Circus Trivia
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164 free Circus trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
45 free circus trivia questions with answers. The circus is 250 years old and stranger than the posters. It began with a cavalry sergeant riding in a circle in a London field, its most famous elephant gave English a new word, its worst day was caused by waterproofing a tent with gasoline, and its biggest modern name refuses to use animals at all. This quiz runs 164 questions from Philip Astley and the first American circus through Barnum, Bailey and the Ringling brothers, Jumbo, the clowns and trapeze pioneers, Blondin at Niagara, the Wallendas, the Hartford fire, Ringling's closure and animal-free return, Cirque du Soleil, and the odd corners like the flea circus, the calliope and why Piccadilly Circus is called a circus. It starts easy and works up to questions for people who know who Dan Rice was. Every answer has been checked against reference sources, shown under each question once you answer, so it works for a themed party, a classroom or a general-knowledge round at pub trivia.
30 of 164 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who is regarded as the 'father of the modern circus'?
Philip Astley
Philip Astley drew crowds to his riding school with trick-riding displays performed in a ring, then added acrobats, a rope-dancer and a clown to build the first full circus programme.
Q 02In what year and city did Astley put on his first public show?
1768, London
Philip Astley and his wife Patty first performed on Easter Monday, 4 April 1768, at Ha'penny Hatch in Lambeth, London, near today's Waterloo station.
Q 03What is the standard diameter of a circus ring, fixed by Astley?
42 feet
Astley settled on a ring of 42 feet (13 m), the diameter at which a cantering horse's centrifugal pull helps a rider stand on its back; it became the standard circus ring worldwide.
Q 04Where does the word 'circus' come from?
Latin for 'circle'
'Circus' is Latin for 'circle' or 'ring', borrowed from Greek kirkos; Romans applied it to their chariot-racing arenas, and 18th-century London showmen revived it for shows built around a ring.
Q 05Who coined the term 'circus' when he opened the Royal Circus in London in 1782?
Charles Dibdin
Charles Dibdin, a songwriter and writer of pantomimes, opened the Royal Circus in Lambeth with the equestrian Charles Hughes in 1782 and chose the name himself.
Q 06What was Astley's job before he became a showman?
A cavalry sergeant major
Philip Astley served in the 15th Light Dragoons, a cavalry regiment, and left the army in 1766 as a cavalry sergeant major before opening his riding school in Lambeth.
Q 07Who brought the first modern circus to the United States, opening in Philadelphia in 1793?
John Bill Ricketts
John Bill Ricketts, a rider trained at Hughes's Royal Circus in London, opened his Philadelphia circus on 3 April 1793; George Washington attended a performance that month.
Q 08In circus slang, a cry of 'Hey, Rube!' summoned help for what?
A brawl with townspeople
'Hey, Rube!' summoned every circus hand to a brawl with townspeople, the rallying cry when hostile locals started a fight; 'rube' was the show people's word for a country townsman.
Q 09In what decade was the first circus held under a canvas big top?
1820s
Joshuah Purdy Brown used a large canvas tent in 1825; touring tents overtook wooden circus buildings by the mid-19th century.
Q 10Who is generally considered the first mainstream clown, so dominant that clowns became known as 'Joeys'?
Joseph Grimaldi
Joseph Grimaldi starred in Regency pantomime at Drury Lane and Sadler's Wells, turning the clown into the star of the show, and 'Joey' entered the language for any clown.
Q 11Which American clown popularised the phrases 'the one-horse show' and 'Hey, Rube!'?
Dan Rice
Dan Rice, the most famous American clown of the 1850s, toured with a trained pig and a single horse; his 'one-horse show' and the 'Hey, Rube!' cry passed into circus slang.
Q 12Who performed the first flying trapeze routine, at the Cirque Napoléon in Paris in 1859?
Jules Léotard
Jules Léotard, son of a Toulouse gymnasium owner, flew between trapezes at the Cirque Napoléon on 12 November 1859; safety nets came later, so he worked over a row of mattresses.
Q 13Who directed Disney's 2019 live-action remake of Dumbo?
Tim Burton
Q 21In what year were the Ringling and Barnum & Bailey circuses combined into one show?
1919
The combined Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey show first played Madison Square Garden in March 1919, after wartime labour shortages and rail restrictions made running two circuses impractical.
Q 22Which US city became Ringling's winter headquarters in 1927?
Sarasota, Florida
John Ringling moved the winter quarters from Bridgeport, Connecticut, to Sarasota, Florida, in 1927; the circus shifted to nearby Venice in 1960.
Q 23What was the billing slogan of Barnum's, and later Ringling's, circus?
The Greatest Show on Earth
Tim Burton directed the 2019 Dumbo, casting Colin Farrell, Michael Keaton and Danny DeVito in a story set in a struggling travelling circus just after the First World War.
Q 14Which tightrope walker crossed the Niagara Gorge in 1859, later blindfolded, on stilts and cooking an omelette?
Charles Blondin
Charles Blondin, born Jean François Gravelet, first crossed the gorge on a 1,100-foot rope on 30 June 1859 and later carried his manager Harry Colcord across on his back.
Q 15What was the name of the elephant Barnum bought from London Zoo in 1882 for £2,000?
Jumbo
Jumbo, an African bush elephant, had carried children on rides at the zoo for years; his £2,000 sale to Barnum in 1882 caused a national outcry in Britain.
Q 16What lasting effect did Barnum's famous elephant have on the English language?
A new word for anything very large
A new word for anything very large: 'jumbo' passed from the elephant's name into everyday English, from jumbo jets to jumbo shrimp; Barnum had billed him as the biggest elephant in the world.
Q 17How did Jumbo die in 1885?
Hit by a locomotive in Ontario
Jumbo was hit by a freight locomotive in the railway yard at St. Thomas, Ontario, on 15 September 1885; Barnum claimed he died shielding the smaller elephant Tom Thumb.
Q 18Which university's sports teams are nicknamed the Jumbos, after Barnum's elephant?
Tufts
Barnum, an early Tufts trustee, gave Jumbo's stuffed hide to the university's Barnum Hall; it burned in a 1975 fire, but Tufts teams kept the Jumbos name.
Q 19Who persuaded P. T. Barnum out of retirement in 1871 to lend his name to their circus?
Dan Castello and William Cameron Coup
William Cameron Coup and Dan Castello talked the semi-retired showman into backing their show, which opened in Brooklyn in April 1871; Coup later pioneered the circus train and the second ring.
Q 20Where and when did five of the seven Ringling brothers start their circus?
Baraboo, Wisconsin, 1884
Al, Otto, Alf T., Charles and John Ringling opened their first show in Baraboo, Wisconsin, on 19 May 1884; the town later became home to the Circus World museum.
Barnum used it for the show Castello and Coup built in Delavan, Wisconsin.
Q 24On what date did fire sweep a Ringling big top in Hartford, in one of the worst fire disasters in US history?
July 6, 1944
July 6, 1944: at least 167 people died in a Ringling big top attended by 6,000 to 8,000, with more than 700 injured.
Q 25Why did the Hartford big top burn so fast?
Paraffin-and-gasoline waterproofing
Melting wax rained down on the crowd, and big-cat chutes blocked two exits.
Q 26A photo of which sad-faced tramp clown with a water bucket named the Hartford fire 'the day the clowns cried'?
Emmett Kelly
Emmett Kelly, in his sad-faced tramp make-up, was photographed carrying a water bucket toward the blaze; a 13-year-old Charles Nelson Reilly was among the survivors.
Q 27Which family bought Ringling from the Ringlings in 1967?
The Felds
Irvin Feld sold it to Mattel in 1971 and bought it back a decade later; his son Kenneth later took over Feld Entertainment.
Q 28What did Irvin Feld found in 1968 to revive a neglected craft?
A Clown College
Irvin Feld opened the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College in Venice, Florida, in 1968 to train a new generation of clowns; it ran until 1997 and graduated about 1,400 students.
Q 29When did Ringling retire its elephants?
May 2016
Ringling's elephants gave their last performance on 1 May 2016, eighteen months ahead of the 2018 date first announced; the circus itself gave its last show in May 2017.
Q 30Where did Ringling give its final show before its six-year hiatus, on May 21, 2017?
Nassau Coliseum on Long Island
The last performance was at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, Long Island, on 21 May 2017; falling attendance, animal-rights pressure and high costs were blamed.