Harvard Trivia
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49 free Harvard trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Harvard is the oldest university in the United States, the richest in the world, and the alma mater of eight presidents, but the fun facts are in the details: a founder statue modelled on a random student, a library built by a Titanic widow, a humor magazine that lives in a fake castle, and a football tie the student paper reported as a win. This quiz covers the whole story: the 1636 founding vote and John Harvard's bequest, the presidents from Increase Mather to Claudine Gay, the schools and museums, Harvard Yard and the residential houses, the Crimson, the Lampoon, Hasty Pudding, The Game against Yale, and famous alumni from W. E. B. Du Bois and Helen Keller to Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg. Questions range from easy ones any Legally Blonde fan can answer to genuinely hard ones about 18th-century presidents and old libraries. Every answer has been checked against the university's documented history and the source is shown after each question.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In what year was Harvard, the oldest US institution of higher learning, founded?
1636
1636 is the founding year, sixteen years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth; it was named Harvard College in 1639 in honour of the clergyman whose bequest kept it alive.
Q 02Which body voted the £400 that founded the college?
The colony's Great and General Court
The colony's Great and General Court, the Massachusetts Bay legislature, voted the £400 at a session that opened on 8 September and was adjourned to 28 October, the date Harvard treats as its birthday.
Q 03Besides half his estate, what did John Harvard bequeath to the college in 1638?
His library of some 400 volumes
His library of some 400 volumes, together with half his estate, made the Charlestown minister the college's first major benefactor; it was renamed Harvard College in his honour in 1639.
Q 04What single Latin word appears on the three open books of Harvard's shield?
Veritas
Veritas, Latin for 'truth', was sketched on the books in a 1643 design that was forgotten until President Josiah Quincy rediscovered it in 1836; the 1650 charter seal instead read 'In Christi Gloriam'.
Q 05Which of these is Harvard's official school color?
Crimson
Its sports teams take the name Harvard Crimson and compete in the Ivy League without athletic scholarships.
Q 06As of 2024, how many US presidents had been Harvard alumni, the most for any university?
Eight
Eight presidents attended, from John Adams and John Quincy Adams through Rutherford B. Hayes and both Roosevelts to George W. Bush, counting law- and business-school graduates; Yale is next with five.
Q 07Roughly how large was Harvard's endowment, the world's biggest university fund, as of 2023?
$51 billion
$51 billion, roughly $50.7 billion at the close of fiscal 2023, was more than the entire endowment of any other university; Yale's stood at about $41 billion.
Q 08Harvard's oldest surviving building, completed in 1720, is which one on Harvard Yard?
Massachusetts Hall
Massachusetts Hall, finished in 1720, housed Continental troops during the Siege of Boston; the president's offices occupy its lower floors and a handful of freshmen live on the top floor.
Q 09Which library, the anchor of the world's largest academic library system, sits in Harvard Yard?
Widener
Widener Library, opened in 1915, anchors a system of more than 20 million items across dozens of libraries; its stacks alone hold several million volumes.
Q 10Harvard's great library is a memorial to a 1907 graduate who died in what event?
The sinking of the Titanic
The sinking of the Titanic in April 1912 killed the 27-year-old book collector, class of 1907; his mother Eleanor, who survived, funded the library in his name, and the swimming-test story is campus legend.
Q 11The main library's stacks hold about 3.5 million books along roughly how much shelving?
57 miles
57 miles of shelving run through the building's ten levels of stacks, which hold roughly 3.5 million volumes; the stacks were built as a self-supporting steel structure.
Q 12Who sculpted the John Harvard statue that stands in Harvard Yard?
Daniel Chester French
Daniel Chester French, who had already made Concord's Minute Man, completed the bronze in 1884 and later created the seated Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial.
Q 13With no likeness of John Harvard surviving, whose face inspired the sculptor of his statue?
A student named Sherman Hoar
Q 21The Hasty Pudding has named a Woman of the Year since 1951 and a Man of the Year since which year?
1967
1967 saw the first Man of the Year, Bob Hope, sixteen years after Gertrude Lawrence became the first Woman of the Year; honourees are 'roasted' and receive a brass pudding pot.
Q 22Mark Zuckerberg launched 'TheFacebook' from his Harvard dorm on which date?
4 February 2004
4 February 2004 was launch day for thefacebook.com, run from his room in Kirkland House; months earlier his Facemash site had landed him in front of the Administrative Board.
Q 23Zuckerberg's earlier site Facemash asked users to do what?
Rate students' attractiveness
A student named Sherman Hoar, class of 1882, sat for the face; the inscription 'John Harvard, Founder, 1638' underpins the tour-guide routine about the 'statue of three lies'.
Q 14What do tourists do to the John Harvard statue in the mistaken belief that it is a student tradition?
Rub the toe of his left shoe
Rub the toe of his left shoe for luck, visitors are told, and the constant handling has polished that one spot of bronze to a bright gold.
Q 15After a 1968 rivalry game ended 29–29, the student newspaper ran which famous headline?
Harvard Beats Yale, 29–29
'Harvard Beats Yale, 29–29' was the student paper's headline after Harvard scored 16 points in the final minute to salvage the draw; it later titled a 2008 documentary.
Q 16During the 1982 rivalry game, a weather balloon inflated at midfield bearing the letters of which school?
MIT
MIT students had buried the balloon under the turf beforehand; inflated from below, it rose bearing the letters 'MIT' and grew until it burst, spraying powder over the field.
Q 17Harvard's undergraduate humor magazine, founded in 1876, is called what?
The Lampoon
The Lampoon counts Conan O'Brien, John Updike and Robert Benchley among its alumni and is housed in a mock-Flemish castle near Harvard Square.
Q 18In 1953 the student newspaper stole the humor magazine's ibis and gave it to which government?
The Soviet Union
The Soviet Union was the recipient: the newspaper's editors handed the ibis to Soviet diplomats as a 'gift' from Harvard's students, and the magazine had to retrieve its bird; the two publications have feuded for generations.
Q 19Harvard's Memorial Hall was built to honour Harvard men who died in which war?
The Civil War
The Civil War dead of the Union side are honoured in Memorial Hall, the Victorian Gothic pile completed in 1878; Sanders Theatre and Annenberg Hall, the freshman dining hall, sit inside it.
Q 20Hasty Pudding Theatricals, formed in 1795, holds what distinction?
Oldest theatrical organization in the US
Oldest theatrical organization in the US is the Pudding's claim, with only two older in the world; its cast was all-male, often in drag, until women joined in 2018.
Rate students' attractiveness was the game: Facemash paired photos lifted from house 'facebooks' and asked who was hotter, drawing hundreds of visitors within hours before Harvard shut it down.
Q 24Which 2010 film dramatised the founding of Facebook at Harvard?
The Social Network
The Social Network, directed by David Fincher from Aaron Sorkin's script, could not film on campus because Harvard refused permission, so Johns Hopkins and other colleges stood in.
Q 25Which 1970 film pairs a wealthy Harvard hockey player with a dying music student?
Love Story
Love Story, adapted by Erich Segal from his own novel, stars Ryan O'Neal as Oliver Barrett IV and Ali MacGraw as Jenny Cavilleri; its famous line is 'Love means never having to say you're sorry'.
Q 26Who became Harvard's first female president in 2007?
Drew Gilpin Faust
Drew Gilpin Faust, a historian of the American South, became the university's 28th president after serving as the first dean of its institute for advanced study.
Q 27Which Harvard president resigned in January 2024 after the shortest tenure in its history?
Claudine Gay
Claudine Gay stepped down on 2 January 2024, six months and a day after taking office, amid plagiarism allegations and criticism of her congressional testimony; Provost Alan Garber took over as interim president.
Q 28For how many years was Charles William Eliot, who modernised Harvard, its president?
40
40 years, from 1869 to 1909, made Eliot the longest-serving president; a chemist who had studied in Germany, he introduced the elective system and oversaw Harvard's first PhDs in 1873.
Q 29Who in 1708 became the first Harvard president who was not also a clergyman?
John Leverett
John Leverett, a lawyer and judge, led the college from 1708 to 1724; every earlier head, including Increase Mather, had been a minister.
Q 30Harvard Law School, founded in 1817, was made possible by a 1779 bequest from whom?
Isaac Royall Jr.
Isaac Royall Jr., a Medford slaveholder whose will endowed Harvard's first law professorship, made the school possible; it has operated continuously for longer than any other US law school.