50 free Delaware trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 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 50 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 03Delaware is the second-smallest US state by area. Which is the smallest?
Rhode Island
Delaware is also among the least populous states and has the lowest mean elevation of any state.
Q 04How many counties does Delaware have, the fewest of any state?
Three
Kent and Sussex are two of them. 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
The bay was named for him first, and the river, the state and the Native people whom the English called Delaware Indians all followed. He barely spent a year in America.
Q 06Delaware occupies the northeastern part of which peninsula, shared with two other states?
Delmarva
The name is a mash-up of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. Delaware Bay and the Atlantic lie to the east, Chesapeake Bay to the west.
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
The others are Alaska, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon. Tax-free shopping is a big draw for visitors from neighbouring states.
Q 09Most of Delaware's northern border is a rare curved boundary called what?
The Twelve-Mile Circle
It is a hangover from a 1681 grant to William Penn, and gives Delaware the whole Delaware River out to the far shore's low-tide mark.
Q 10Which European power planted the first settlement in present-day Delaware, at Zwaanendael in 1631?
The Dutch
The name means 'swan valley'. The 28 settlers on the bay were wiped out within a year after a dispute over a piece of decorated tin.
Q 11Fort 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 12Until 1776 Delaware's three counties shared a governor with which neighbouring colony?
Pennsylvania
Known as the Lower Counties on the Delaware, they had their own assembly from 1701. On June 15, 1776 that assembly broke with Britain and Pennsylvania at the same time.
Q 13Which Delaware delegate rode 70 miles overnight in July 1776 to break his delegation's tie on independence?
Caesar Rodney
Q 21Which future president represented Delaware in the US Senate from 1973 to 2009?
Joe Biden
His family moved from Scranton to Claymont, Delaware, when he was ten. He won his Senate seat aged 29, becoming the seventh-youngest senator in history, and served as the 46th president.
Q 22Reggae 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.
Q 23Delaware Bay holds the world's largest population of which ancient marine animal?
He suffered from facial cancer and wore a green scarf to hide it. His ride is pictured on the 1999 Delaware state quarter, the first coin in the 50 State Quarters series.
Q 14Delaware's 1999 state quarter was the first coin issued in the 50 State Quarters programme. Why?
States were honoured in order of joining the Union
The coin shows Caesar Rodney on horseback with the words 'The First State'. The second state to ratify got the second coin.
Q 15Delaware's state bird, the Blue Hen, gets its name from what?
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 16Which chemical company was founded in 1802 as a gunpowder mill on the Brandywine Creek near Wilmington?
DuPont
Éleuthère Irénée du Pont, a French émigré, started at the Eleutherian Mills. The company later gave the world neoprene, nylon, Teflon, Kevlar and Lycra.
Q 17Which synthetic fibre was first produced at a Wilmington research station on February 28, 1935?
Nylon
Wallace Carothers led the work but died before it was announced. Its first commercial use was toothbrush bristles in 1938; stockings followed in 1940.
Q 18Winterthur, 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 19Wilmington was renamed in 1739 after Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, who held which office?
British prime minister
He took his title from Wilmington in East Sussex, England. The city sits where Brandywine Creek meets the Christina River, just before it joins the Delaware.
Q 20A 1981 Delaware law scrapping usury limits made Wilmington a national centre for which industry?
Credit-card banking
The Financial Center Development Act lured card issuers such as Barclays Bank of Delaware. Corporate law and banking together underpin the small state's economy.
Horseshoe crab
Migrating red knots and other shorebirds arrive each May to gorge on its eggs. It is also Delaware's official state marine animal.
Q 24Which ferry links southern Delaware with New Jersey across the mouth of Delaware Bay?
Cape May–Lewes
Cape Henlopen on the Delaware side and Cape May on the Jersey side frame the entrance to the bay.
Q 25The Delaware Memorial Bridge to New Jersey is a pair of twin what?
Suspension bridges
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 26Rehoboth Beach bills itself as 'The Nation's Summer Capital' because of holidaymakers from where?
Washington, D.C.
Its population swells from a few thousand to over 25,000 in summer, with visitors from Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania too.
Q 27Dover Motor Speedway, a concrete NASCAR oval in Delaware's capital, is nicknamed what?
The Monster Mile
Miles the Monster has been its mascot since 2000, and a 46-foot statue of him holding a car greets fans. The track opened in 1969 alongside a horse-racing course.
Q 28At Georgetown, Delaware's post-election 'Return Day', what do winners and losers do together?
Bury a hatchet in a tub of sand
The tradition dates from colonial times, when it took two days for results to reach Georgetown from Dover by horse. Rivals ride together in carriages and share an ox roast afterwards.
Q 29From 1986 to 2013 Sussex County hosted the World Championship 'Punkin Chunkin'. What did competitors do?
Fire pumpkins for distance
Air cannons, trebuchets and catapults hurled the pumpkins; the Delaware event record was 4,694 feet in 2013. Liability lawsuits ended the annual run.
Q 30What 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.