Franklin D. Roosevelt Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
48 free Franklin D. Roosevelt trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Franklin D. Roosevelt trivia quiz covers the only president elected four times, from a cosseted Hyde Park childhood and a Harvard newspaper editorship to the New York State Senate, the Navy Department, the polio that paralysed him at 39, and the comeback that carried him to Albany and then the White House. It then works through the Hundred Days, the alphabet agencies, the 1936 landslide, the court-packing fight, Pearl Harbor, the wartime conferences and his death at Warm Springs three weeks before Germany surrendered. The easy questions are ones most people know: which number president, which war, which famous phrase. The medium ones ask about his cabinet firsts, the New Deal programmes that survive today, his running mates and the assassination attempt in Miami. The hard ones dig into Tammany Hall, the Taconic parkway feud with Robert Moses, Executive Order 6102, the 1944 tax rates and why he is on the dime. It works for a US history class, a Presidents' Day round or anyone who wants to go deeper than the Theodore Roosevelt quiz elsewhere on BrainPickle. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What do presidents today call the retreat FDR named Shangri-La?
Camp David
Camp David. President Eisenhower renamed it in 1953, honouring his grandson David.
Q 02After FDR won four elections, which constitutional amendment barred anyone from being elected president more than twice?
The 22nd Amendment
The 22nd Amendment. It wrote into law the two-term tradition set by George Washington, which FDR broke by running for a third term in 1940.
Q 03In which New York town was Roosevelt born and later buried?
Hyde Park
Hyde Park. After he died in 1945, thousands lined the tracks as a funeral train carried him home to be buried in the Springwood rose garden.
Q 04In a 1944 speech, FDR mocked a false story that the Navy sent a destroyer back to fetch which companion?
His dog Fala
His dog Fala. FDR joked that he and his family didn't resent the attacks, but Fala did.
Q 05Which student newspaper did Roosevelt edit as an undergraduate?
The Harvard Crimson
The Harvard Crimson. He stayed at Harvard an extra year for graduate courses, largely so he could keep working on the paper.
Q 06Who gave away the bride at Franklin and Eleanor's 1905 wedding?
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt. Eleanor was his niece, and he stood in for her father, his younger brother Elliott, who had died in 1894.
Q 07In his 1933 inaugural address, FDR said the only thing Americans had to fear was what?
Fear itself
Fear itself. Later in the address he warned that if Congress failed to act, he would ask for broad executive power to wage war against the emergency.
Q 08Which of Eleanor's social secretaries had a long affair with FDR and was with him when he died?
Lucy Mercer
Lucy Mercer. After Eleanor discovered the affair in 1918, FDR promised never to see Lucy again, then quietly resumed seeing her.
Q 09Roosevelt began his political career in 1910 by winning election to which body?
New York State Senate
New York State Senate. The young Democrat won in a Dutchess County district that was traditionally dominated by Republicans.
Q 10As a state senator, Roosevelt led the 'Insurgents' against which political machine?
Tammany Hall
Tammany Hall. The machine essentially ran New York City's Democratic Party, and in 1914 FDR failed to win his party's nomination for the US Senate.
Q 11Under President Wilson, Roosevelt held which post from 1913 to 1920?
Assistant Secretary of the Navy
Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He pushed so hard for a 'big Navy' and for entering World War I that he was at odds with the Wilson administration's neutrality.
Q 12Roosevelt was the vice-presidential running mate of which Democratic nominee in 1920?
James M. Cox
James M. Cox. Popular feeling against Wilson's plan to join the League of Nations helped Warren Harding beat their ticket by a wide margin.
Q 13Before the 1920 ticket, Roosevelt approached which businessman about running for president as a Democrat?
Herbert Hoover
Q 21Who was Roosevelt's running mate in 1932 and 1936?
John Nance Garner
John Nance Garner. FDR clinched the 1932 nomination only after promising the vice presidency to Garner, whose Texas delegates then backed him.
Q 22Who became the first woman to hold a US cabinet post when Roosevelt named her Secretary of Labor?
Frances Perkins
Frances Perkins. She chaired the committee that shaped the Social Security Act and served as Labor Secretary for all twelve years of FDR's presidency.
Q 23Who was killed in the February 1933 assassination attempt on president-elect Roosevelt in Florida?
Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak
Hoover declared himself a Republican instead, and Roosevelt beat him in a landslide twelve years later.
Q 14Where was FDR vacationing in August 1921 when he fell ill with the disease that paralysed his legs?
Campobello Island
Campobello Island. After a plunge into cold sea water and an active day, he came down with chills and fever, and then paralysis.
Q 15In which Georgia town did FDR set up a rehabilitation centre for polio patients?
Warm Springs
Warm Springs. He first went there hoping its mineral waters would heal him, and he died at his cottage there in April 1945.
Q 16What nickname did FDR's 1932 campaign advisers, mostly Columbia University professors, earn?
The Brain Trust
The Brain Trust. Members such as Raymond Moley went on to help shape the policies of the First New Deal.
Q 17Roosevelt clashed with which powerful planner while chairing the Taconic State Park Commission?
Robert Moses
The two men's contentious relationship continued for the rest of their careers.
Q 18What name did FDR give the coalition of 26 Allied nations that pledged in 1942 to defeat the Axis?
The United Nations
The United Nations. FDR hoped the wartime alliance would outlast the war as a body for world peace, and the UN was founded in 1945.
Q 19What name was given to FDR's informal radio addresses to the nation?
Fireside chats
Fireside chats. His first as president explained the banking crisis, and Americans returned about $1 billion to banks within weeks.
Q 20How did FDR break tradition after his 1932 nomination?
Flying to Chicago to accept it in person
Flying to Chicago to accept it in person. The flight was meant to show voters that polio had not left him too frail to lead.
Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak. Gunman Giuseppe Zangara, first sentenced to 80 years in prison, was retried after Cermak died and executed that March.
Q 24What did FDR declare shortly after his 1933 inauguration to stop runs on the banks?
A national bank holiday
A national bank holiday. When stock trading resumed after it, the Dow jumped about 15 percent in a single day.
Q 25In March 1933, FDR signed a law letting Americans legally buy which drink again?
Beer
Beer. April 7, 1933, the day legal sales resumed, is now celebrated every year as National Beer Day.
Q 26Which New Deal agency sent young unemployed men to rural work camps?
Civilian Conservation Corps
Civilian Conservation Corps. Its young men planted trees and built trails, earning $30 a month but sending $25 of it home to their families.
Q 27What did Executive Order 6102 require Americans to turn in to the Federal Reserve in 1933?
Privately held gold
Privately held gold. In 1934 the government raised gold's official price from $20.67 to $35 an ounce, devaluing the dollar.
Q 28Which New Deal act created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation?
Glass-Steagall Act
Glass-Steagall Act. Representative Steagall backed Senator Glass's bank reforms only once federal deposit insurance was added.
Q 29Roosevelt insisted Social Security be funded by payroll taxes so no politician could ever do what?
Scrap the programme
Scrap the programme. FDR said the contributions gave workers a 'legal, moral, and political right' to their benefits, so 'no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.'
Q 30Which New Deal agency, led by Harry Hopkins, gave millions of jobless Americans paid jobs instead of the dole?
Works Progress Administration
Works Progress Administration. Besides building schools, hospitals and airports, it paid writers, actors and musicians for cultural projects.