First Responders
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50 free First Responders trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
First responders are the people who run toward trouble: police officers, firefighters, paramedics and the dispatchers who send them. Their work has a long and surprising history, full of odd inventions, hard lessons and traditions that survive on uniforms and fire trucks to this day. This quiz covers all three services. There are questions on how the earliest police forces and fire brigades were organised, where emergency phone numbers came from, the tools crews carry, the symbols on their vehicles, and the animals that have worked beside them. A few step into film and television, and a few reach back to ancient Rome. It is written for trivia nights, classrooms, station open days and anyone planning a thank-you event for local crews. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which dog breed became a firehouse mascot after running ahead of horse-drawn fire carriages to clear a path?
Dalmatian
The Dalmatian gets along so well with horses that crews trained it to run in front and guide the team to a fire. It was originally bred as a hunting dog.
Q 02Which Founding Father helped form Philadelphia's Union Fire Company, whose members each supplied six leather buckets?
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin campaigned for it in the Pennsylvania Gazette, and the brigade formed in December 1736. Unlike the Boston clubs it copied, it protected the whole community, not only its members.
Q 03Which farm animal was blamed in legend for kicking over a lantern and starting the Great Chicago Fire of 1871?
Cow
A cow owned by Catherine O'Leary took the blame, but the reporter behind the story admitted in 1893 that he had invented it. Chicago's city council formally cleared O'Leary in 1997.
Q 04Which Forest Service mascot fronts the longest-running public service campaign in US history, on wildfire prevention?
Smokey Bear
Smokey Bear gained a living counterpart in 1950, when a three-month-old black bear cub was found after a wildfire in New Mexico's Capitan Mountains.
Q 05Which three-digit number became the world's first emergency phone line when it launched in London in 1937?
999
999 was introduced after a house fire on Wimpole Street killed five women in 1935. It takes longer to dial on a rotary phone, one reason AT&T later chose 911 for America.
Q 06Which crime was the US Secret Service created to fight in 1865, decades before it began guarding presidents?
Counterfeiting
Counterfeiting was rampant after the Civil War, so the agency began inside the Treasury Department. Congress turned to it for presidential protection only after President McKinley was assassinated in 1901.
Q 07Which giant dog breed was originally bred for rescue work by a hospice high on the Italian-Swiss border?
St. Bernard
The St. Bernard is named for the Great St Bernard Pass, where its most famous rescuer, Barry, reportedly saved between 40 and 100 lives.
Q 08Which broadcast warning system for abducted children is named after a nine-year-old girl taken in Arlington, Texas?
Amber Alert
Amber Alert honours Amber Hagerman, who was abducted while riding her bike. Officially the name is also an acronym: America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response.
Q 09Which firehouse fixture did Chicago captain David Kenyon install in 1878 after a fireman's shortcut from the hayloft?
Sliding pole
The sliding pole began as a wooden pole for binding hay, which fireman George Reid used to reach the ground floor well ahead of his company. Kenyon offered to pay for upkeep to get a permanent one.
Q 10Which rescue tool did George Hurst invent after watching a stock car driver stay trapped for over an hour?
Jaws of Life
Jaws of Life earned the name because crews said the device snatched people from the jaws of death. It was first used in 1963 to free race car drivers after crashes.
Q 11Which future prime minister founded London's Metropolitan Police in 1829, earning officers the nickname bobbies?
Robert Peel
Robert Peel was Home Secretary when the first constables walked London's streets that September. The 1,000 officers were also called peelers, a less affectionate tribute.
Q 12Whose 1966 Supreme Court case against Arizona led American police to warn suspects of their right to stay silent?
Ernesto Miranda
Ernesto Miranda had been arrested by Phoenix police in 1963. The court ruled that statements from suspects who are not warned of their rights in custody cannot be used at trial.
Q 13Which fictional young inventor inspired the Taser's name, a loose acronym taken from the title of a 1911 novel?
Tom Swift
Q 21Which emergency does the Heimlich maneuver treat, with a rescuer pressing up beneath the victim's diaphragm from behind?
Choking
Choking on a lodged object is what the abdominal thrusts are meant to clear. The American physician it is named after is often credited with developing the technique.
Q 22Which medication, sold as the nasal spray Narcan, do first responders carry to reverse an opioid overdose?
Naloxone
Naloxone is an opioid antagonist, commonly used to restore breathing after an overdose. The nasal spray version was approved in the United States in 2015.
Q 23Which emblem on American ambulances replaced an orange cross after the Red Cross complained about it in 1973?
Star of Life
Tom Swift was the childhood hero of NASA researcher Jack Cover, who finished the stun device in 1974. The book was called Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle.
Q 14Which French city has housed Interpol's headquarters since 1989, after earlier homes in Vienna and wartime Berlin?
Lyon
Lyon took over from Saint-Cloud, a suburb of the French capital. The agency was founded in Vienna in 1923 and fell under Nazi control after the Anschluss in 1938.
Q 15Which dog breed is most associated with police work, though many forces favour the smaller Belgian Malinois?
German Shepherd
The German Shepherd remains the breed most linked to law enforcement. Organized police dog work began in Ghent, Belgium, which set up the first service program in 1899.
Q 16Which nickname for London's police headquarters comes from a Westminster street beside the force's original offices?
Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard stuck even after the force left Great Scotland Yard in 1890. The replacement building, and each one since, has been called New Scotland Yard.
Q 17Which federal law enforcement agency, created by the Judiciary Act of 1789, runs America's Witness Protection Program?
U.S. Marshals
U.S. Marshals were the original federal law officers, created during George Washington's presidency. They also track down fugitives and protect federal courthouses.
Q 18Which country's police staff the koban, small neighbourhood stations that also give directions and handle lost property?
Japan
Japan's koban began in 1874 as simple boxes for standing watch. Singapore later built its own neighbourhood police posts on the same system.
Q 19Which police radio ten-code, popularised by the 1950s TV series Highway Patrol, means a message has been understood?
10-4
10-4 belongs to a set of codes credited to Charles Hopper of the Illinois State Police. Work on them began in 1937, when police radio channels were scarce and every word counted.
Q 20Which law enforcement title comes from the Old English for a royal official who ran a county for the king?
Sheriff
Sheriff began as scirgerefa, the reeve who managed a shire on behalf of the king. The two words wore down into one over the centuries.
The Star of Life has six points, one for each main task of emergency medical care. At its centre is the Rod of Asclepius, an ancient symbol of medicine.
Q 24Which French leader made Dominique Jean Larrey, inventor of the flying ambulance, surgeon-in-chief of his Guard?
Napoleon
Napoleon first met Larrey at Toulon and later asked for him by name. Larrey copied the fast carriages of the horse artillery to rush wounded soldiers off the battlefield.
Q 25Which emergency practice of ranking patients by urgency takes its name from an Old French verb meaning to sort?
Triage
Triage comes from trier, to separate or select, though the word was only applied to the medical practice in the 1800s. The idea itself is far older.
Q 26Which Bee Gees disco hit has a beat that matches the rhythm recommended for hands-only CPR chest compressions?
Stayin' Alive
Stayin' Alive runs at about 104 beats per minute, inside the 100 to 120 compressions a minute that resuscitation guidelines call for.
Q 27Which river is linked to the unidentified woman whose death mask became the face of the CPR manikin Resusci Anne?
Seine
The Seine is where the young woman reputedly drowned around the late 1880s. Norwegian toy maker Asmund Laerdal helped develop the manikin that wears her face.
Q 28Which city had America's first ambulance service staffed by paramedics, Freedom House, founded in the Hill District?
Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh police had been carrying patients to hospital in paddy wagons. Freedom House, founded in 1967, drew its first 25 recruits from a low-income, predominantly Black neighbourhood.
Q 29Which term, promoted by trauma surgeon R Adams Cowley, describes the critical period right after a severe injury?
Golden hour
Golden hour sums up the belief that prompt treatment gives the best chance of preventing death. Cowley promoted it as a military surgeon, then as head of Maryland's Shock Trauma Center.
Q 30Which Civil War nurse, nicknamed the Angel of the Battlefield, went on to found the American Red Cross?
Clara Barton
Clara Barton won approval for the organisation by arguing that it could respond to natural disasters as well as war. She first encountered the Red Cross on a trip to Geneva in 1869.