Delaware Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
95 free Delaware trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
41 free Delaware trivia questions with answers. Delaware is the second-smallest state, but it punches far above its size in trivia. It was the first to ratify the Constitution, it hosts more corporations than people, it has no sales tax, three counties and a border drawn with a compass, and it gave the world nylon, the broiler chicken industry and a president. This quiz covers all of it. You will find questions on Dover and Wilmington, Dutch and Swedish colonists, Caesar Rodney's midnight ride, the Blue Hen, DuPont and Winterthur, horseshoe crabs in Delaware Bay, the Monster Mile, Return Day in Georgetown, Punkin Chunkin, and the state's official milk, peach pie and rescue dogs. Difficulty runs from easy classroom facts to stumpers only a lifelong Delawarean would know. Every answer has been checked against a primary source, mostly the relevant Wikipedia article, and the citation is attached to each question.
30 of 95 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Delaware is nicknamed 'The First State' because it was the first to do what?
Ratify the US Constitution
It acted five days ahead of the next state. The nickname was only made official in 2002.
Q 02What is the capital of Delaware?
Dover
Dover is only the state's second-largest city, with about 38,000 people. Wilmington, with about 70,000, is the biggest.
Q 03Which US state is the only one smaller in area than Delaware?
Rhode Island
Rhode Island is the only state smaller than Delaware, which covers about 2,490 square miles; Delaware also has the lowest mean elevation of any state, about 60 feet.
Q 04How many counties does Delaware have?
Three
Delaware has just three counties, the fewest of any state; Rhode Island and Hawaii, the next fewest, each have five.
Q 05Delaware takes its name from Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, who was the colonial governor of where?
Virginia
De La Warr governed the Virginia colony, arriving at Jamestown in 1610 and staying barely a year; the bay was named for him first, then the river, the state and the people the English called Delaware Indians.
Q 06Which state lies directly south of Delaware?
Maryland
Maryland wraps around Delaware's western and southern borders on the Delmarva Peninsula; New Jersey lies across the Delaware River and Bay to the east.
Q 07Roughly what share of Fortune 500 companies are legally incorporated in tiny Delaware?
About three-fifths
Business-friendly courts and laws, not physical offices, draw them in.
Q 08Delaware is one of only five US states with no statewide what?
Sales tax
Delaware levies no sales tax, a distinction it shares with Alaska, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon; tax-free shopping draws visitors from neighbouring states.
Q 09Most of Delaware's northern border is a rare curved boundary called what?
The Twelve-Mile Circle
The Twelve-Mile Circle dates from William Penn's 1681 charter, which fixed the boundary at a 12-mile radius; within the arc Delaware owns the river out to New Jersey's low-tide mark.
Q 10Fort Christina, founded at present-day Wilmington in 1638, was the first North American settlement of which nation?
Sweden
The colonists arrived aboard the Kalmar Nyckel and Fogel Grip and named the fort after their queen. It became the capital of the New Sweden colony.
Q 11Until 1776 Delaware's three counties shared a governor with which neighbouring colony?
Pennsylvania
Known as the Lower Counties on the Delaware, they shared Pennsylvania's governor but had their own assembly from 1704; on June 15, 1776 that assembly broke with both Britain and Pennsylvania.
Q 12Which Delaware delegate rode 70 miles overnight in July 1776 to break his delegation's tie on independence?
Caesar Rodney
Caesar Rodney rode through a storm from Dover to Philadelphia to vote with Thomas McKean against George Read; he hid facial cancer behind a green scarf, and his ride appears on the 1999 Delaware quarter.
Q 13Delaware's state bird, the Blue Hen, gets its name from what?
Q 21Delaware Bay holds the world's largest population of which ancient marine animal?
Horseshoe crab
Delaware Bay's horseshoe crabs, little changed in 400 million years, spawn on its beaches each May, when migrating red knots gorge on their eggs; the horseshoe crab is the state marine animal.
Q 22Which ferry links southern Delaware with New Jersey across the mouth of Delaware Bay?
Cape May–Lewes
The Cape May–Lewes Ferry has crossed the 17-mile mouth of the bay since 1964; Cape Henlopen beside Lewes and Cape May in New Jersey frame the entrance.
Q 23The Delaware Memorial Bridge to New Jersey is a pair of twin what?
Suspension bridges
Fighting cocks carried by Revolutionary soldiers
Captain Jonathan Caldwell's men were nicknamed the 'Blue Hen's Chickens' after their gamecocks. The chicken became the official state bird on April 14, 1939, and University of Delaware teams are the Blue Hens.
Q 14Which chemical company was founded in 1802 as a gunpowder mill on the Brandywine Creek near Wilmington?
DuPont
DuPont began as Éleuthère Irénée du Pont's Eleutherian Mills gunpowder works in 1802; the company later gave the world neoprene, Teflon and Kevlar.
Q 15Which synthetic fibre was first produced at a Wilmington research station on February 28, 1935?
Nylon
Nylon was first made at DuPont's Experimental Station under Wallace Carothers, who died before it was announced; its first commercial use was toothbrush bristles in 1938, and stockings followed in 1940.
Q 16Winterthur, the 175-room mansion and museum north of Wilmington, was the estate of which family?
The du Ponts
Henry Francis, an heir of the family, opened it to the public in 1951. Its 90,000 objects make it the largest museum of American furniture and decorative arts in the world.
Q 17Wilmington was renamed in 1739 after Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, who held which office?
British prime minister
Spencer Compton was British prime minister from 1742 to 1743, succeeding Walpole; he took his title from Wilmington in Sussex, and Thomas Penn renamed Willingtown in his honour in 1739.
Q 18A 1981 Delaware law scrapping usury limits made Wilmington a national centre for which industry?
Credit-card banking
The Financial Center Development Act of 1981 lifted interest-rate caps, drawing credit-card banks such as Chase and MBNA, and later Barclays, to Wilmington; corporate law and banking underpin the state's economy.
Q 19Which future president represented Delaware in the US Senate from 1973 to 2009?
Joe Biden
Joe Biden won his Senate seat in 1972 aged 29 and held it until becoming vice president in 2009; his family had moved from Scranton to Claymont, Delaware, when he was ten, and he became the 46th president.
Q 20Reggae star Bob Marley briefly lived in Wilmington, Delaware in 1966, working at which local employers?
A DuPont lab and a Chrysler plant
He was near his mother's home and used the alias Donald Marley on the Chrysler assembly line in Newark. He soon went back to Jamaica and the Wailers.
The first span opened in 1951 and the second in 1968, briefly making it the world's second-longest twin suspension bridge. Because of the Twelve-Mile Circle, almost the whole crossing is in Delaware.
Q 24Dover Motor Speedway, a concrete NASCAR oval in Delaware's capital, is nicknamed what?
The Monster Mile
The one-mile concrete oval is the Monster Mile; Miles the Monster has been its mascot since 2000, a 46-foot statue of him greets fans, and the track opened in 1969 alongside a harness-racing course.
Q 25At Georgetown, Delaware's post-election 'Return Day', what do winners and losers do together?
Bury a hatchet in a tub of sand
Winners and losers literally bury a hatchet in a tub of sand, a tradition dating from 1792 when voters returned to Georgetown two days after polling to hear the results; rivals share carriages and an ox roast.
Q 26Which craft brewery was founded in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, in 1995?
Dogfish Head
Sam Calagione opened Dogfish Head as a brewpub in Rehoboth Beach in June 1995; its 60 Minute and 90 Minute IPAs made it one of America's best-known craft brewers, with a larger brewery in Milton.
Q 27What happened to Cecile Steele in 1923 that led her to found the US broiler chicken industry?
She was sent 500 chicks instead of 50
She raised the surplus birds in a coal-heated barn and her husband sold them for 62 cents a pound. Neighbours copied her, and by 1935 the Steeles were raising 35,000 broilers a year.
Q 28Which is the only state whose highest point is lower than Delaware's Ebright Azimuth?
Florida
Florida's Britton Hill, at 345 feet, is the only state high point lower than Delaware's 448-foot Ebright Azimuth, a benchmark on a suburban street near the Pennsylvania line named after the Ebright family.
Q 29What is Delaware's official state flower?
Peach blossom
The peach blossom was adopted in 1895, when Delaware orchards held hundreds of thousands of peach trees; peach pie became the state dessert in 2009, and the state tree is the American holly.
Q 30What did Delaware make its official state beverage in 1983?
Milk
Milk became Delaware's state beverage in 1983, a nod to the state's dairy farms; the state fish is the weakfish and the state fruit, since 2010, the strawberry.