Honduras Trivia
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58 free Honduras trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Honduras gave the world the phrase "banana republic", fought a war remembered for a football match, hosts one of the great Maya cities, and has a town where fish turn up on the streets after storms. It is also home to the largest island on the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef and a national bird as bright as its flag is calm. This Honduras trivia quiz covers all of it. Fifty-five questions run from geography (Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, Roatán, La Mosquitia, Lake Yojoa) through history (Copán, Columbus at Trujillo, Lempira, independence in 1821, O. Henry, the Football War, Hurricane Mitch, the 2009 coup) to symbols and culture (the five-starred flag, the scarlet macaw, the lempira, baleadas, punta, the Garifuna, the rain of fish of Yoro) and sport (three World Cups, the 1981 CONCACAF title). Roughly a third are easy, a third medium, and the rest are for people who really know Central America. Every answer has been checked against encyclopaedia and official pages, so the dates, numbers and names are ones you can rely on.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital and largest city of Honduras?
Tegucigalpa
Tegucigalpa is not quite the capital alone: the constitution names it and Comayagüela, its twin across the Choluteca River, as joint capital, though nearly all of government sits on its side.
Q 02The Spanish word honduras literally means what?
Depths
Depths. Columbus is said to have thanked God for getting his ships out of "those depths", and the cape he named on the same voyage is still called Gracias a Dios, "Thanks to God".
Q 03By what nickname are Hondurans commonly known in Spanish?
Catrachos
Catrachos is said to come from General Florencio Xatruch: locals who greeted his Honduran troops on their return from battle in the 1850s called them "xatruches", and the hard-to-say name slid into catrachos.
Q 04Which great Maya city in western Honduras is a UNESCO World Heritage Site?
Copán
Copán's greatest king, known as 18 Rabbit, was captured and beheaded in 738 by the ruler of Quiriguá, a smaller city that had been his own vassal.
Q 05In Honduras, the longest known Maya inscription is carved into what kind of structure?
Stairway
Stairway: its steps record a royal dynasty glyph by glyph, but many of the blocks had tumbled out of place before it was excavated, and scholars are still piecing the text back together.
Q 06On his fourth voyage in 1502, Columbus landed near which modern Honduran town?
Trujillo
Trujillo grew into colonial Honduras's first capital, but a raid in 1643 left it in ruins and all but abandoned for more than a century.
Q 07Which American adventurer, who had seized the presidency of a neighbouring country, was shot by a Honduran firing squad in 1860?
William Walker
William Walker had ruled a neighbouring republic in 1856–57 and came back in 1860 to try again, but he was captured and handed to the Honduran authorities, who had him shot.
Q 08Which indigenous people of the western highlands are Honduras's largest native group?
Lenca
Lenca campaigner Berta Cáceres rallied her people against a dam on a river they hold sacred and pushed the world's largest dam builder to pull out; she was murdered in 2016.
Q 09What is the currency of Honduras?
Lempira
Lempira was a war chief who led a major indigenous uprising against the Spanish in 1537; the currency took his name almost four centuries later, and his face is on the 1-lempira note.
Q 10The Honduran currency was introduced in 1931 to replace which unit at par?
Peso
Peso: the new unit kept the old peg of two to the US dollar, and held it for decades until a 1990 devaluation sent it sliding.
Q 11After independence in 1821, Honduras briefly joined which country's empire?
Mexico
Mexico: Honduras and its neighbours pledged allegiance to Agustín de Iturbide's empire in early 1822, but he was overthrown a year later and they promptly declared independence a second time.
Q 12Which city was the capital of Honduras until the seat of government moved in 1880?
Comayagua
Comayagua had taken turns as capital with its rival since 1824, swapping back and forth until President Marco Aurelio Soto's Liberal government made the move permanent.
Q 13Which American writer coined the term "banana republic" after living in Honduras?
O. Henry
O. Henry had fled to Honduras after being indicted for embezzling bank funds in Texas; his first book, Cabbages and Kings (1904), called its fictional Anchuria a "banana republic".
Q 21Who was elected in 2021 as the first female president of Honduras?
Xiomara Castro
Xiomara Castro won with just over 51% of the vote, ending 12 years of National Party rule that had begun after her husband was removed from the presidency.
Q 22Former president Juan Orlando Hernández was extradited to the United States in 2022 on what charges?
Drug trafficking and firearms
Drug trafficking and firearms charges put him on trial in New York, where he was convicted in 2024 and sentenced to 45 years, only for Donald Trump to pardon him in December 2025.
Q 23In 1960 the International Court of Justice upheld a 1906 border award to Honduras against which neighbour?
Nicaragua
Q 14Samuel Zemurray sold his Honduran banana firm to which rival he later ran?
United Fruit
United Fruit paid him in its own shares; when their value collapsed in the Depression, Zemurray staged a takeover and ran the company that had bought him out.
Q 15The 1969 Football War was fought between Honduras and which neighbour?
El Salvador
El Salvador invaded on 14 July 1969, weeks after riots at World Cup qualifiers between the two countries; the fighting lasted just over four days, hence its other name, the 100 Hour War.
Q 16Which international body negotiated the ceasefire that ended the 1969 Football War?
Organization of American States
The Organization of American States called for a ceasefire the day after the fighting began, then held out the threat of economic sanctions until the invading troops went home in early August.
Q 17Which hurricane devastated Honduras in October 1998?
Mitch
Mitch struck in late October 1998; soon after, the capital's mayor, César Castellanos, was killed when his helicopter crashed as he toured the damage.
Q 18What made the 1998 hurricane that devastated Honduras so deadly?
Rain and mudslides
Rain and mudslides: the storm had weakened to a minimal hurricane by landfall, but it crawled across Central America, and most of its victims died in floods and collapsing hillsides.
Q 19Which hurricane skimmed Honduras's northern coast in 1974, causing severe damage?
Fifi
Fifi killed thousands of Hondurans and destroyed the banana crop, and its name was struck from the Atlantic hurricane list, never to be used again.
Q 20Which president was removed in the 2009 Honduran coup and flown to Costa Rica?
Manuel Zelaya
Manuel Zelaya was seized by soldiers on the morning of a referendum he had called on rewriting the constitution, a vote the Supreme Court had already declared illegal.
Nicaragua had accepted the award, made by Spain's King Alfonso XIII, then disputed it from 1912; the court's ruling finally fixed the border along the Río Coco.
Q 24During the 1980s the United States used Honduras as a base to support which guerrilla force?
The Contras
The Contras struck at the Sandinista government next door from bases in Honduran border areas, a presence that drew growing protests inside Honduras itself.
Q 25Honduras once gave banana firms land for each kilometre of what?
Railway
Railway: the government hoped the lines would link the capital to the Caribbean, but the firms ran them through their own plantations instead, and the capital never got its trains.
Q 26Until 2015, Honduras's constitution barred presidents from what?
Seeking re-election
Seeking re-election was banned by a clause the constitution said could never be amended; the Supreme Court struck it down in 2015, and the sitting president ran again two years later.
Q 27The blue stars on the flag of Honduras represent what?
The states of the Central American Union
The states of the Central American Union had long since gone their separate ways when Honduras added the five stars in 1866, in the hope that they might one day reunite.
Q 28What do the two blue stripes on the Honduran flag symbolise?
The Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea
The Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea were meant to be turquoise: a 1949 decree said so, yet flags stayed navy blue until 2022, and a new government went back to navy in 2026.
Q 29What is the national bird of Honduras?
Scarlet macaw
The scarlet macaw was sacred to the Maya, which is why its image decorates the ball court of Honduras's greatest ruined city.
Q 30Which animal is the national mammal of Honduras?
White-tailed deer
White-tailed deer, not a rainforest rarity: in 1993 Honduras made a national symbol of the same species that roams from Canada all the way to Peru.