February Trivia
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177 free February trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
47 free February trivia questions with answers. Forty-seven questions on the shortest month of the year. They cover why February has 28 days and how leap years work, the Roman purification festival that gave the month its name, and the holidays that fill it: Groundhog Day, Candlemas, Valentine's Day, Presidents' Day, Black History Month, the Super Bowl and Japan's bean-throwing Setsubun and Sapporo Snow Festival. There are questions on things that happened in February, from the discovery of Pluto and John Glenn's orbit to the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, Nelson Mandela walking free and the launch of Facebook, plus famous February birthdays including two giants born on the very same day in 1809. Easier questions suit a family or classroom quiz; the later ones on the Roman calendar, Sweden's February 30th and Irish leap-day proposals will test seasoned quizzers. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia, and the sentence that establishes it appears under each explanation, so you can use these February facts for a quiz night, a newsletter or a bulletin board with confidence.
30 of 177 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01February is named after Februa, a Roman ritual of what?
Purification
Februa was a Roman purification rite held on February 15; the month's name comes from februum, an instrument of purification, and the feast later merged with Lupercalia.
Q 02Which Roman king is credited with adding January and February to the calendar?
Numa Pompilius
Tradition credits Numa Pompilius, Rome's second king, with adding January and February to Romulus's ten-month calendar, bringing the year to 355 days.
Q 03Until about 450 BC, February was which month of the Roman calendar year?
Twelfth
February was the twelfth and final month until the decemvirs, around 450 BC, moved it to second place; Romans sometimes cut it to 23 or 24 days before an intercalary month.
Q 04In the Southern Hemisphere, February is the last month of which meteorological season?
Summer
Summer's last month in the south is the twin of August in the north, which is why Rio's Carnival and Australia's beach season fall in it.
Q 05Which gemstone is February's birthstone?
Amethyst
Amethyst means 'not intoxicated'; ancient Greeks carved drinking cups from the purple stone, believing it prevented drunkenness.
Q 06Which of these is one of February's birth flowers?
Violet
The violet is February's birth flower, sharing the month with the primrose; carnations belong to January, daffodils to March and lily of the valley to May.
Q 07Under the Gregorian calendar, which of these years is NOT a leap year?
2100
Century years only get a February 29 if divisible by 400, so 2000 and 2400 qualify but 2100 does not.
Q 08Which Roman leader's calendar reform of 45 BC introduced the regular leap day?
Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar's reform, in force from 45 BC, fixed the year at 365 days with a leap day every fourth year; the Julian calendar ran about 1,600 years until Pope Gregory XIII's 1582 correction.
Q 09The papal bull that created the Gregorian calendar, Inter gravissimas, was dated to which day in 1582?
24 February
The new calendar took effect that October, when ten days were dropped, but Protestant and Orthodox countries ignored it for centuries.
Q 10Which country's calendar once had a 30 February, in the year 1712?
Sweden
Sweden had botched a gradual switch to the Gregorian calendar, so it added a double leap day to fall back in line with the Julian one.
Q 11By Irish tradition, what are women permitted to do on 29 February?
Propose marriage
Legend says Saint Brigid persuaded Saint Patrick to let women propose marriage on 29 February; the custom, sometimes called Bachelor's Day, spread to Britain and inspired the 2010 film Leap Year.
Q 12Which Italian opera composer, famous for The Barber of Seville, was born on 29 February 1792?
Gioachino Rossini
Gioachino Rossini was born in Pesaro on 29 February 1792; by his death in 1868 he had seen only eighteen true leap-day birthdays, because 1800 was not a leap year.
Q 13Groundhog Day on 2 February grew out of the superstitions of which community?
Pennsylvania Dutch
Q 21Which state, admitted on 14 February 1912, completed the contiguous 48?
Arizona
Arizona became the 48th state on 14 February 1912, five weeks after New Mexico on 6 January 1912; no further state joined until Alaska in January 1959.
Q 22How many members of Chicago's North Side Gang were killed in the 1929 Saint Valentine's Day Massacre?
Seven
Two of the gunmen were dressed as police officers, and the intended target, Bugs Moran, had not yet arrived.
Q 23What is the official federal name of the US holiday most people call Presidents' Day?
Washington's Birthday
The federal holiday's legal name is Washington's Birthday (5 U.S.C. 6103); states add Lincoln, Jefferson or others to their own versions, which is how 'Presidents' Day' stuck.
Pennsylvania Dutch settlers brought German Candlemas lore that a badger or hedgehog seeing its shadow meant six more weeks of winter, and swapped in the local groundhog.
Q 14Punxsutawney Phil makes his prediction from a spot with what name?
Gobbler's Knob
Phil emerges at Gobbler's Knob, a wooded hill just outside Punxsutawney; the top-hatted Inner Circle prepares two scrolls in advance so either verdict is ready to read.
Q 15In what year did the Punxsutawney Groundhog Day ceremony formally begin?
1887
The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club made its first official trek to Gobbler's Knob in 1887; the groundhog was not called Phil until 1961, though lore insists it is the same animal.
Q 16Groundhog Day (1993) was shot almost entirely in which Illinois town standing in for Punxsutawney?
Woodstock
Woodstock, Illinois, with its town square and opera house, stood in for Punxsutawney throughout the 1993 shoot; the film joined the National Film Registry in 2006.
Q 17Candlemas, on 2 February, commemorates which event from the Gospel of Luke?
The presentation of Jesus at the Temple
The presentation of Jesus at the Temple by Joseph and Mary; churchgoers bring candles to be blessed for the year, a symbol of Christ as 'Light of the World'.
Q 18Imbolc, the Gaelic festival on 1 February, is the feast day of which saint?
Brigid
Imbolc falls on the feast of Saint Brigid of Kildare, 1 February; it marks the start of spring, roughly halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.
Q 19Which Roman festival, held 13-15 February, is often cited as a pagan ancestor of Valentine's Day?
Lupercalia
Lupercalia, held 13-15 February, was a Roman fertility and purification festival in which priests ran through the city striking bystanders with goat-hide thongs; Pope Gelasius I suppressed it around AD 494.
Q 20Which medieval English poet is credited with first linking Saint Valentine's Day to romantic love?
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer's Parlement of Foules, written around 1382, is the earliest known text tying Saint Valentine's Day to birds choosing mates and to courtly love.
Q 24Which two famous men were both born on 12 February 1809?
Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin
Abraham Lincoln was born in a Kentucky log cabin and Charles Darwin at The Mount in Shrewsbury, England, both on 12 February 1809; Dickens arrived three years later, on 7 February 1812.
Q 25Which historian created Negro History Week in 1926, the forerunner of Black History Month?
Carter G. Woodson
Carter G. Woodson, founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, launched Negro History Week in February 1926; President Ford recognised the full month in 1976.
Q 26Negro History Week's February date held the birthdays of Lincoln and which other man?
Frederick Douglass
Black communities had marked both birthdays since the late 1800s; a Douglass Day was taught in Washington DC schools from 1897.
Q 27Which country observes Black History Month in October rather than February?
United Kingdom
The US and Canada both mark it in February; Ireland and the UK chose the autumn.
Q 28Which Super Bowl was the first played in February, after 9/11 disrupted the 2001 season?
XXXVI
Super Bowl XXXVI, on 3 February 2002, saw the Patriots beat the Rams after the 9/11 postponements pushed the season back a week; every later Super Bowl but one was played in February.
Q 29Which Super Bowl, played in 2016, was the only one branded with ordinary numerals?
50
Super Bowl 50, won by the Broncos over the Panthers in Peyton Manning's final game, dropped Roman numerals because a lone 'L' looked awkward; Super Bowl LI resumed them.
Q 30Which Japanese festival on or around 3 February involves throwing roasted beans to drive out demons?
Setsubun
Setsubun, the eve of Risshun (the old first day of spring), sees roasted soybeans thrown with the cry 'Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi'; mame (bean) puns on 'devil's eye'.