Long Island
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
55 free Long Island trivia questions with answers. Long Island is 118 miles of contradictions: the country's biggest island that the Supreme Court says is not legally an island, home to Gatsby's mansions and the first mass-produced suburb, the factory that built the lunar module and the bar that (probably) invented a cocktail with no tea in it. This quiz covers the whole thing, from Brooklyn and Queens out to Orient and Montauk Points: geography, the Battle of Long Island, the LIRR, Levittown, Roosevelt Field, Brookhaven and Cold Spring Harbor, Jones Beach and Fire Island, the Islanders and Belmont, wine, ducks, the Hamptons, and famous Long Islanders. Questions start easy (which sound lies to the north, where the Hamptons are) and climb to genuinely hard ones about the Dutch name on 1650s maps, Jayne's Hill and the first vinifera vineyard. Every answer was checked against a documented source and the citation sits under each explanation, so a Nassau-versus-Suffolk argument can be settled on the spot. Play it solo, or use it as a Long Island round for a bar trivia night from Massapequa to Montauk.
30 of 55 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Long Island stretches how far east from New York Harbor into the Atlantic?
118 miles
Long Island measures about 118 miles from New York Harbor to its eastern tip, yet only 23 miles at its widest, which is why locals give directions by 'north shore' and 'south shore'.
Q 02Long Island's eight million-plus people are roughly what share of New York State's population?
40%
Long Island's four counties hold about 8 million of New York State's roughly 20 million residents, close to 40%, which makes it the most populous island in the United States.
Q 03Which two of Long Island's four counties are also boroughs of New York City?
Kings and Queens
Kings and Queens are New York City boroughs: Kings County is Brooklyn and Queens County is the borough of the same name. Nassau and Suffolk make up what most people mean by 'the Island.'
Q 04The 1650s Dutch name for the island, 't Lange Eylandt, was paired on maps with what Native American name?
Matouwacs
Dutch maps of the 1650s, such as the Visscher map, label the island ''t Lange Eylandt alias Matouwacs'; Paumanok, the name a later poet favored, comes from the same Algonquian tongue.
Q 05What formed Long Island's two east-west ridges, Harbor Hill and Ronkonkoma?
Ice Age glaciers
Ice Age glaciers built both ridges as terminal moraines during the last pulses of the Wisconsin glaciation about 21,000 years ago; the same ice scooped out the kettle lakes Ronkonkoma and Success.
Q 06What is the highest natural point on Long Island, at a modest 401 feet?
Jayne's Hill
Jayne's Hill, at 401 feet, crowns West Hills County Park in the Town of Huntington, Suffolk County, and a boulder marker at its summit records the elevation.
Q 07Why are the island's northern beaches rocky while its southern beaches are fine white sand?
Glacial debris vs glacial outwash
Glacial debris vs glacial outwash explains it: the North Shore sits on the rocky terminal moraine, while the South Shore's sand is outwash washed from the melting ice, fronted by barrier islands such as Fire Island.
Q 08In United States v. Maine (1985), the Supreme Court ruled Long Island is legally what?
Part of the mainland
The ruling turned Long Island Sound into a 'juridical bay', though the Board on Geographic Names still calls it an island because it is surrounded by water.
Q 09The far eastern tip of the North Fork, where the ferry to New London departs, is called what?
Orient Point
Orient Point, at the end of the North Fork, is the terminal of the Cross Sound Ferry to New London, Connecticut; the fork behind it has largely traded potato farms for vineyards.
Q 10The Battle of Long Island, fought on August 27, 1776, holds what distinction in the Revolutionary War?
Biggest engagement of the war
Biggest engagement of the war by troops involved, it was also the first major battle after the Declaration of Independence; the British held New York until their evacuation in November 1783.
Q 11How did Washington save his army after losing the Battle of Long Island?
A night evacuation across the East River
A night evacuation across the East River saved the army: on August 29-30, 1776, about 9,000 men were ferried to Manhattan under darkness and fog without the loss of a single life.
Q 12The Long Island Rail Road, chartered in 1834, is the oldest US railroad still doing what?
Operating under its original name and charter
Operating under its original name and charter since April 1834, the LIRR was first meant to be part of a New York-to-Boston route via a ferry from Greenport, not a commuter line.
Q 13The LIRR gained a second Manhattan terminal in January 2023. What is it called?
Q 21For how many hours was Apollo 13's lunar module Aquarius designed to support two astronauts?
45
Aquarius was built to support two men for 45 hours yet kept three alive for about 90; Grumman staff later sent North American Rockwell a joke towing bill for hauling the command module home.
Q 22Which Long Island lab, on the old Camp Upton army base, produced Tennis for Two in 1958?
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Brookhaven National Laboratory, opened on the former Camp Upton in 1947, is where physicist William Higinbotham built Tennis for Two on an analog computer and oscilloscope in 1958; seven Nobel Prizes trace to its research.
Q 23Which Long Island institution was run for decades by James Watson and counts eight Nobel laureates?
Grand Central Madison
The East Side Access project took more than a decade and gave the busiest commuter railroad in North America a direct route to Grand Central.
Q 14Levittown, the prototype postwar suburb, was called what when Levitt & Sons broke ground in 1947?
Island Trees
Island Trees was the name of the farmland community Levitt & Sons began building on in 1947; it became Levittown in 1948, when the company was finishing 30 houses a day, and the 1949 ranch model sold for $7,990.
Q 15Levittown's original leases contained a covenant restricting occupancy to whom?
Members of the Caucasian race
Members of the Caucasian race were the only occupants clause 25 of the original leases allowed; after Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) made such covenants unenforceable, Levitt kept refusing Black buyers, and the town stayed nearly all-white for decades.
Q 16Which industrialist's Long Island estate, Oheka Castle, is the second-largest US private home?
Otto Kahn
The name is built from his initials, Otto Hermann Kahn; the 127-room house later doubled as Xanadu in Citizen Kane and starred in Taylor Swift's 'Blank Space' video.
Q 17Roughly how many Gold Coast mansions went up on the North Shore during its Gilded Age building spree?
Over 500
Over 500 mansions rose on the North Shore between the 1890s and the 1930s; roughly 300 were torn down after World War II, and survivors include Old Westbury Gardens and the Vanderbilt Museum.
Q 18Which real Long Island peninsula, where Fitzgerald lived from 1922 to 1924, was the model for Gatsby's West Egg?
Great Neck
Great Neck, where Fitzgerald rented a house from 1922 to 1924, became new-money West Egg; old-money East Egg was Sands Point across Manhasset Bay, and the 'valley of ashes' was the Corona ash dumps.
Q 19Charles Lindbergh took off for Paris in 1927 from which Long Island airfield, now a shopping mall site?
Roosevelt Field
Roosevelt Field took its name in 1919 from Theodore Roosevelt's son Quentin, killed in air combat in 1918; Lindbergh left it on May 20, 1927, and the field closed in 1951 to become a shopping center.
Q 20Long Island's cluster of early airfields earned it what nickname by the mid-1920s?
The Cradle of Aviation
The museum of that name in Garden City holds a real Lunar Module, LM-13, built for the cancelled Apollo 19 mission.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory was led by James Watson from 1968 to 2007 as director, president and chancellor; its darkest chapter was hosting the Eugenics Record Office from 1910 to 1939.
Q 24Which poet was born in 1819 in a West Hills farmhouse and raised in Brooklyn?
Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in the West Hills farmhouse now kept as a state historic site; a nearby shopping mall also borrows his name.
Q 25The Montauk Point Light, completed in 1796, was authorized under which president?
George Washington
George Washington signed the 1792 act of Congress that authorized the light, New York State's first lighthouse, which was completed in 1796 at the island's eastern tip.
Q 26The 168-foot Fire Island Lighthouse, lit in 1858, was decommissioned in 1974 and then what?
Relit in 1986 after a preservation campaign
Relit in 1986 after a preservation campaign by the Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society, the 168-foot tower had for decades been the first sight of America for immigrants arriving by ship.
Q 27Fire Island National Seashore was created in 1964 largely in response to protests against what?
A proposed highway
A proposed highway along the barrier island, pushed by Robert Moses, sparked the protests that led Congress to create the seashore in 1964; most of Fire Island has no roads, so residents haul groceries in wagons along boardwalks.
Q 28Which Fire Island community calls itself 'America's First Gay and Lesbian Town'?
Cherry Grove
Cherry Grove and neighboring Fire Island Pines were established LGBT havens by the 1950s.
Q 29Jones Beach honors Major Thomas Jones, who ran what kind of business on the outer beach?
Whaling
Whaling was Major Thomas Jones's trade: around 1700 he set up a shore whaling station on the outer beach that later took his name, continuing a hunt the Shinnecock had practiced for generations.
Q 30The Power Broker alleged Robert Moses built parkway bridges deliberately low to keep out what?
Buses
Buses could not pass under the parkway overpasses, Caro argued, which kept poorer families without cars away from Jones Beach; Moses himself never learned to drive.