivated, and as president he held press conferences several times a month.
Q 03Coolidge is the only US president born on which holiday?
Independence Day
Independence Day: three presidents, Adams, Jefferson and Monroe, died on the Fourth of July, but Coolidge, born in 1872, is the only one whose life began on it.
Q 04Massachusetts made Coolidge's career, but which state was his birthplace?
Vermont
Vermont: he was born in the hamlet of Plymouth Notch, where the family kept the general store, and he is buried there rather than in the state he governed.
Q 05Where did Coolidge study, graduating cum laude?
Amherst College
Amherst College gave him more than a degree: fellow graduates such as the Boston merchant Frank Stearns organised and publicised his rise through Massachusetts politics.
Q 06In which Massachusetts city did Coolidge practise law and serve as mayor?
Northampton
Northampton: he read law in an office there, served as mayor from 1910 and, frugal as ever, insisted on renting his home rather than buying one.
Q 07Where did Grace Goodhue teach when she met Coolidge?
A school for the deaf
A school for the deaf: Grace taught at the Clarke School and first saw Calvin through a window, shaving in his underwear with a hat on. Her laugh made him look up.
Q 08Which race gave Coolidge his only defeat at the ballot box?
School board member
School board member: a second Republican entered the race, split the vote and let a Democrat in. The neighbours' stated objection was that he had no children in the schools.
Q 09Which 1919 event made Governor Coolidge a national figure?
The Boston police strike
The Boston police strike left the city to two nights of rioting. Coolidge called out the State Guard, backed the dismissal of the strikers and became a national hero of law and order.
Q 10Which labour leader received Coolidge's "no right to strike against the public safety" reply?
Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, had telegraphed asking that the strikers be taken back and the official who suspended their leaders removed. Coolidge's reply made front pages.
Q 11Which 1912 labour dispute did state senator Coolidge help arbitrate?
The Bread and Roses strike
The Bread and Roses strike had shut the woollen mills of Lawrence for two months. Coolidge chaired the special committee whose proposed settlement the company finally accepted.
Q 12Rob Roy and Prudence Prim, Coolidge's favourite White House dogs, were which breed?
Collies
Collies, both white. Coolidge wrote that they became so bound up with him that he had them drawn into his bookplate, 'where they will live as long as our country endures'.
Q 13Sworn in as president in the middle of the night, what did Coolidge do next?
Went back to bed
Q 21Which 1914 speech as state senate president summed up Coolidge's philosophy of government?
Have Faith in Massachusetts
Have Faith in Massachusetts carried his name beyond the state. Six years later a delegate from Oregon put him up for vice president, and the convention stampeded to him against the party bosses.
Q 22Which federal force was set up in May 1924, two days after Coolidge signed the Immigration Act?
The Border Patrol
The Border Patrol was created by a Labor Department spending act two days after the quota law, to watch the stretches of frontier between official inspection stations.
Q 23Which Treasury Secretary's "scientific taxation" drove Coolidge's tax cuts?
Went back to bed: the house had no telephone to keep him up, and he set off for Washington only after a night's sleep.
Q 14Who was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee Harding and Coolidge defeated in 1920?
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt, then assistant secretary of the Navy, ran with James M. Cox and lost in a landslide. Twelve years later he won the presidency himself.
Q 15Who administered Coolidge's first presidential oath of office in August 1923?
His father
His father, a notary public, read him the oath in the family sitting room by the light of a kerosene lamp, because electric light had not yet reached the hamlet.
Q 16In which city did President Harding die, making Coolidge president?
San Francisco
San Francisco: Harding fell ill on his way back from Alaska, near the end of a long tour of the West, and his train was rushed to the city, where he died on 2 August 1923.
Q 17Why was Coolidge sworn in a second time at the Willard Hotel?
A state official had given it
A state official had given it, and the attorney general questioned whether such authority reached to a federal oath. A Washington judge repeated it at the hotel, with no publicity.
Q 18Which Harding-era scandal did Coolidge inherit on taking office?
Teapot Dome
Teapot Dome: Coolidge let the Senate's investigators do their work, named special counsel to pursue the oil-lease cases, and forced out Attorney General Harry Daugherty for refusing to cooperate.
Q 19Coolidge's December 1923 annual message to Congress was the first to be what?
Aired nationally on radio
Aired nationally on radio: Harding's message a year earlier had reached only a very limited audience. Coolidge went on to use the new medium to carry his 1924 campaign speeches to millions.
Q 20What did Coolidge's son Calvin Jr. die from in 1924?
Sepsis from a blister
Sepsis from a blister, raised playing tennis on the White House court, killed the 16-year-old within about a week. Coolidge wrote that the power and the glory of the presidency went with him.
Andrew Mellon
Andrew Mellon, a Pittsburgh industrialist, argued that lower rates would bring in more revenue, not less. The Revenue Acts of 1924 and 1926 cut the surtaxes on large incomes accordingly.
Q 24Which future president served as Coolidge's Secretary of Commerce?
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover got no warm send-off: Coolidge called him 'Wonder Boy' and grumbled that for six years the man had given him unsolicited advice, all of it bad.
Q 25Who was Coolidge's vice president during his full term from 1925?
Charles G. Dawes
Charles G. Dawes got the nomination only after Frank Lowden turned it down. In office the author of the Dawes Plan for German reparations clashed with Coolidge over farm relief.
Q 26Which farm relief bill did Coolidge veto in both 1927 and 1928?
McNary-Haugen
McNary-Haugen would have had the government buy up surplus crops to prop up prices. Coolidge vetoed it twice, the milder plan he preferred never passed, and critics blamed him when the farm crisis deepened.
Q 27Which 1927 disaster is Coolidge criticised for not visiting?
The Great Mississippi Flood
The Great Mississippi Flood: Coolidge believed a visit would achieve nothing and look like grandstanding, so he reluctantly sent a cabinet member to run the relief effort instead.
Q 28Which 1928 treaty, signed in Coolidge's term, pledged its signatories to renounce war?
The Kellogg-Briand Pact
The Kellogg-Briand Pact had no means of enforcement, and Coolidge himself doubted that it would prevent a war. It still won his Secretary of State the Nobel Peace Prize.
Q 29Coolidge's only foreign trip as president was to a conference in which city?
Havana
Havana: Coolidge went in person in January 1928 to hold out an olive branch to Latin American leaders embittered by United States interventions in the region.
Q 30Whom did Coolidge appoint to the Supreme Court in 1925?
Harlan F. Stone
Harlan F. Stone had been brought in as attorney general to restore the Justice Department after the Harding scandals. A Democratic president later promoted him to chief justice.