Oahu
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50 free Oahu trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Oahu is the island most visitors to Hawaii see first and the one most residents call home. It fits a state capital, a royal past, famous surf and a wartime anchorage into a space you can drive around in a day. This quiz covers the island's geography, from its volcanic mountain chains to its headlands and beaches, along with the monarchs, battles and buildings of Honolulu's history. You will also meet the films and television series shot here, the musicians and athletes the island raised, and the food locals queue for. It suits a trivia night with friends, a classroom unit on the Hawaiian Islands, or anyone planning a trip who wants the stories behind the place names.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Oahu landmark's Hawaiian name, Leahi, is thought to liken its ridgeline to a tuna's dorsal fin?
Diamond Head
Diamond Head got its English name in 1825, when British sailors mistook calcite crystals in the sand for gems.
Q 02Which internet term did programmer Ward Cunningham borrow from the name of the shuttle at Honolulu's airport?
Wiki
Wiki means quick in Hawaiian, and the Wiki Wiki Shuttle that carries passengers between terminals inspired the name of the first user-editable website in 1994.
Q 03Oahu's H-1, H-2 and H-3 freeways belong to which national road network despite never leaving the island?
Interstate Highways
Interstate Highways on Oahu were approved by Congress in 1960, a year after statehood. Protests and lawsuits kept H-3 from opening until 1997, at a cost of $1.3 billion.
Q 04Which Oahu visitor attraction near Wahiawa is home to a three-acre garden maze declared the world's largest in 2008?
Dole Plantation
Dole Plantation's Pineapple Garden Maze winds through nearly two and a half miles of paths lined with 14,000 Hawaiian plants.
Q 05Which Honolulu home of King Kalakaua was among the world's first royal residences lit by electricity, in 1886?
Iolani Palace
Iolani Palace also had indoor plumbing and a telephone, after its king visited Thomas Edison to see electric lighting demonstrated.
Q 06Which singer, born Peter Hernandez in Honolulu, performed with a family band at the Sheraton Waikiki from age four?
Bruno Mars
Bruno Mars sang with his family's band, the Love Notes, five days a week, and later attended Roosevelt High School in Honolulu.
Q 07In which season do storm swells from the North Pacific bring the biggest surf to Oahu's North Shore?
Winter
Winter waves on the North Shore average around 16 feet on the face and can rise to 45 feet or more at the peak of the season.
Q 08Which battleship, on whose deck the Second World War formally ended, is now moored at Oahu's Ford Island?
USS Missouri
USS Missouri was brought to Oahu in 1998 so that a symbol of the war's end could sit beside the sunken wreck that marks its beginning for America.
Q 09Which singer's 1961 benefit concert in Honolulu raised about $64,000 toward building the USS Arizona Memorial?
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley would not perform live again until 1968. The memorial his show helped to fund was dedicated on Memorial Day the following year.
Q 10Which Oahu lagoon, once too shallow at its entrance for large ships, became headquarters of the US Pacific Fleet?
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor was known to Hawaiians as Wai Momi, or waters of pearl, and legend made it the home of a shark goddess.
Q 11Which Oahu snorkelling spot formed when waves broke through the seaward wall of a 32,000-year-old volcano?
Hanauma Bay
Hanauma Bay became Hawaii's first Marine Life Conservation District, and at one time drew more than three million visitors a year.
Q 12Which ruler took Oahu by trapping its defenders above the Nuuanu Pali cliffs, then founded the Hawaiian Kingdom?
Kamehameha I
Kamehameha I sailed from Hawaii Island with an army of 10,000, and road workers found some 800 skulls beneath the cliffs in 1898.
Q 13Which queen, Hawaii's last monarch, was held prisoner in an upstairs bedroom of her former royal residence in 1895?
Liliuokalani
Q 21The Byodo-In Temple in Oahu's Valley of the Temples is a concrete replica of an 11th-century temple in which country?
Japan
Japan's original stands at Uji, near Kyoto, and was built of wood without nails. The Oahu copy was dedicated in 1968, a century after the first Japanese immigrants arrived.
Q 22Honolulu's Kawaiahao Church, a royal chapel, was built from some 14,000 slabs of which material?
Coral
Coral blocks weighing about 1,000 pounds each were chiselled from an offshore reef by divers working three to six metres down.
Q 23Which disease was Honolulu fighting in 1900 when a controlled burn of infected buildings destroyed Chinatown?
Bubonic plague
Bubonic plague had killed 13 people when the Board of Health ordered suspect buildings burned. A shift in the wind then carried the flames through most of the district.
Liliuokalani gave up her throne while confined there to save jailed supporters from the gallows, and stitched a quilt that is still on display.
Q 14Which nickname does Oahu carry, fitting for an island that holds about 70 percent of Hawaii's people?
The Gathering Place
The Gathering Place was offered as a translation of the island's name only in 1922, by almanac author Thomas Thrum. The name has no other confirmed meaning.
Q 15Which Olympic swimming champion from Waikiki spread surfing worldwide and later served 13 terms as Sheriff of Honolulu?
Duke Kahanamoku
Duke Kahanamoku won 100-metre freestyle gold in 1912 and 1920, and his 1914 display at Sydney's Freshwater Beach helped launch surfing in Australia.
Q 16Which Hawaiian mountain chain behind Honolulu is the surviving half of one volcano whose other half slid into the sea?
Koolau Range
The Koolau Range is no true range at all: it began as a single volcano, and its name means windward in Hawaiian.
Q 17Which headland, Oahu's westernmost tip, was in Hawaiian tradition the jumping-off place for souls leaving the world?
Kaena Point
Kaena Point is ringed by the first predator-proof fence built in the United States, and albatross chicks have multiplied behind it since 2011.
Q 18Which actor played the Ferrari-driving private eye living on a beachfront Oahu estate in Magnum, P.I.?
Tom Selleck
Tom Selleck's Thomas Magnum lived in the guesthouse of Robin's Nest, a 200-acre estate whose caretaker patrolled with Dobermanns named Zeus and Apollo.
Q 19Which frozen treat did Californian surfers help popularise at North Shore stores such as Matsumoto's in Haleiwa?
Shave ice
Shave ice at Matsumoto's can mean a wait of more than half an hour, with over 1,000 servings sold in a day.
Q 20Which Honolulu landmark, the Hill of Sacrifice in Hawaiian, holds the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific?
Punchbowl
Punchbowl opened to the public as a cemetery in 1949 with services for five war dead, among them the correspondent Ernie Pyle.
Q 24Which Honolulu waterway was dug in the 1920s to drain the rice paddies and swamps that became Waikiki?
Ala Wai Canal
The Ala Wai Canal's builder sold the mud he dredged from it so that developers could raise the level of the new land alongside.
Q 25Which church opened the Polynesian Cultural Center at Laie in 1963, partly so its university students could earn wages?
Latter-day Saints
Latter-day Saints leaders grew the idea from beach feasts held to rebuild a burned chapel, and the centre has since helped more than 12,000 students pay their way.
Q 26Which annual NFL fixture called Honolulu's Aloha Stadium home from 1980 through 2016, missing only two seasons?
The Pro Bowl
The Pro Bowl's old home had four 7,000-seat stands that glided on cushions of air to reshape the arena for football, baseball or concerts.
Q 27Which 1953 film staged its famous surf-soaked beach embrace at Halona Cove on Oahu's southeastern shore?
From Here to Eternity
From Here to Eternity put Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in the waves there, and 50 First Dates returned to the same cove half a century later.
Q 28Oahu was the first Hawaiian island Captain James Cook sighted in 1778, but on which island did he land instead?
Kauai
Kauai got the first landing, and a year passed before Cook's deputy Charles Clerke became the first recorded outsider to step ashore on Oahu.
Q 29Which mystery drama, shot almost entirely on Oahu, used Honolulu streets as stand-ins for Iraq, Paris and Australia?
Lost
Lost filmed its pilot's first island scenes at Mokuleia Beach near Oahu's northwest tip, around a retired airliner that was cut up and shipped to Hawaii to play the wreck.
Q 30Which Honolulu academy, founded by missionaries in 1841 over a natural spring, counts Barack Obama among its graduates?
Punahou School
Punahou School took Obama in the fifth grade in 1971, and he stayed on with his grandparents in Honolulu to graduate there in 1979.