Nashville Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Nashville trivia questions with answers. Nashville is more than honky-tonks on Broadway, and this quiz proves it. Fifty questions cover the city from Fort Nashborough in 1779 to the Batman Building: how the Grand Ole Opry got its name, why the Ryman is the Mother Church, who invented hot chicken (and why), what the Goo Goo Cluster was first at, the Music City Miracle, the Predators' catfish, the 1960 sit-ins, the Parthenon and its 42-foot Athena, and the plantation that bred America's leading sire. It starts with easy questions any visitor can answer and works up to ones for people who have lived in Davidson County for decades. Use it for a Nashville-themed party, a bachelorette weekend, a classroom unit on Tennessee, or a pub quiz round. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the city and its landmarks, and each question shows its source.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Nashville is the capital of which US state, whose most populous city it also is?
Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of Tennessee and, after overtaking Memphis in the 2020 census, its most populous city; it is also the seat of Davidson County.
Q 02Nashville is named after Francis Nash, who was what?
A Revolutionary War general
Francis Nash was a Revolutionary War general in the Continental Army, mortally wounded at the Battle of Germantown in 1777; North Carolina's legislature named the town for him in 1784.
Q 03What was the name of the stockade settlement built by James Robertson and John Donelson's party in 1779?
Fort Nashborough
Fort Nashborough was the log stockade Robertson's settlers raised over the winter of 1779-80 beside the French Lick trading post; a reconstruction stands downtown today.
Q 04On which river does Nashville sit?
Cumberland
Nashville sits on the Cumberland River, a tributary of the Ohio; its role as a river port and later rail hub drove early growth and made it a Civil War prize.
Q 05Which nickname does Nashville owe to its many colleges and universities?
Athens of the South
Nashville earned the nickname Athens of the South for its many colleges, which is why a full-scale Parthenon replica was chosen as the centrepiece of the state's 1897 centennial fair.
Q 06Who ad-libbed 'Music City, U.S.A.' on WSM radio in 1950, coining Nashville's nickname?
David Cobb
WSM announcer David Cobb coined 'Music City, U.S.A.' on air in 1950; the phrase stuck as studios set up to record Grand Ole Opry performers and the 'Nashville Sound' followed.
Q 07What is the Grand Ole Opry?
A live country radio broadcast
It began as the WSM Barn Dance in 1925 and is the longest-running radio broadcast in US history.
Q 08Who founded the Grand Ole Opry as the WSM Barn Dance in November 1925?
George D. Hay
Hay, the 'Solemn Old Judge', had come from Chicago's National Barn Dance; the show took its current name in 1927 with a joke about following an hour of grand opera.
Q 09Which venue, home of the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 to 1974, is the 'Mother Church of Country Music'?
Ryman Auditorium
The Ryman Auditorium housed the Opry from 1943 to 1974; when the show moved out, a six-foot circle of the Ryman's oak stage was inlaid into the new Grand Ole Opry House stage.
Q 10Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, the Mother Church of Country Music, opened in 1892 under what name?
Union Gospel Tabernacle
Union Gospel Tabernacle was built by riverboat and saloon owner Thomas Ryman, who went to heckle a revivalist, was converted instead, and built him a church.
Q 11Which president played piano at the opening night of the Grand Ole Opry House in March 1974?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon opened the Grand Ole Opry House on 16 March 1974, playing 'Happy Birthday' on the piano for his wife Pat and trying a yo-yo with Roy Acuff before 4,400 guests.
Q 12WSM's call letters come from what motto of the insurance company that founded the station?
We Shield Millions
WSM stands for 'We Shield Millions', the slogan of National Life & Accident Insurance, which signed the station on in October 1925 partly as a way to sell policies.
Q 13Nashville's full-scale Parthenon replica was built for which 1897 event?
Tennessee Centennial Exposition
Q 21Which team beat the Nashville Predators in their first Stanley Cup Final, in 2017?
Pittsburgh Penguins
The Pittsburgh Penguins beat Nashville in six games, clinching 2-0 in Game 6 at Bridgestone Arena on 11 June 2017, where fans kept up the tradition of throwing catfish onto the ice.
Q 22Nashville's MLS team began play in 2020 and moved in 2022 into which stadium at the Fairgrounds?
Geodis Park
Geodis Park, a 30,000-seat soccer-specific stadium at the Nashville Fairgrounds, opened in May 2022 as the largest soccer-specific stadium in the United States at the time.
Q 23Which president's home, The Hermitage, lies ten miles east of downtown Nashville?
Andrew Jackson
The Parthenon was the centrepiece of the 1897 Tennessee Centennial Exposition; built of plaster, wood and brick as a temporary pavilion, it was rebuilt in concrete in the 1920s and houses an art museum in Centennial Park.
Q 14How tall is Alan LeQuire's statue of Athena Parthenos inside the Nashville Parthenon?
42 feet
LeQuire's Athena Parthenos stands 42 feet tall (41 feet 10 inches); completed in 1990, it was gilded in 2002 with more than eight pounds of gold leaf.
Q 15Whose fried-chicken breakfast did a girlfriend spike with extra pepper, inventing Nashville hot chicken?
Thornton Prince
Thornton Prince's girlfriend reportedly loaded his chicken with cayenne as revenge; he liked it so much that by the mid-1930s he and his brothers had opened the BBQ Chicken Shack, ancestor of Prince's Hot Chicken Shack.
Q 16Which fast-food chain launched 'Nashville Hot Chicken' nationwide in January 2016?
KFC
KFC put Nashville Hot Chicken on menus nationwide in January 2016 after a Pittsburgh test market; the city itself hosts the Music City Hot Chicken Festival, founded in 2007.
Q 17The Goo Goo Cluster, made in Nashville since 1912, is credited as the first what?
Combination candy bar
The Goo Goo Cluster is billed as the first combination candy bar, mixing marshmallow nougat, caramel and peanuts in milk chocolate; maker Standard Candy Company was a long-time Grand Ole Opry sponsor.
Q 18Which NFL team moved to Tennessee in 1997 and took the name Titans two years later?
Houston Oilers
The Houston Oilers spent a season in Memphis and one at Vanderbilt Stadium before Nissan Stadium opened in 1999.
Q 19Who caught Frank Wycheck's lateral and ran 75 yards to win the 'Music City Miracle' in January 2000?
Kevin Dyson
Kevin Dyson took Frank Wycheck's lateral and ran 75 yards for the winning touchdown against Buffalo; the play, 'Home Run Throwback', sent the Titans on a run that ended one yard short in Super Bowl XXXIV.
Q 20Which team beat the Titans 23-16 in Super Bowl XXXIV at the end of the 1999 season?
St. Louis Rams
The St. Louis Rams beat the Titans 23-16 on 30 January 2000 when Kevin Dyson was tackled at the one-yard line on the final play; it was the franchise's first Super Bowl appearance.
Andrew Jackson bought the Hermitage in 1804 and died there in 1845; he is buried in its garden beside his wife Rachel.
Q 24The cedar-lined carriage drive approaching The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson's Nashville mansion, was laid out in what shape?
A guitar
A guitar shape, designed by Ralph E. W. Earl, made it easier to turn carriages in the narrow space, decades before Nashville was Music City.
Q 25Which former US president died in Nashville's 1849-50 cholera epidemic?
James K. Polk
James K. Polk died just months after leaving the White House; the epidemic killed hundreds, and another in 1873 killed about a thousand.
Q 26In February 1862 Nashville earned what unwanted Civil War distinction?
First Confederate state capital to fall to Union troops
Nashville was the first Confederate state capital to fall to Union troops, occupied on 25 February 1862 after Fort Donelson surrendered; Hood's attempt to retake it in December 1864 ended in a rout.
Q 27Who designed Nashville's state capitol, called it his greatest work, and is entombed in it?
William Strickland
William Strickland, the Greek Revival architect, designed the capitol, built between 1845 and 1859; he died in 1854 before it was finished and was entombed in its north wall.
Q 28Nashville's Bicentennial Capitol Mall carillon has how many bells, one for each county in the state?
95
The carillon has 95 bells, one for each of Tennessee's 95 counties, ringing around the Court of Three Stars; a 200-foot granite map of the state anchors the mall's south end.
Q 29Why is Nashville's 617-foot AT&T Building nicknamed the Batman Building?
Its twin spires resemble a caped hero's cowl
Its twin spires resemble a caped hero's cowl, so locals call the dark 617-foot tower the Batman Building; it was completed in 1994.
Q 30What was Nashville's first skyscraper, completed in 1957?
Life & Casualty Tower
The Life & Casualty Tower, 30 storeys and 409 feet, opened in 1957 as Nashville's first true skyscraper and was briefly the tallest commercial building in the Southeast.