Cape Cod Trivia
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6correct to beat the crowd
This Cape Cod trivia quiz has 41 free questions with answers and runs the whole 65 miles from the Bourne and Sagamore bridges to Race Point. It covers the Pilgrims' first landfall and the Mayflower Compact in Provincetown Harbor, Bartholomew Gosnold naming the Cape in 1602, the canal that turned it into an island, and the National Seashore that John F. Kennedy signed into being from his summer White House in Hyannis Port. There are questions on the 15 towns and their claims to fame, the lighthouses that had to be moved back from the eroding bluffs, Marconi's wireless station, Woods Hole and the discovery of the Titanic, Edward Hopper's Truro, Wellfleet oysters, Cape Cod potato chips, the Falmouth Road Race and the wooden-bat baseball league that has sent more than a thousand players to the majors. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer was checked against a reliable source. Perfect for a rainy day at the rental.
30 of 41 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Cape Cod forms the southern boundary of which body of water that stretches northeast to Nova Scotia?
Gulf of Maine
Gulf of Maine: stretching from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia, it warmed faster than 99% of the world's oceans after 2004, making its water too warm for cod.
Q 02Which English explorer coined the name Cape Cod in 1602?
Bartholomew Gosnold
Bartholomew Gosnold's crew took aboard a great store of codfish off the Cape in 1602, and five years later he helped found Jamestown in Virginia.
Q 03What agreement did the Pilgrims sign aboard their ship off Cape Cod's tip in November 1620?
The Mayflower Compact
The Mayflower Compact: storms had carried the ship outside the Virginia Company's jurisdiction, so with some passengers threatening to go their own way, 41 men signed to form a government.
Q 04What juice goes into a Cape Codder cocktail?
Cranberry
Cranberry: the Cape Codder is named for the peninsula, which is known for growing cranberries.
Q 05The Whydah, whose wreck and treasure were found off Cape Cod in 1984, sank in 1717 as what kind of ship?
A pirate ship
A pirate ship: the Whydah had carried enslaved Africans until Black Sam Bellamy's crew seized it and made it their flagship.
Q 06Compared with the nearby mainland, what is Cape Cod's weather usually like?
Warmer winters and cooler summers
Warmer winters and cooler summers: the surrounding ocean moderates the Cape's climate, so its seasons are milder than on the mainland.
Q 07The Cape Cod Canal opened in July 1914, just weeks ahead of which other canal?
Panama Canal
Panama Canal: the Cape Cod Canal began as a private toll route, until the federal government bought it and made it free.
Q 08Which playwright got his start when the Provincetown Players staged his sea play Bound East for Cardiff in 1916?
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill: the troupe performed it in a fish house on a wharf over the water, and that fall the Players moved to New York City.
Q 09What architectural distinction does the Pilgrim Monument at Cape Cod's tip hold?
Tallest all-granite structure in the United States
At 252 feet, the Pilgrim Monument, the tallest all-granite structure in the United States, marks the Pilgrims' first landing at Provincetown, before they settled Plymouth.
Q 10Which Italian tower served as the model for the Pilgrim Monument?
Torre del Mangia in Siena
Torre del Mangia in Siena: architect Willard T. Sears patterned the monument on it, and President Theodore Roosevelt laid the cornerstone in 1907.
Q 11In 1961, what kind of federal park did Congress create on the outer Cape?
A national seashore
A national seashore: President John F. Kennedy signed the act creating the Cape Cod National Seashore that August, protecting the outer Cape's dunes and marshes.
Q 12In which Cape Cod village is the Kennedy Compound, JFK's 'summer White House'?
Hyannis Port
Hyannis Port: in 2012 the Kennedy family gave the compound's main house to an institute.
Q 13From which Cape Cod town did Marconi make the first US transatlantic wireless transmission?
Wellfleet
Wellfleet: on January 18, 1903, Marconi's station at South Wellfleet relayed messages between President Theodore Roosevelt and King Edward VII.
Q 21Bartender Tommy Leonard dreamed up the Falmouth Road Race after watching which runner's 1972 Olympic marathon?
Frank Shorter
Frank Shorter: Leonard's wish to get him to race on Cape Cod came true in 1975, when Shorter ran the Falmouth race and won it.
Q 22Which singer's 1957 record 'Old Cape Cod' became the peninsula's unofficial anthem?
Patti Page
Patti Page had never set foot on Cape Cod when she recorded 'Old Cape Cod', and only visited after the song became a hit.
Q 23Which naturalist wrote the book Cape Cod, published in 1865, three years after his death?
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau had published only two books, Walden among them, when he died in 1862; Cape Cod was one of several that came out afterward.
Q 14Which was the first lighthouse built on Cape Cod?
Highland Light
Highland Light: George Washington authorized it to warn ships away from the dangerous waters off Truro.
Q 15Why were two of Cape Cod's lighthouses moved in 1996?
Coastal erosion threatened to topple them
Coastal erosion threatened to topple them, so house movers rolled each tower back from the crumbling bluff in one piece rather than let the sea take it.
Q 16Which Cape Cod town, founded in 1637, is the oldest on the Cape?
Sandwich
Sandwich: families who had been living in Saugus, north of Boston, moved to the Cape and founded it in 1637.
Q 17Which Cape Cod town is home to a federally recognized Wampanoag tribe?
Mashpee
Mashpee: a jury in the tribe's 1977-78 land-claim suit found it was not a tribe, but the federal government recognized the Mashpee Wampanoag in 2007.
Q 18Which famous ocean-research organization, founded in 1930, is based in a village of Falmouth on Cape Cod?
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution: in 1977 scientists in its submersible Alvin found deep-sea vents whose life runs on chemical energy instead of sunlight.
Q 19Robert Ballard of Cape Cod's famous ocean-research institution co-led the 1985 expedition that found which famous wreck?
RMS Titanic
RMS Titanic: its bow and stern lie about 2,000 feet apart on the seabed, showing that the ship broke in two as it sank.
Q 20What kind of bats does the Cape Cod Baseball League use?
Wooden
Wooden: the Cape League dropped aluminum bats for wood, and pro scouts come to watch its hitters use professional equipment.
Q 24Which American painter built a summer house in South Truro on Cape Cod in 1934?
Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper: he and his wife had summered in a rented South Truro cottage since 1930 before he designed a house of their own.
Q 25Kalmus Beach on the Mid-Cape is named after Herbert Kalmus, co-founder of which film company?
Technicolor
Technicolor: the company Kalmus co-founded developed the three-color process used to film the Oz scenes of The Wizard of Oz.
Q 26Which Cape Cod town has become known as a hub of great white shark activity?
Chatham
Chatham: in 1952 a four-man lifeboat crew from its Coast Guard station rescued the survivors of the broken tanker Pendleton.
Q 27Which Cape Cod town contains First Encounter Beach, named for a 1620 run-in between Pilgrim scouts and Native people?
Eastham
Eastham: the near-battle came during a month the Pilgrims spent scouting Cape Cod, after which they chose to settle Plymouth instead.
Q 28Which Cape Cod lighthouse is pictured on bags of Cape Cod Potato Chips?
Nauset Light
Nauset Light: the tower was all white until 1940, when its top was painted red to give it a distinctive daymark.
Q 29What kind of bridge carries trains across the Cape Cod Canal?
A vertical-lift bridge
A vertical-lift bridge: it mostly carries trains hauling trash off Cape Cod, along with seasonal passenger trains.
Q 30Which French explorer charted a Cape Cod harbor in 1605?
Samuel de Champlain
Samuel de Champlain: he explored the New England coast as far south as Cape Cod in 1605 and 1606, and in 1608 he founded Quebec.