Cornell University
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50 free Cornell University trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Cornell is the youngest member of the Ivy League and in some ways the least typical. It was founded just after the Civil War by a self-made businessman and a scholar who wanted a university open to any person and any field of study, and it still mixes private colleges with state-supported ones on a hilltop campus cut by gorges in upstate New York. This quiz covers the full sweep of Cornell history and lore: the founders and where their money came from, the alumni and professors who went on to change science, literature, law, food and film, the Big Red teams and their rivalries, campus landmarks, songs and student traditions, and a few legendary pranks. Expect Nobel winners and sitcom characters side by side. It is written for students, alumni and proud parents, for anyone planning a Cornell-themed trivia night, and for curious players who simply like a good college story. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave knowing more about the university than when you started.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which fast-food staple did Cornell food scientist Robert Baker invent and publish without ever patenting it?
Chicken nugget
Chicken nugget credit often goes to McDonald's, which did not sell McNuggets until the early 1980s. Baker also created Cornell chicken, a vinegar-marinated barbecue recipe popular across upstate New York.
Q 02Which NBC sitcom features Andy Bernard, forever boasting of his Cornell a cappella group, Here Comes Treble?
The Office
The Office cast Ed Helms as Andy, and its finale sends him back to Ithaca for a job in Cornell's admissions department.
Q 03Which TV science host earned a Cornell engineering degree in 1977, then invented a part for Boeing 747s?
Bill Nye
Bill Nye quit Boeing in 1986 for a Seattle sketch comedy show, where he performed wacky science experiments on air.
Q 04Which Supreme Court justice studied literature under Vladimir Nabokov before graduating from Cornell in 1954?
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Ruth Bader Ginsburg met her husband Martin at Cornell and married him a month after graduating. She later named Nabokov as a major influence on her writing.
Q 05Which future screen superhero chose Cornell because Ithaca was far from New York City's acting jobs?
Christopher Reeve
Christopher Reeve had promised his mother he would finish college before acting full time. He went on to Juilliard and first played Superman in 1978.
Q 06Which animal, brought live to Cornell football games in 1915 and named Touchdown, became the mascot?
Bear
Bear number one cost the athletic association $25. Harvard students kidnapped him before the 1915 game by posing as his keepers on a morning walk.
Q 07Which object appeared atop Cornell's 173-foot clock tower in October 1997 and stayed there until March?
A pumpkin
A pumpkin it was, as DNA tests later confirmed, and the pranksters have never been publicly identified.
Q 08Ezra Cornell made the fortune that endowed his university from stock in which company?
Western Union
Western Union was formed when his lines merged with a rival's, handing him $2 million in stock. He got his start devising a plow to bury telegraph cable, then strung the poles for Samuel Morse's Baltimore–Washington line.
Q 09James McLamore, who arrived at Cornell with $11 in his pocket, went on to co-found which fast-food chain?
Burger King
Burger King of Miami was formed in 1954 with David Edgerton, a fellow Cornell alumnus. The pair sold the chain to Pillsbury in 1967.
Q 10Cornell's library holds one of only five manuscript copies of which Abraham Lincoln speech?
Gettysburg Address
Gettysburg Address manuscripts are scarce, and Cornell's is the only one still paired with the letter and envelope Lincoln sent with it.
Q 11Which Cosmos host joined Cornell after Harvard denied him tenure, and stayed nearly 30 years?
Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan worked on the Voyager Golden Record during his Cornell years and lived in an Egyptian revival house perched on a cliff edge in Ithaca.
Q 12Which author of Beloved earned a Cornell master's degree in 1955 with a thesis on Woolf and Faulkner?
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison became the first Black woman of any nationality to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1993, and later returned to Cornell as a professor-at-large.
Q 13Which Slaughterhouse-Five author studied biochemistry at Cornell before leaving to join the Army?
Kurt Vonnegut
Q 21What do Cornell hockey fans hurl onto the ice when archrival Harvard skates out at Lynah Rink?
Fish
Fish first hit the ice in February 1973. The student behind it said there was no symbolism: he just wanted something disgusting in the Harvard net.
Q 22Which goaltender won 76 of his 81 starts for Cornell before lifting six Stanley Cups with Montreal?
Ken Dryden
Ken Dryden put off the Canadiens in 1964 to study history at Cornell, and backstopped the college team to the 1967 national title.
Q 23Cornell gave back a 1940 football win after film showed it had scored on a fifth down against which rival?
Dartmouth
Dartmouth accepted the forfeit by telegram, turning a 7–3 defeat into a 3–0 victory. Cornell's president at the time was himself a Dartmouth graduate.
Kurt Vonnegut was an indifferent science student who also edited the student newspaper. Poor grades and a satirical article cost him his place in Cornell's ROTC unit.
Q 14Which Charlotte's Web author was nicknamed Andy at Cornell because he shared a co-founder's surname?
E. B. White
E. B. White shared a surname with Andrew Dickson White, Cornell's first president. He edited the student newspaper in his senior year and graduated in 1921.
Q 15Which Cornell law graduate and coach gave his nickname to a famous youth football league?
Pop Warner
Pop Warner got the nickname for being one of the oldest students at Cornell. He later coached its team twice before moving on to Carlisle, Pittsburgh and Stanford.
Q 16Willis Carrier, a 1901 Cornell graduate, designed the first modern version of which home comfort?
Air conditioning
Air conditioning began in 1902 as a fix for a Brooklyn printing company's air quality problem, and Carrier's key addition was humidity control.
Q 17In 1922 Cornell opened the world's first four-year program in which field, later funded by Ellsworth Statler?
Hotel management
Hotel management students still train at the Statler, a working hotel on campus. Its namesake was a skeptic until a visit to the school in 1927 won him over.
Q 18Cornell gave Daniel Salmon, namesake of salmonella, the first American doctorate in which field in 1876?
Veterinary medicine
Veterinary medicine had a Cornell professor from 1868, the year the university opened. Salmonella was actually found by Salmon's assistant, Theobald Smith.
Q 19Cornell's free Merlin app identifies which animals from a photo or a sound recording?
Birds
Birds are the business of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, whose eBird project has gathered more than a billion sightings from volunteers worldwide.
Q 20Cornell's Steve Squyres led the science team for Spirit and Opportunity, twin rovers on which world?
Mars
Mars was meant to host each rover for about 90 days, yet Opportunity kept working for more than 14 years, until a dust storm silenced it in 2018.
Q 24Which graduate of Cornell's labor relations school became the NHL's first commissioner in 1993?
Gary Bettman
Gary Bettman spent a dozen years as an NBA lawyer and executive before taking the job. Rob Manfred, later baseball's commissioner, is a Cornell graduate too.
Q 25Where in New York City, reached from Manhattan by aerial tramway, did Cornell Tech open in 2017?
Roosevelt Island
Roosevelt Island gave the campus a site in the East River where a city hospital once stood. Cornell won it in a contest launched by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Q 26Cornell opened the first American medical school abroad in which Gulf country?
Qatar
Qatar's government helps fund the college through the Qatar Foundation, and students follow the same curriculum as at Cornell's medical school in Manhattan.
Q 27Until 2011 Cornell ran Arecibo, once the world's largest radio dish, where in the Caribbean?
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico hosted the 305-metre dish, set in a natural sinkhole, from 1963 until its collapse in 2020. No single telescope was bigger for 53 years.
Q 28Which controversial 1955 novel did Vladimir Nabokov write during his years teaching at Cornell?
Lolita
Lolita was written on his summer butterfly-collecting trips and nearly burned: his wife Véra stopped him destroying the unfinished drafts.
Q 29Robert Moog earned a Cornell doctorate in 1965 while developing which electronic instrument?
Synthesizer
Synthesizer parts first took shape at Cornell with composer Herb Deutsch. Moog had already spent years designing and selling theremins.
Q 30Which surgeon, once drum major of Cornell's marching band, devised abdominal thrusts for choking victims?
Henry Heimlich
Henry Heimlich earned both his degrees from Cornell, finishing medical school at 23. He first described the maneuver in 1974, three decades into his career.