Columbus Day Trivia
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49 free Columbus Day trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Columbus Day trivia quiz covers both the holiday and the history it commemorates. The holiday rounds trace the first celebration by New York's Tammany Society in 1792, Colorado's pioneering state holiday, Benjamin Harrison's one-time 1892 proclamation after the New Orleans lynchings, the 1968 law that fixed the second Monday in October, and the growing list of states and cities that now mark Indigenous Peoples' Day instead. Latin America's Día de la Raza, Spain's Fiesta Nacional and Italy's Giornata Nazionale get their turn too. The voyage rounds go back to 1492: the Niña, Pinta and Santa María, the lookout who first saw land, the grounding on Christmas Day, La Navidad, and the chains, lawsuits and Jamaican eclipse of Columbus's later years. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What did Columbus name the island its inhabitants called Guanahaní?
San Salvador
San Salvador. Nobody is sure which island it was: Watling Island took the name officially in the 1920s on the strength of its claim, but scholars still argue for several rivals.
Q 02Since 1971, on which Monday of October has Columbus Day fallen in the United States?
Second
Second. Until then the holiday sat on October 12 itself; a 1968 law moved it, along with Washington's Birthday and Memorial Day, to a Monday to give workers more three-day weekends.
Q 03Which New York group held the first Columbus Day celebration in 1792?
Tammany Society
Tammany Society. The club, later the Tammany Hall political machine, toasted Columbus on the landing's 300th anniversary, yet it took its own name from Tamanend, a chief of the Lenape.
Q 04Which city hosted the World's Columbian Exposition, the world's fair held to mark 400 years since Columbus's first voyage?
Chicago
Chicago. The fairground was dedicated in October 1892, in time for the anniversary, but the fair itself did not open to visitors until May 1893, half a year late.
Q 05Which president became the first to issue a formal proclamation of Indigenous Peoples' Day, on the same day as Columbus Day?
Joe Biden
Joe Biden. His proclamation spoke of a 'centuries-long campaign of violence, displacement, assimilation, and terror' against Native peoples, yet he signed a Columbus Day proclamation the same day rather than replace the holiday.
Q 06Colorado replaced Columbus Day in 2020 with a holiday honouring which Italian-born saint?
Frances Xavier Cabrini
Frances Xavier Cabrini. An Italian immigrant herself, she founded 67 schools, hospitals and orphanages and was the first US citizen to be made a saint; her day falls a week before the old holiday.
Q 07Which president declared a one-time national Columbus Day celebration in 1892?
Benjamin Harrison
Benjamin Harrison. His proclamation made schools the centre of the day, and it came the year after an American mob lynched Italian immigrants, deaths for which he paid reparations to Italy.
Q 08Which city's 1891 lynching of 11 Italian immigrants preceded the 1892 Columbus Day celebration?
New Orleans
New Orleans. The mob broke into the jail after a trial over the police chief's murder ended without a conviction, and though it included some of the city's leading men, nobody was ever charged.
Q 09Which patriotic text was written for the 1892 Columbus anniversary celebrations?
Pledge of Allegiance
Pledge of Allegiance. Credited to Francis Bellamy of The Youth's Companion, a magazine then selling American flags to schools, it was first recited by children across the country that October.
Q 10After lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, which president began proclaiming Columbus Day nationwide every October 12?
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt. His yearly proclamations made it a day of observance, not a day off: Columbus Day did not become a federal holiday for another three decades.
Q 11Which kingdom's ruler was the first to turn down Columbus's plan to reach Asia by sailing west?
Portugal
Portugal. King John II's advisers judged, rightly, that Columbus had badly underestimated the distance to Asia, and the kingdom was already pursuing its own route east around Africa.
Q 12Which president signed the 1968 act that made Columbus Day a federal holiday?
Lyndon Johnson
Lyndon Johnson. Most states already honoured Columbus by then; the act made the day federal and, he said, guaranteed government workers at least five three-day weekends a year.
Q 13Which Canadian holiday coincides with US Columbus Day?
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving. Canadians hold theirs weeks before the American feast, and trace it to explorer Martin Frobisher, whose crew gave thanks in the Arctic in the 1570s, decades before the Pilgrims landed.
Q 21The island Columbus named Hispaniola is shared today by the Dominican Republic and which other country?
Haiti
Haiti. Spain's colony grew up in the east of the island, but settlers from a rival power took hold in the west and Spain ceded that third in 1697, which is why the two neighbours speak different languages.
Q 22In much of Latin America, by what name has October 12 traditionally been known?
Día de la Raza
Día de la Raza. The name, 'Day of the Race', celebrated the shared heritage of Spain and its former colonies, but Argentina, among others, has since renamed the day to honour cultural diversity instead.
Q 23Which Latin American capital took Columbus off his plinth in 2020 and chose a statue of an Indigenous woman to replace him?
Q 14Which US service branch marks its birthday on October 13, the day after traditional Columbus Day?
Navy
Navy. The date honours a 1775 vote of the Continental Congress to fit out armed ships for a cruise, yet the service only adopted October 13 as its birthday in 1972.
Q 15Which city, where Italians arrived with the Gold Rush, claims the nation's oldest continuous Columbus Day parade?
San Francisco
San Francisco. Merchant Nicola Larco started the parade in the 1860s for a community that had come seeking gold, and since 1994 it has marched under a new name, the Italian Heritage Parade.
Q 16In the US Virgin Islands, Columbus Day doubles as a friendship day with which other territory?
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico. Columbus reached both within days of each other in November 1493, sighting St. Croix and the Virgin Islands and then landing on Puerto Rico, which he named San Juan Bautista.
Q 17Which other legal holiday does Virginia mark on the same day as Columbus Day?
Yorktown Victory Day
Yorktown Victory Day. The British surrender at Yorktown came on October 19, 1781, so Virginia honours the battle that settled the Revolutionary War on the same October Monday.
Q 18What does Hawaii call its alternative to Columbus Day?
Discoverers' Day
Discoverers' Day. Hawaii is one of the states that do not observe Columbus Day: the islands gave the date their own name, though it is not an official day off.
Q 19Which state skips Columbus Day but takes a late-October day off for its own statehood?
Nevada
Nevada. By law its governor is 'authorized and requested' to proclaim Columbus Day each year, but the paid holiday that month is Nevada Day, marking statehood on October 31, 1864.
Q 20Which city began the practice of celebrating Indigenous Peoples' Day instead of Columbus Day, in 1992?
Berkeley
Berkeley. Congress had picked the Bay Area for a 1992 jubilee, with replica ships due to sail through the Golden Gate, and local Native organisers answered by persuading the city to rename the day.
Mexico City
Mexico City. The statue left Reforma Avenue two days before planned October 12 protests, officially 'for restoration', and the mayor said moving it was about social justice, not erasing history.
Q 24Which country has marked Día de la Resistencia Indígena since 2002?
Venezuela
Venezuela. Hugo Chávez's government turned the meaning of the day around by decree: a date that had honoured the Spanish arrival now honours the peoples who fought it.
Q 25Which island group off Africa was Columbus's last stop for repairs and supplies before he crossed the Atlantic in 1492?
The Canaries
The Canaries. He spent about a month there while the Pinta's broken rudder was mended, then took his final departure from Gomera on September 6.
Q 26Which Spanish city holds its main fiesta around October 12 for Our Lady of the Pillar?
Zaragoza
Zaragoza. On the 12th itself, a vast crowd comes to lay flowers before the Virgin in the Offering of Flowers, a highlight of the fiestas.
Q 27On his 1498 voyage Columbus first reached the American mainland, on the coast of which region?
South America
South America. He first took the coast for another island, and only the vast outflow of fresh water from the Orinoco persuaded him that so great a river must drain a continent.
Q 28What did Belize rename October 12 in 2021?
Indigenous Peoples' Resistance Day
Indigenous Peoples' Resistance Day. It replaced Pan American Day, and was first marked under the new name on October 12, 2021, as a deliberate break with what officials called the old holiday's colonial legacy.
Q 29Which Caribbean country replaced its Discovery Day holiday with National Heroes Day?
The Bahamas
The Bahamas. The swap was pointed: Columbus's first landfall in 1492 was on a Bahamian island, the very event that Discovery Day had celebrated every October 12.
Q 30Whose account of the riches of Asia did Columbus study closely while planning his voyage west?
Marco Polo
Marco Polo. His book placed Japan far out to the east of China, which helped persuade Columbus that Asia lay a short sail west of Europe; the real distance was about five times his estimate.