Labor Day
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8correct to beat the crowd
Celebrate Labor Day with our comprehensive free 136-question trivia quiz with answers! Challenge yourself and learn fascinating facts about the history, significance, and traditions of Labor Day across different countries. Whether you're a history buff or just looking for some fun, this interactive quiz will test your knowledge and provide interesting insights into this important holiday.
30 of 136 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01When is Labor Day celebrated in the United States?
First Monday in September
First Monday in September: Congress fixed the date in June 1894, and Canada's Parliament chose the same Monday weeks later, so the two neighbours have shared the holiday ever since.
Q 02Which pageant did Atlantic City businessmen dream up in 1921 to keep tourists in town after Labor Day?
Miss America
Miss America paid off at once: crowds packed the Boardwalk for the first contest, won by Margaret Gorman, a 16-year-old from Washington, D.C.
Q 03The first Labor Day parade in 1882 nearly failed to start because the few punctual marchers lacked what?
Music
They had no music. Two hundred jewelers from Newark then arrived off the ferry with a band, spectators fell in behind, and the parade finally set off from City Hall.
Q 04Virginia's law forcing most schools to open after Labor Day was nicknamed after which park?
Kings Dominion
Kings Dominion and other Virginia attractions lobbied for the rule so families had one more holiday weekend to visit; the state repealed the 'Kings Dominion law' in 2019.
Q 05New York held the first Labor Day parade, but which western state first made it a legal holiday?
Oregon
Oregon passed its law on February 21, 1887, beating New York, which had been first to introduce a bill, and acting seven years before Congress did.
Q 06Which Central Labor Union secretary is credited with first proposing Labor Day in 1882?
Matthew Maguire
Descendants of two men with near-identical surnames still argue over which great-grandfather fathered the holiday; a Paterson newspaper called Maguire its 'undisputed author'.
Q 07Which AFL co-founder is credited with proposing Labor Day after seeing a labor festival in Canada in 1882?
Peter J. McGuire
Peter J. McGuire, a prominent labor leader and co-founder of the American Federation of Labor, is frequently cited for proposing the idea of Labor Day.
Q 08Roughly how many people packed the post-parade picnic on the first Labor Day in 1882?
25,000
Some 25,000 people filled the picnic grounds from afternoon into the night; even unions that skipped the march turned up for the speeches, cigars and lager kegs 'mounted in every conceivable place'.
Q 09Labor Day traditionally marks the unofficial end of which season in the United States?
Summer
For many, Labor Day weekend symbolizes the unofficial close of the summer season.
Q 10Which US president signed the 1894 act making Labor Day a national holiday?
Grover Cleveland
Grover Cleveland signed the act on June 28, 1894, only days before he sent federal troops to Chicago to break a nationwide rail strike.
Q 11Labor Day became a national holiday in 1894 just as which railroad strike was spreading across the country?
Pullman Strike
The Pullman Strike's rail boycott began on June 26, 1894, and the holiday was signed two days later; within a week federal troops were in Chicago and the dispute turned deadly.
Q 12The first New York City Labor Day parade marched from City Hall to which location?
Union Square
Union Square, where the marchers filed past a reviewing stand, was made a National Historic Landmark in 1997 chiefly as the site of that first parade; many carried on to a park at 42nd Street.
Q 13A labour festival in which Canadian city is said to have inspired the first American Labor Day parade in 1882?
Toronto
Q 21On what day of the week was New York's first Labor Day celebration held in 1882?
Tuesday
The first Labor Day was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, organized by the Central Labor Union.
Q 22Along with Connecticut and Pennsylvania, which state had passed a Labor Day law by the end of the 1880s?
Nebraska
Nebraska, with Connecticut and Pennsylvania, followed the five states of 1887 before the decade was out; by 1894, 23 more had joined before Congress made the day a national holiday.
Q 23Which Pulitzer-winning William Inge play, filmed in 1955 with William Holden, unfolds on Labor Day in a small Kansas town?
Picnic
Picnic follows a drifter who hops off a freight train on Labor Day morning and upends the town within 24 hours; the 1953 stage production gave Paul Newman his Broadway debut.
Toronto had paraded for labour since an 1872 rally for striking printers, which pushed Canada to legalise unions; an American union leader who watched a later festival there took the idea home.
Q 14Which vice president urged Americans to 'speak softly and carry a big stick' at the Minnesota State Fair on Labor Day 1901?
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt gave the speech on September 2, 1901, and became president twelve days later, when William McKinley died of an assassin's bullet.
Q 15Labor Day's early-September date was pitched as sitting midway between which two holidays?
Fourth of July and Thanksgiving
Fourth of July and Thanksgiving: the 1882 proposal liked early September for its fine weather and for breaking up the long stretch between the two public holidays.
Q 16What common tradition, alongside parades and barbecues, is associated with Labor Day celebrations?
Family picnics
Labor Day celebrations often include parades, barbecues, and family picnics.
Q 17During the Cold War, Soviet leaders reviewed huge 1 May parades from atop Lenin's tomb in which square?
Red Square
Red Square turned on its hosts in 1990: protesters let into the parade booed Mikhail Gorbachev and the Kremlin leadership with shouts of 'Resign!' until they filed off the mausoleum.
Q 18Which major union, formed in 1881, was co-founded by the man who later claimed to have proposed Labor Day?
United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America
Peter J. McGuire founded the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America in 1881.
Q 19On France's 1 May Labour Day, people traditionally give loved ones sprigs of which spring flower?
Lily of the valley
Lily of the valley, or muguet: Charles IX is said to have been handed a sprig as a lucky charm on 1 May 1561, and on that one day anyone in France may sell the flowers tax-free.
Q 20The 1935 Labor Day hurricane wrecked the Florida Keys railroad built by which tycoon?
Henry Flagler
Henry Flagler rode the first train into Key West in 1912 on a line mocked as 'Flagler's Folly'; after the storm the railway could not afford to rebuild and sold its roadbed and bridges to the state.
Q 24The US chose September for Labor Day partly out of wariness of May Day's ties to what kind of politics?
Socialist and anarchist
May Day's links to socialist and anarchist movements made U.S. officials prefer September; May 1 was later given patriotic observances instead, none of them legal public holidays.
Q 25Which New Mexico village celebrates its famous green chile harvest with a festival every Labor Day weekend?
Hatch
Hatch bills itself as the chile capital of the world; its festival began in 1971 as a modest gathering of local farmers and has since drawn crowds of 30,000 to the village.
Q 26Which deadly 1886 Chicago clash made US officials wary of adopting May 1 as a labor holiday?
Haymarket Affair
Haymarket Affair: a bomb thrown at police breaking up a labor rally set off violence that left seven officers dead, four men were hanged after a disputed trial, and workers abroad took up May 1 in memory.
Q 27Which computer pioneer bankrolled the US Festival, a giant open-air concert held in California over Labor Day weekend 1982?
Steve Wozniak
Steve Wozniak, rich from Apple, set up a company called Unuson, short for 'Unite Us in Song', to stage it, and lost millions of dollars on the weekend.
Q 28China stretches its 1 May Labour Day holiday by reshuffling weekends, creating one of the breaks nicknamed what?
Golden Week
Golden Week: the long breaks were introduced in 1999 to boost domestic tourism; the May one was dropped after 2007 and brought back in 2019, with nearby weekend days worked to make up the time.
Q 29Roughly how many workers marched in the first Labor Day parade in New York in 1882?
About 10,000
About 10,000, and up to 20,000 by some reports; yet at the 10 a.m. start only a handful had turned up, and onlookers were urging the grand marshal to give up the idea.
Q 30What type of ordinances recognising Labor Day were passed in 1885 and 1886, before any state law?
Municipal
Municipal ordinances came first, in 1885 and 1886; they set off a movement for state laws that had swept much of the country by the time Congress acted in 1894.