Florida
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204 free Florida trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free Florida trivia questions with answers. From the coral reefs of the Keys to the launch pads of Cape Canaveral, Florida is a state of extremes. Test your knowledge of its geography, history, wildlife, culture, and all the quirky facts that make the Sunshine State unlike anywhere else.
30 of 204 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which sports drink was invented in 1965 for a Florida college football team wilting in the heat?
Gatorade
Gatorade began when an assistant coach asked kidney specialist Robert Cade why his players lost so much weight in games yet rarely needed the restroom; Cade's team mixed a drink to replace the water and salts they sweated out.
Q 02Which drink did Florida's legislature name the official state beverage in 1967?
Orange juice
Orange juice became the state beverage in 1967; wartime scientists had worked out how to concentrate it, and frozen concentrate then turned Florida's oranges into a multi-billion-dollar juice industry.
Q 03What is the nickname of Florida?
The Sunshine State
The Sunshine State has been Florida's official nickname since 1970; from 1910 to 1986 one evening newspaper backed the boast by giving its edition away free after any sunless day, 296 times in all.
Q 04Which inventor wintered in Fort Myers for decades, next door to his friend Henry Ford?
Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison bought his Fort Myers riverfront in 1885, and Henry Ford, who had once worked for an Edison company, bought the house next door in 1916; Edison later ran a laboratory there hunting for a homegrown supply of rubber.
Q 05Which space shuttle lifted off from Florida in April 1981 on the program's first orbital flight?
Columbia
Columbia flew first, on April 12, 1981; the earlier test shuttle Enterprise had been built without engines or a working heat shield and could never reach space.
Q 06Which legend is Juan Ponce de León popularly, though wrongly, said to have chased to Florida?
The Fountain of Youth
The Fountain of Youth appears nowhere in Ponce de León's own surviving letters; a Spanish chronicler tied him to it in 1535, fourteen years after his death, in an account that painted him as a fool.
Q 07Which NASA facility on Merritt Island has been the agency's primary orbital launch site since 1968?
Kennedy Space Center
Kennedy Space Center sits on Florida's east coast so rockets can head out over the open Atlantic and borrow speed from Earth's spin, which is fastest toward the equator.
Q 08Which animal is Florida's official state marine mammal?
Manatee
The manatee was named Florida's state marine mammal in 1975; cold water can kill one, so each winter manatees crowd into warm springs and the outflows of power plants.
Q 09Which Florida spring has staged live mermaid shows in an underwater theater since 1947?
Weeki Wachee Springs
Weeki Wachee Springs built its show on a trick of stunt swimmer Newt Perry: the performers breathe from underwater air hoses instead of wearing tanks, while the audience watches through windows set below the surface.
Q 10Which February NASCAR race on Florida's Atlantic coast is the sport's biggest event yet opens the season?
Daytona 500
The Daytona 500 has opened the Cup season since 1982; until 1958 the town's big stock car race was run on the beach itself, down the hard sand and back along the coast road.
Q 11Which national park, within sight of Miami's skyline, is about 95 percent water?
Biscayne
Biscayne National Park is 95 percent water, so although it lies within sight of downtown Miami, most of its reefs, islands and mangrove shore can be reached only by boat.
Q 12Which invasive snake species has become a major ecological threat in South Florida's wetlands?
Burmese python
The Burmese python, descended from escaped or released pets, has bred in the Everglades since at least 2000 and is linked to sharp declines in raccoons, rabbits and other native mammals there.
Q 13Which Walt Disney World hotel, open since day one in 1971, has monorail trains running through its main building?
Contemporary Resort
Q 21Which architect designed Florida Southern College's 'Child of the Sun' campus, the largest single-site collection of his buildings?
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright drew up 18 buildings for the cash-poor college, and its students built the first five themselves, trading their labor for part of their tuition.
Q 22Which author's 1930s Florida Keys house is now a museum famous for its polydactyl cats?
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway's Key West house is home to nearly 60 cats, about half of them six-toed; the museum says they descend from Snow White, a white six-toed cat given to him by a ship's captain.
Q 23Which 1928 road across the Everglades is named for the two cities it was built to link?
Contemporary Resort opened with Walt Disney World on October 1, 1971; its rooms were built elsewhere as finished modules and lifted into the A-frame by crane, with the monorail running straight through the building.
Q 14Which gem did Florida adopt in 1970 to honor the astronauts launched from its shores?
Moonstone
Moonstone was chosen a year after the first lunar landing lifted off from Florida, a tribute with a catch: the stone is found naturally neither in Florida nor on the Moon.
Q 15Which NFL team completed the only perfect season in league history in 1972?
Miami Dolphins
The Miami Dolphins finished 17-0 by winning Super Bowl VII, and did most of it with a 38-year-old backup: Earl Morrall took over at quarterback when Bob Griese broke his ankle in the fifth game.
Q 16Which Miami neighborhood is centered on Calle Ocho, where regulars gather daily to play at Domino Park?
Little Havana
Little Havana took its name in the 1960s, when Cuban exiles filled what had been a largely Southern and Jewish neighborhood; Calle Ocho is simply Spanish for Eighth Street.
Q 17Which road carries US Route 1 across 42 bridges to the end of the Florida Keys?
Overseas Highway
The Overseas Highway opened in 1938 on the right-of-way of the Florida East Coast Railway's Key West Extension, which the 1935 Labor Day hurricane had destroyed.
Q 18What nickname is given to the northerners who spend each winter in Florida and head home in spring?
Snowbirds
Snowbirds share their name with juncos and snow buntings, birds that winter where it snows; the human kind does the opposite, fleeing the cold for the Sun Belt.
Q 19Which Panhandle beach town marketed itself to college students as the 'Spring Break Capital of the World'?
Panama City Beach
Panama City Beach began advertising to spring breakers in the late 1990s, hoping to win the crowds that older spring-break towns had driven away with new restrictions.
Q 20Which state entered the Union as the 28th in December 1845, months after Florida became the 27th?
Texas
Texas followed Florida into the Union on December 29, 1845, and arrived by an unusual route: it had been an independent republic for nearly a decade and was never a US territory.
Tamiami Trail
Tamiami Trail joins Tampa and Miami in one word; the 13-year job nearly stalled until millionaire Barron Collier agreed to finish it if the state named a new county after him, which it did in 1923.
Q 24Which inlet south of St. Augustine is where Spanish troops killed hundreds of shipwrecked French soldiers in 1565?
Matanzas
Matanzas is Spanish for 'slaughters': a hurricane had wrecked the French fleet sent to attack St. Augustine, and the Spanish put the castaways who surrendered at the inlet to the sword.
Q 25What is the highest natural point in Florida?
Britton Hill
Britton Hill tops out at just 345 feet, the lowest high point of any state; Miami's tallest towers rise more than twice as high.
Q 26Which NBA team won back-to-back championships in 2012 and 2013?
Miami Heat
The Miami Heat won the second title only after trailing by three with seconds left in Game 6 of the 2013 Finals; Ray Allen's three-pointer forced overtime, and Miami took the series in seven.
Q 27Which porous rock underlies almost all of Florida, feeding its springs and opening its sinkholes?
Limestone
Limestone under Florida is riddled with water-filled cavities, which makes its aquifer one of the most productive in the world; where the rock dissolves and a cavern roof gives way, a sinkhole opens.
Q 28Which US president made a Florida Keys commandant's quarters his 'Little White House'?
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman first came in November 1946, when his doctor ordered the exhausted president to take a warm rest; he returned ten more times and spent 175 days of his presidency there.
Q 29Which game fish is Florida's official state saltwater fish?
Sailfish
Sailfish became the state saltwater fish in 1975; they roam warm oceans worldwide, but winter cold fronts send them south along Florida's Atlantic coast, which makes the colder months the famous season off Miami and the Keys.
Q 30Which Florida university's football team is known as the Gators?
University of Florida
University of Florida teams owe the name, by the school's account, to a Gainesville shopkeeper who in 1908 ordered pennants bearing an alligator before the school had any mascot; by 1911 the football team was the Gators.