Geography Trivia for Seniors
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50 free Geography Trivia for Seniors trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This geography trivia for seniors quiz is written for people who learned their atlas when Ceylon, Burma, Rhodesia and Siam were still on the map. It covers the classics everyone was taught in school (the longest river, the highest mountain, the largest ocean, the five Great Lakes) and the changes that happened during a long lifetime: the Berlin Wall going up and coming down, Alaska and Hawaii joining the Union, Hong Kong being handed back, the Soviet Union breaking into 15 countries, and cities changing their names from Peking, Bombay, Saigon and Leningrad. The questions are pitched for a senior centre or retirement community quiz, a family game with grandparents, or anyone who likes to travel from an armchair. Most are gentle; a handful will start a good argument. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and reference sources, and each question shows where it comes from. All 50 questions are free with no sign-up. For more, try our main Geography trivia page or World Geography quiz.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which river is generally listed as the longest in the world?
The Nile
The Nile: the Amazon carries far more water, and some researchers argue the Amazon is longer, depending on how each river's length is measured.
Q 02Which two men made the first documented ascent of Mount Everest in 1953?
Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary
Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary: a coded telegram got the news to London in time for it to break on 2 June 1953, the day of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation.
Q 03What is the world's largest hot desert?
The Sahara
The Sahara: Antarctica is an even bigger desert, because deserts are defined by how little precipitation they get, not by heat.
Q 04Which city was chosen as Australia's capital as a compromise between Sydney and Melbourne?
Canberra
Canberra: while it was being built, the federal Parliament sat in Melbourne, and it only moved to Canberra in 1927.
Q 05Which is the smallest sovereign state in the world by both area and population?
Vatican City
Vatican City: popes had refused to accept Italy's 1870 seizure of Rome, and the standoff ended only when Mussolini's government signed the 1929 Lateran Treaty.
Q 06Greenland, the world's largest island, belongs to which country?
Denmark
Denmark: Greenland voted in 1982 to leave the European Community, mainly to keep control of its fishing, and left in 1985 while Denmark stayed in.
Q 07Which US president backed Panama's 1903 break from Colombia?
Roosevelt
Roosevelt: when Colombia's congress rejected a US canal treaty, he sent warships to back the revolt, and within weeks Panama granted the US its canal zone.
Q 08Which US president signed the 1977 treaties that eventually handed the Panama Canal to Panama?
Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter signed the Torrijos-Carter Treaties with Panama's Omar Torrijos on 7 September 1977; the US Senate ratified them in 1978 by 68 votes to 32, one more than the two-thirds required.
Q 09Which Egyptian leader nationalised the Suez Canal in 1956, sparking the Suez Crisis?
Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the nationalisation on 26 July 1956 to fund the Aswan High Dam, prompting the Israeli, British and French invasion that autumn; the crisis ended with a humiliating Anglo-French withdrawal.
Q 10Which Berlin crossing saw a US-Soviet tank standoff in 1961?
Checkpoint Charlie
Checkpoint Charlie: the standoff began when East German guards demanded to check a US diplomat's papers as he headed into East Berlin for the opera.
Q 11Which Berlin landmark stood inside the Wall's restricted zone from 1961 until it reopened in December 1989?
Brandenburg Gate
Brandenburg Gate: in 1987 Ronald Reagan gave his 'tear down this wall' speech in front of it, and more than 100,000 people cheered its reopening.
Q 12Route 66 ran from Chicago to which California city?
Santa Monica
Santa Monica: as Interstate highways bypassed Route 66 town by town, it was removed from the US highway system in 1985.
Q 13Which of the five Great Lakes is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area?
Superior
Superior: it covers about 82,100 square kilometres, though Lakes Michigan and Huron together cover more if counted as a single lake.
Q 21Which country was officially called Burma in English until 1989?
Myanmar
Myanmar: the military government changed the English name from Burma in June 1989; many governments and news organisations kept using Burma for years afterwards.
Q 22Southern Rhodesia became which independent nation on 18 April 1980?
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe: the country is named after Great Zimbabwe, the medieval stone city that white colonists claimed Africans could not have built.
Q 23Which country was historically known to the West as Persia?
Iran
Iran: in 1935 Reza Shah's government asked foreign countries to use Iran, the land's own name, instead of the Greek-derived Persia.
Q 14The Mississippi River traditionally rises from which body of water in northern Minnesota?
Lake Itasca
From there it flows 2,340 miles to the Gulf of Mexico. Only the Missouri is longer among American rivers.
Q 15Which US Secretary of State bought Alaska in 1867, a deal mocked as his 'Folly'?
William Seward
William Seward: he and Russia's envoy Eduard de Stoeckl negotiated all night, signing the treaty at 4 a.m. on 30 March 1867.
Q 16Which was the last state to join the United States, in August 1959?
Hawaii
Hawaii: in 1893 American expatriates and sugar planters, backed by US Marines, overthrew Queen Liliʻuokalani, and the US annexed the islands in 1898.
Q 17Which sculptor carved Mount Rushmore, working from 1927 to 1941?
Gutzon Borglum
Gutzon Borglum: he died in March 1941, months before carving ended that October, and his son Lincoln took on the sculptor's role and put on the finishing touches.
Q 18Which river carved the Grand Canyon?
The Colorado
The Colorado: in 1869 John Wesley Powell, a Civil War veteran who had lost his right arm at Shiloh, led an expedition down the river through the canyon.
Q 19Which of the three Niagara waterfalls straddles the Canada-US border?
Horseshoe Falls
Horseshoe Falls: under a 1950 treaty, power plants may divert more of the river at night and outside the tourist season, when fewer people are watching.
Q 20Sri Lanka was known by what name before 1972?
Ceylon
Ceylon: the island gained independence from Britain in 1948 and became the Republic of Sri Lanka in 1972; its tea industry kept the Ceylon name as a brand.
Q 24Which Southeast Asian country was never colonised by a European power?
Thailand
Thailand, then Siam, gave up territory and trade rights through unequal treaties but stayed independent as a buffer between British Burma and French Indochina.
Q 25Which Indian city was officially called Bombay until 1995?
Mumbai
Mumbai: Portugal handed the islands to England in 1661 as part of Catherine of Braganza's dowry when she married Charles II, and the city was officially renamed in 1995.
Q 26Which city was long spelled Peking in the West?
Beijing
Beijing: the older spelling Peking was fixed by the imperial post office in the 1890s, and it gave way abroad after pinyin spellings took over from 1979.
Q 27Vietnam's largest city, formerly Saigon, was renamed in 1976 after whom?
Ho Chi Minh
Ho Chi Minh: Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in 1976 after the reunification of Vietnam, honouring the late revolutionary leader; the river through the city kept the Saigon name.
Q 28Which Russian city was called Petrograd, then Leningrad, before getting its original name back?
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg: when war with Germany began in 1914, Tsar Nicholas II renamed it Petrograd to strip out the German-sounding 'Sankt' and 'Burg'.
Q 29Which Soviet leader resigned on 25 December 1991, the day before the Soviet Union was formally dissolved?
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev: that evening the Soviet flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time and replaced by the Russian tricolour.
Q 30Which dissident playwright became the Czech Republic's first president in 1993?
Václav Havel
Václav Havel: the communist regime had jailed him for years, yet on 29 December 1989 he was elected Czechoslovakia's president.