Charleston Trivia
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99 free Charleston trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free Charleston trivia questions with answers. Charleston, South Carolina has been a pirate target, the richest city in the colonies, the place the Civil War started and, more recently, a food and travel obsession. This quiz covers all of it: Charles Town in 1670, Blackbeard's blockade, the palmetto-log fort, the 1780 siege, Fort Sumter and the Hunley, the 1886 earthquake and Hurricane Hugo, plus Rainbow Row, single houses and piazzas, joggling boards, the Angel Oak, Gullah culture, she-crab soup, Spoleto, the Citadel and the College of Charleston. Because 'Charleston trivia' means different things to different people, there are also questions on the Charleston dance craze of the 1920s and on Charleston, West Virginia, the state capital on the Kanawha. Questions run from easy ones for first-time visitors to hard ones for people who can pronounce 'Chalston' properly. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the city and its landmarks, and each question shows its source. Good for a Lowcountry-themed quiz night, a classroom unit on South Carolina, or a rainy afternoon on the piazza.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Charleston, on the Ashley, Cooper and Wando rivers, is the largest city in which state?
South Carolina
South Carolina: Charleston passed Columbia to become the state's largest city in the 2010s. Locals joke that the Ashley and Cooper rivers meet at its harbour to form the Atlantic Ocean.
Q 02Charleston was founded in 1670 under what name, honouring the reigning English king?
Charles Town
Charles Town, named for Charles II, was founded in 1670 at Albemarle Point and moved to the present peninsula in 1680. By 1690 it ranked among the five largest towns in English North America.
Q 03The first battle of the American Civil War was fought at which harbour stronghold?
Fort Sumter
Fort Sumter: Confederate shore batteries under P. G. T. Beauregard opened fire on 12 April 1861, and Major Robert Anderson's garrison surrendered after 34 hours of bombardment.
Q 04Which Confederate vessel became the first submarine to sink a warship, off Charleston in 1864?
H. L. Hunley
The H. L. Hunley sank the USS Housatonic on 17 February 1864, then went down with all eight crew. Raised in 2000, she is kept at a conservation center in North Charleston.
Q 05How many crewmen died in total across the three sinkings of the Confederate submarine Hunley?
21
She sank in a test run in August 1863, again in October with Horace Lawson Hunley aboard, and finally after her attack.
Q 06Rainbow Row on East Bay Street is a series of how many colourful historic houses?
13
Rainbow Row is 13 houses at 79–107 East Bay Street. Their pastel colours date from restoration begun by Dorothy Porcher Legge in 1931, after the block had decayed into a near-slum.
Q 07Charleston's 'Holy City' nickname is traditionally linked to what feature of its skyline?
Its many church spires
Historians think the term was actually coined in the 20th century, possibly as a jab at Charlestonians' self-satisfaction.
Q 08What creole language and culture developed among enslaved Africans' descendants on the Sea Islands?
Gullah
Rice planters paid premiums for captives from Africa's 'Rice Coast' who knew the crop; Gullah foodways gave the city Carolina Gold rice, okra and benne seeds.
Q 09Which Charleston speciality is finished with a splash of dry sherry as it is served?
She-crab soup
She-crab soup, a cream soup of crab meat and roe, gets a splash of dry sherry as it is served. The roe of the female crab gives the soup its name and orange tint.
Q 10Which Pulitzer-winning composer founded Charleston's late-spring arts festival in 1977 as a US twin of an Italian one?
Gian Carlo Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti founded Spoleto Festival USA in 1977 as an American counterpart to his Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, choosing Charleston for its wealth of churches and theatres.
Q 11Charleston's senior military academy was established in what year?
1842
It grew out of an arsenal built after Denmark Vesey's thwarted 1822 uprising, and moved from Marion Square to the Ashley River in 1922.
Q 12Who was the first woman admitted to the Corps of Cadets at Charleston's military academy in 1995?
Shannon Faulkner
She withdrew within days after death threats; Nancy Mace, later a congresswoman, became the first female graduate in 1999.
Q 13Which local school, founded 1770, is the oldest municipal institution of higher learning in the US?
College of Charleston
The College of Charleston, founded in 1770 and chartered in 1785, became the country's first municipal college in 1837. It is also the oldest institution of higher learning in South Carolina.
Q 21Which pirate blockaded Charleston in May 1718, leaving only when given a chest of medicine?
Blackbeard
Blackbeard (Edward Teach) held Charleston's harbour for about a week in May 1718, seizing ships and hostages until Governor Robert Johnson handed over a chest of medicines. His sometime partner Stede Bonnet was hanged in Charleston that December.
Q 22Roughly what share of Africans enslaved in North America landed at Sullivan's Island off Charleston?
40%
About 40% of enslaved Africans brought to North America are estimated to have entered through Charleston, many first quarantined at Sullivan's Island, which has been called the Ellis Island of Black Americans.
Q 23Which tree's spongy logs absorbed British cannonballs at Fort Sullivan in June 1776?
Palmetto
Q 14The Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge, opened in 2005 over the Cooper River, links Charleston with which town?
Mount Pleasant
Mount Pleasant: the Ravenel Bridge replaced the 1929 Grace and 1966 Pearman bridges. At its 2005 opening, its 1,546-foot main span was the longest of any cable-stayed bridge in North America.
Q 15Which category 4 hurricane came ashore at Charleston Harbor in September 1989?
Hugo
Hurricane Hugo came ashore at Sullivan's Island, just north of Charleston Harbor, around midnight on 21–22 September 1989 with winds near 140 mph, damaging most buildings in the historic district.
Q 16In a Charleston single house, where is the real front door?
Halfway along the long side, off the piazza
The real front door sits halfway along the long side, opening off the piazza; the street-facing 'door' just leads onto the porch. The story that the houses were built narrow to dodge a frontage tax is a myth.
Q 17Charleston's City Market is famous for baskets hand-coiled from which native grass?
Sweetgrass
Sweetgrass baskets, a Gullah craft with West African roots, are coiled from bundles of sweetgrass bound with palmetto strips. They are sold at the City Market and along Highway 17 in Mount Pleasant.
Q 18The Angel Oak on Johns Island is estimated to be how old?
400 to 500 years
The Angel Oak is usually estimated at 400 to 500 years old. Its longest limb stretches 187 feet and its canopy shades about 17,200 square feet; it is named for landowners Justus and Martha Angel.
Q 19Mother Emanuel, the Charleston congregation attacked in 2015, holds what distinction?
Oldest AME church in the South
Emanuel AME is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal church in the South, founded in 1817. It was burned after the 1822 Vesey plot, outlawed in 1834 and rebuilt; nine worshippers were murdered there in June 2015.
Q 20Denmark Vesey, who planned an 1822 uprising in Charleston, had bought his freedom with what?
Lottery winnings
He planned the revolt for Bastille Day and an escape to Haiti; the plot leaked and he was hanged on 2 July 1822.
Palmetto logs, soft and spongy, soaked up British cannonballs on 28 June 1776. The fort was renamed for its commander, William Moultrie, and the palmetto went on to the state flag and seal.
Q 24Which Seminole leader died as a prisoner at Fort Moultrie in 1838 and is buried at its gate?
Osceola
Osceola, seized under a flag of truce in Florida in 1837, died at Fort Moultrie on 30 January 1838. He is buried outside the fort's sally port beneath a marked stone.
Q 25Charleston's surrender to the British on 12 May 1780 is described as what?
The greatest American defeat of the Revolutionary War
Sir Henry Clinton besieged the city with about 14,000 troops and 90 ships; the British then held it for over a year after Yorktown.
Q 26What magnitude was the great Charleston earthquake of 31 August 1886?
About 7.0
The 1886 quake is estimated at about magnitude 7.0, the strongest on record in the southeastern United States. It was felt from Boston to Cuba, damaged some 2,000 buildings, and left iron 'earthquake bolts' on many houses.
Q 27A Charleston institution founded in 1773 in the Wraggborough neighbourhood claims what national first?
Oldest museum in the United States
It did not open to the public until 1824; the Old Charleston Museum building burned down.
Q 28The original Dock Street playhouse, opened in 1736, was what?
America's first purpose-built theatre
It opened with Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer and hosted Flora, the first opera performed in America; the current theatre was built inside the old Planter's Hotel in the 1930s.
Q 29Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, founded in Charleston in 1749, is important in the history of which movement?
Reform Judaism
Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim is the birthplace of Reform Judaism in America: members formed the Reformed Society of Israelites there in 1824. It is the fourth-oldest Jewish congregation in the continental United States.
Q 30Which 1925 novel, later an opera, is set on Charleston's fictional 'Catfish Row'?
Porgy
DuBose Heyward wrote it; he and George Gershwin spent the summer of 1934 at Folly Beach writing Porgy and Bess.