Father's Day Trivia
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151 free Father's Day trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
15 free Father's Day trivia questions with answers. Father's Day trivia for the family table: how the holiday started in Spokane in 1910, when it became a US national holiday, and when Spain, Germany, Thailand and Brazil celebrate it. Play the questions below and share your score.
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Q 01Taiwan marks Father's Day on which date, chosen because it sounds like 'bàba', the Mandarin word for dad?
8 August
8 August: 'eight' is 'bā' in Mandarin, so the eighth day of the eighth month reads 'bā bā', almost the same as 'bàba', and Taiwanese fathers get their day on a pun.
Q 02Which actor gave his voice to two of cinema's most famous fathers, Darth Vader and Mufasa?
James Earl Jones
James Earl Jones stuttered so badly as a boy that he hardly spoke for years, until a high-school teacher got him to recite a poem to the class and the famous bass voice found its footing.
Q 03Sonora Smart Dodd founded Father's Day to honour her father, a veteran of which war?
Civil War
Civil War: William Jackson Smart was widowed in 1898 when his wife died in childbirth, and Sonora, at 16 the eldest child and only girl, helped him bring up the boys.
Q 04Which flower did people in Spokane wear on the first Father's Day in 1910?
Rose
The rose: boys from the Spokane YMCA wore fresh-cut roses in their lapels, red for a living father and white for one who had died. The carnation was already the emblem of Mother's Day.
Q 05Which president, in the election year 1972, signed the law that made Father's Day a permanent US national holiday?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon signed the law on April 24, 1972, 62 years after Spokane's first celebration. Lyndon B. Johnson's 1966 proclamation had covered that year alone, so the day had stayed unofficial.
Q 06Which American river has long been nicknamed the 'Father of Waters'?
The Mississippi
The Mississippi: when the fall of Vicksburg in 1863 gave the Union the whole river, President Lincoln wrote that 'the Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea'.
Q 07In Spain, Portugal and Italy, Father's Day is held on 19 March — the feast day honouring which figure?
Saint Joseph
These Catholic countries attach Father's Day to 19 March, the feast of Saint Joseph, husband of Mary. Italians call it Festa del papà and the Portuguese Dia do Pai.
Q 08In Australia and New Zealand, Father's Day is celebrated on which day?
The first Sunday in September
The first Sunday in September is the first Sunday of the southern spring, so Australian and New Zealand fathers are honoured as winter ends rather than in June, which is midwinter there.
Q 09In Germany, Father's Day (Vatertag) is observed on which Christian feast, always a Thursday?
Ascension Day
German Vatertag shares its date with Ascension Day, a public holiday. A common custom is for groups of men to make a hiking trip pulling a Bollerwagen handcart loaded with beer, wine and regional food.
Q 10Thailand's National Father's Day is 5 December, the birthday of which king, who reigned from 1946 until his death in 2016?
King Bhumibol Adulyadej
King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Rama IX, reigned for 70 years, and Thailand kept 5 December as Father's Day and a public holiday after his death rather than moving it to his son's birthday.
Q 11Which country celebrates Father's Day, known there as 'Dia dos Pais', on the second Sunday of August?
Brazil
Brazil: publicist Sylvio Bhering of the newspaper O Globo launched the day in 1953 on the feast of Saint Joachim, Mary's father, to give shops a lift between Mother's Day and Christmas.
Q 12Nepal honours fathers on Kushe Aunsi, a day named for which lunar phase?
The new moon
Aunsi is the new moon day in the Hindu lunar calendar, so Kushe Aunsi shifts around late August or early September from year to year.
Q 13What is the 8 May observance on which South Koreans honour their fathers called?
Parents' Day
Parents' Day began in 1956 as Mother's Day and was renamed in 1973 so that fathers were honoured too; children still pin carnations on both parents.
Q 21Whose experiments with pea plants earned him the title 'father of genetics'?
Gregor Mendel
Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian friar, saw his pea results ignored in his lifetime; other botanists rediscovered his laws of inheritance around 1900, sixteen years after he died.
Q 22Which king was the father of Alexander the Great?
Philip II
Philip II made Macedon the leading power in Greece and was planning to invade Persia when he was assassinated in 336 BC, leaving both the army and the plan to his son.
Q 23In 1924 which president urged the states to observe Father's Day but left it short of an official holiday?
Calvin Coolidge
Q 14Which president gave Father's Day his public backing in 1916, 56 years before it became a national holiday?
Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson had made Mother's Day a national holiday in 1914, yet his support for Father's Day two years later produced no law, and fathers waited until 1972 for the same honour.
Q 15Grace Golden Clayton proposed a day to honour fathers in 1908 after which disaster killed more than 360 people?
The Monongah mine explosion
The Monongah mine explosion in West Virginia was America's worst mining disaster; Clayton's church held a service for the lost fathers in July 1908, but it was a one-off that started no annual tradition.
Q 16The English settlers remembered as the Pilgrim Fathers crossed the Atlantic in 1620 aboard which ship?
The Mayflower
The Mayflower sailed alone because its companion, the Speedwell, leaked so badly that both ships turned back, and the delay pushed the crossing into the autumn storm season.
Q 17Why was the first Father's Day in 1910 held two weeks later than its founder wanted?
Pastors needed sermon time
Pastors needed sermon time: Sonora Smart Dodd asked for 5 June, her father's birthday, but Spokane's ministers said they could not prepare by then and chose the third Sunday of the month, 19 June.
Q 18Which physicist is often called the 'father of the atomic bomb'?
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Oppenheimer led the Los Alamos laboratory that built the bomb, then argued against the far more powerful hydrogen bomb and was stripped of his security clearance in 1954.
Q 19Which ancient Greek is traditionally called the 'Father of Medicine'?
Hippocrates
Hippocrates of Kos gave his name to the oath doctors still swear, although scholars think the oath was written after his death and that others wrote most of the works credited to him.
Q 20Which guitarist wrote the 1998 song 'My Father's Eyes' about the father he never met?
Eric Clapton
Eric Clapton was raised by his grandparents, believing they were his mother and father, and never met his real father; he wrote that he glimpsed the man at last in the eyes of his own young son, Conor.
Calvin Coolidge backed the day in 1924 but issued no national proclamation, and a Congress wary of creating another commercial holiday left Father's Day unofficial for decades more.
Q 24Which social reformer proposed a citywide Father's Day for Chicago in 1911, a year after Spokane's?
Jane Addams
Jane Addams, founder of Chicago's Hull House, floated the idea in 1911, but it was a 1913 bill in Congress that first tried to make Father's Day national, and it failed.
Q 25Who was the father of Queen Elizabeth II?
George VI
George VI was never meant to reign: he became king in 1936 only because his elder brother Edward VIII abdicated, which put his ten-year-old daughter Elizabeth next in line.
Q 26When does the Eastern Orthodox Church keep the feast of the Forefathers?
Two Sundays before Nativity
Two Sundays before Nativity: the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers falls between 11 and 17 December and commemorates the ancestors of Christ; the Sunday of the Holy Fathers follows a week later.
Q 27South Sudan has marked Father's Day since 2012 on which day?
The last Monday of August
The last Monday of August: South Sudan, independent from July 2011, held its first Father's Day on that day in August 2012.
Q 28Which reggae star was the father of musicians Ziggy, Stephen and Damian?
Bob Marley
Bob Marley had eleven children, and after his death in 1981 his eldest son Ziggy carried the name on by leading the family band, the Melody Makers.
Q 29Which king was the father of Queen Elizabeth I?
Henry VIII
Henry VIII had Elizabeth's mother, Anne Boleyn, beheaded and the girl declared illegitimate before restoring her to the succession; she went on to reign for 44 years.
Q 30The necktie traces back to mercenaries from which country serving France in the Thirty Years' War?
Croatia
Croatia: Parisians took to the knotted neckcloths of Croatian mercenaries in the 1630s, and 'cravate', the French word for a necktie, is simply the word for a Croat.