Christopher Columbus Trivia
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48 free Christopher Columbus trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
50 free Christopher Columbus trivia questions with answers. Christopher Columbus is one of the most argued-about people in history, and most of what people think they know about him is wrong. This quiz sticks to what the records actually say: where he was born, who paid for the 1492 voyage and what he was promised, what the three ships were really called, where he made landfall, what happened to the men he left behind, and how a lunar eclipse saved his crew on Jamaica in 1504. It runs from easy questions (how many voyages, which ship ran aground on Christmas Day) through the second, third and fourth voyages, the arrest and the chains, the wandering of his remains between Spain, Santo Domingo and Havana, and the history of Columbus Day itself, from a Tammany Society dinner in 1792 to Indigenous Peoples' Day. There are questions on the flat-earth myth, the Columbian exchange and the cities and countries that carry his name. Every answer has been checked against the encyclopedia articles on Columbus, his voyages and the holiday, and each question shows its source. Use it for a Columbus Day classroom round, a history quiz night, or to settle an argument.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city-state was Christopher Columbus born?
Genoa
The scholarly consensus puts his birth in the Republic of Genoa between late August and October 1451; the family later moved along the coast to Savona.
Q 02How many transatlantic voyages to the Americas did Columbus complete?
Four
All four were sponsored by the Crown of Castile, between 1492 and 1504.
Q 03Which of the three ships on the first voyage was the largest, a carrack under Columbus's direct command?
The Santa María
The Santa María, a roughly 100-ton nao (carrack), was the flagship; its owner Juan de la Cosa sailed aboard as master and later drew one of the earliest maps showing the New World.
Q 04From which Spanish port did the first voyage depart on 3 August 1492?
Palos de la Frontera
Palos de la Frontera, on the Río Tinto in Huelva, was obliged by royal order to supply two of the ships; the fleet sailed down the river to the Atlantic. The second voyage left from Cádiz in 1493.
Q 05On what date in 1492 did Columbus's fleet first make landfall in the Americas?
12 October
Land was sighted at about 2 a.m. on 12 October 1492, five weeks after the fleet left the Canaries; the anniversary became Columbus Day in the United States and Día de la Raza in Latin America.
Q 06What name did Columbus give Guanahani, the island of his first 1492 landfall?
San Salvador
Columbus named Guanahani San Salvador ('Holy Saviour'). It lies in the Bahamas; Watling Island took the name San Salvador in 1925, though the true landfall island is debated.
Q 07Which monarchs sponsored the 1492 voyage?
Isabella I and Ferdinand II
Isabella I and Ferdinand II, the Catholic Monarchs of Castile and Aragon, agreed only after Granada fell in January 1492, following years of Columbus lobbying courts including Portugal and England.
Q 08What title was Columbus promised in the April 1492 Capitulations of Santa Fe if he succeeded?
Admiral of the Ocean Sea
The Capitulations of Santa Fe, signed 17 April 1492, made him Admiral of the Ocean Sea, a hereditary rank modelled on the Admiral of Castile, with jurisdiction over the seas he crossed.
Q 09What fraction of all revenues from the new lands was Columbus promised in perpetuity?
One-tenth
Columbus was promised one-tenth of all gold, pearls and goods from the new lands, the diezmo; the Crown's failure to honour it led to the pleitos colombinos lawsuits brought by his son Diego.
Q 10What was the real name of the caravel nicknamed La Niña?
Santa Clara
The Niña's formal name was Santa Clara; the nickname honoured her owner, Juan Niño of Moguer. The Santa María was nicknamed La Gallega, and the Pinta's real name is unknown.
Q 11Brothers from which seafaring family captained the Pinta and the Niña in 1492?
Pinzón
Martín Alonso Pinzón captained the Pinta and his brother Vicente Yáñez Pinzón the Niña; Martín Alonso later took the Pinta off on an unauthorised gold hunt.
Q 12Which sailor is credited with first sighting land at about 2 a.m. on the morning of the 1492 landfall?
Rodrigo de Triana
Rodrigo de Triana, a lookout aboard the Pinta, made the sighting; Columbus later claimed he had seen a light hours earlier and took the 10,000-maravedí lifetime pension promised to the first man to see land.
Q 13On which day of 1492 did the Santa María run aground and have to be abandoned?
Christmas Day
Q 21Which island did Columbus first sight on his second voyage, on 3 November 1493?
Dominica
Columbus named it Dominica because he sighted it on a Sunday (domingo); the island kept the name as an independent state from 1978, distinct from the Dominican Republic.
Q 22On which voyage did Columbus first sight Trinidad and the northern coast of South America?
Third (1498)
The men sighted Trinidad on 31 July 1498 after being becalmed in the doldrums for days in punishing heat.
Q 23Which royal commissioner arrested Columbus in 1500 and shipped him back to Spain in chains?
Francisco de Bobadilla
Francisco de Bobadilla, sent as judge-investigator, seized Columbus on Hispaniola in 1500; reputedly only a cook would put the admiral in irons, and Columbus refused to have them removed for the whole voyage home.
She grounded on a reef off Hispaniola in the early hours of Christmas Day, 25 December 1492; her timbers built the fort of La Navidad, Spanish for Christmas.
Q 14How many men did Columbus leave at La Navidad, the first Spanish settlement in the Americas?
39
Columbus left 39 men at La Navidad with the Santa María's stores; when he returned in November 1493 the fort was in ruins and every man was dead, killed after quarrels over gold and women.
Q 15In which modern country was La Navidad located?
Haiti
La Navidad stood on Hispaniola's north coast near modern Cap-Haïtien, Haiti; the later settlement La Isabela, founded on the second voyage, lay to the east in today's Dominican Republic.
Q 16What collective name did Columbus give the peoples he met, a label that stuck for centuries?
Los Indios
Columbus called them los indios, 'Indians', because he believed he had reached the Indies; the peoples he first met were Lucayan and Taíno, Arawak-speaking islanders.
Q 17From which port did Columbus's fleet sail west into the open Atlantic on 6 September 1492?
San Sebastián de La Gomera
After the Pinta's rudder was repaired and the Niña re-rigged with square sails at Las Palmas, the fleet took on water and provisions at San Sebastián de La Gomera and sailed on 6 September.
Q 18On returning in March 1493, Columbus was received by the Catholic Monarchs in which city?
Barcelona
The court was at Barcelona, where in April 1493 he presented kidnapped Taínos, parrots and gold; a storm had forced him into Lisbon on the way home, where John II claimed the lands under the Treaty of Alcáçovas.
Q 19How many ships sailed on Columbus's second voyage in September 1493?
17
A fleet of 17 ships carried some 1,200 to 1,500 men, including farmers, stonemasons and priests, plus a young Juan Ponce de León; they left Cádiz on 25 September 1493.
Q 20Which island, known to the Taíno as Boriquen, did Columbus name San Juan Bautista in 1493?
Puerto Rico
Columbus named Puerto Rico San Juan Bautista on 19 November 1493; the names later swapped, the island becoming Puerto Rico ('rich port') and its capital San Juan.
Q 24After returning to Spain in chains, how long were Columbus and his brothers jailed before Ferdinand freed them?
Six weeks
They were held about six weeks; released on Ferdinand's order, Columbus appeared before the monarchs at the Alhambra in Granada on 17 December 1500 and wept as he defended himself.
Q 25Columbus reached the Bay Islands in 1502, off the coast of which modern country?
Honduras
The Bay Islands lie off Honduras; at Guanaja his brother Bartholomew met Maya merchants in a trading canoe 'as long as a galley' and saw cacao beans, which the Maya used as money.
Q 26What name did Columbus give the Cayman Islands when he sighted them on 10 May 1503?
Las Tortugas
He named them Las Tortugas, 'the turtles', for the sea turtles swarming there; the later name Cayman comes from a Carib word for crocodile, caimán.
Q 27On which island were Columbus and his men stranded for months in 1503–04?
Jamaica
Columbus beached his two worm-eaten ships at St Ann's Bay, Jamaica, on 25 June 1503; Governor Ovando of Hispaniola, no friend of Columbus, delayed a rescue for nearly a year.
Q 28How did the marooned Columbus persuade the islanders to keep feeding his hungry crew?
He predicted a lunar eclipse
Using astronomical tables he foretold the eclipse of 29 February 1504 and claimed his God was angry; the frightened islanders resumed provisions.
Q 29Who paddled a canoe to Hispaniola to fetch help for the stranded fourth-voyage crew?
Diego Méndez
Diego Méndez, with the Genoese Bartolomeo Fieschi, crossed some 100 miles of open sea to Hispaniola in a dugout canoe in July 1503, then chartered the caravel that finally lifted the crew in June 1504.
Q 30In which Spanish city did Columbus die on 20 May 1506?
Valladolid
He died at Valladolid, where he had settled to press his claims on the new sovereigns Philip and Juana after Isabella's death in 1504; he was about 54.