October
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100 free October trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
45 free October trivia questions with answers. October is the month of falling leaves, pumpkins, the World Series and a strange name: it means 'eighth' but comes tenth. This quiz covers all of it. There are questions on the month itself (why the name, the birthstones and birth flower, the zodiac signs, the hunter's moon), on the holidays that fill it (Halloween and its turnip lanterns, Oktoberfest, Canadian Thanksgiving, Columbus Day and its rivals, German Unity Day, Diwali, United Nations Day, the pink ribbon), and on the things that happened in October: the Great Chicago Fire, Sputnik, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Wall Street crashes of 1929 and 1987, Trafalgar, Hastings, the Statue of Liberty and the opening day of Walt Disney World. Roughly a third of the questions are easy enough for a classroom calendar lesson or a family table, a third are medium, and the rest will stretch a pub-quiz regular. It works as an October-themed round for a trivia night, a senior-centre activity, or a solo test. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and other reference sources, and each question shows its citation once you have answered, so you can settle any argument on the spot.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01October takes its name from the Latin word for which number?
Eight
Eight. The early Roman year began in March, which made October its eighth month, and the name stuck even after January and February were added.
Q 02In Tom Clancy's thriller The Hunt for Red October, what is the Red October?
A Soviet submarine
A Soviet submarine. Its captain, Marko Ramius, sets out to defect to the United States with the near-silent missile boat, and Sean Connery played him in the 1990 film.
Q 03Which two gemstones are the birthstones for October?
Opal and tourmaline
Opal and tourmaline. Opal's name as an unlucky stone is no ancient belief: it traces to Sir Walter Scott's 1829 novel Anne of Geierstein.
Q 04Whose War of the Worlds radio play on 30 October 1938 was reported to have panicked listeners with a Martian invasion?
Orson Welles
Orson Welles. He told the story as news bulletins breaking into dance music; newspapers reported a mass panic, though historians now say few listeners were really fooled.
Q 05October's birth flower, the calendula, is better known by what common name?
Marigold
Marigold. The name is a contraction of 'Mary's gold', probably in honour of the Virgin Mary; in Old English the flower was simply called 'golde'.
Q 06Which two zodiac signs fall in October?
Libra and Scorpio
Libra and Scorpio. The two were once one figure: the Greeks saw the Scales as the Scorpion's claws, and Libra's brightest stars still bear Arabic names meaning southern and northern claw.
Q 07In the Southern Hemisphere, October is the seasonal equivalent of which Northern Hemisphere month?
April
April. Seasons flip south of the equator, so October is mid-spring there: Canberra's Floriade flower festival, with more than a million blooms, runs into the middle of the month.
Q 08The full moon after the harvest moon, usually in October, is named after whom?
Hunters
Hunters. The Hunter's Moon is simply whichever full moon follows the Harvest Moon, so in years when the Harvest Moon lands in early October, the Hunter's Moon slips into November.
Q 09Halloween on 31 October is the eve of which Christian feast day?
All Saints' Day
All Saints' Day. The feast was once called All Hallows, 'hallow' being an old word for a saint, and Scots speakers shortened All Hallows' Even, the night before it, to Halloween.
Q 10Before pumpkins, which vegetable was traditionally carved into Halloween lanterns in Ireland and Scotland?
The turnip
The turnip. Irish and Scottish immigrants to North America switched to the native pumpkin, which was softer, bigger and far easier to carve.
Q 11Which ancient Gaelic festival, marking the harvest's end, is usually cited as the pagan root of Halloween?
Samhain
Samhain. It opened the dark half of the year, when the boundary with the Otherworld was believed to open and let its spirits walk among the living.
Q 12Botanically, a pumpkin is which type of fruit, like a tomato?
A berry
A berry. Botanists class the pumpkin as a pepo, a berry with a hard rind, while strawberries and raspberries, despite their names, are not true berries at all.
Q 13As of 2025, which US state grew the most pumpkins, mostly for canning?
Illinois
Illinois. Other states grow pumpkins mainly for carving and display, but most Illinois fields feed the canneries, and in 2025 the state out-produced the next four combined.
Q 21Which health awareness campaign, launched in 1985, runs every October?
Breast cancer month
Breast cancer month. Its pink ribbon came later, credited to Evelyn Lauder of Estée Lauder and Alexandra Penney, then the editor of Self magazine.
Q 22United Nations Day on 24 October marks the anniversary of what 1945 event?
The UN Charter coming into force
The UN Charter coming into force. It had been signed in San Francisco that June, but took effect only once the five permanent Security Council members and most other signers had ratified it.
Q 23Which profession is honoured around the world by an international day on 5 October?
Teachers
Q 14On 14 October 1947, test pilot Chuck Yeager became the first person confirmed to have done what?
Broken the sound barrier
Broken the sound barrier. His Bell X-1 was dropped from the bomb bay of a B-29 before he lit its engine, and he had named the plane Glamorous Glennis after his wife.
Q 15Despite its name, most of Oktoberfest actually takes place in which month?
September
September. Munich moved the festival forward in 1872 to catch the fine late-summer weather, and since then only its final days have fallen in the month it is named for.
Q 16Oktoberfest began in 1810 as the public celebration of what event?
A royal wedding
A royal wedding. Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria married Princess Therese, Munich celebrated with a horse race, and the meadow where it was run is still called the Theresienwiese in her honour.
Q 17Which holiday do Canadians celebrate on the second Monday of October?
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving. Canada's first is credited to the crew of the explorer Martin Frobisher in the 1570s, decades before the Pilgrims sat down to theirs at Plymouth.
Q 18Columbus reached the Americas on 12 October 1492 with the Niña, the Pinta and which flagship?
Santa María
Santa María. She never made it home: the flagship ran aground off Hispaniola that Christmas, and her timbers went into a fort that Columbus named La Navidad.
Q 19On 31 October 1517, who is said to have nailed his Ninety-five Theses to a church door in Wittenberg?
Martin Luther
Martin Luther. The hammer-and-nails story comes from his colleague Melanchthon; what the record shows is that he sent the Theses to the Archbishop of Mainz that day, now kept as Reformation Day.
Q 20Germany's national day, 3 October, marks which 1990 event?
East and West reuniting
East and West reuniting. The Berlin Wall had fallen on 9 November 1989, a date Germans call their day of fate: it is also the anniversary of the Nazi pogroms of 1938.
Teachers. The date marks the adoption in 1966 of a joint UNESCO and International Labour Organization recommendation setting out their rights and working conditions.
Q 24In the 2004 comedy Mean Girls, what does her crush Aaron Samuels ask Cady on October 3rd?
What day it is
What day it is. 'It's October 3rd,' she tells him, a throwaway line that fans have turned into Mean Girls Day, marked online on that date every year.
Q 25Diwali, the festival of lights held in October or November, is most widely tied to which goddess?
Lakshmi
Lakshmi. On the festival's main night, families gather for Lakshmi puja, a prayer to the goddess of prosperity, in homes lit with rows of clay oil lamps.
Q 26Which prizes are announced each October and presented on 10 December, the anniversary of their founder's death?
The Nobel Prizes
The Nobel Prizes. Alfred Nobel's will left the peace prize to a committee chosen by Norway's parliament, which is why that one is handed over in Oslo and the rest in Stockholm.
Q 27Which animal was long blamed, unfairly, for starting the Great Chicago Fire of October 1871?
A cow
A cow. A Chicago reporter later claimed that he had made up the tale of Mrs O'Leary's cow kicking over a lantern, but the legend outlived his confession.
Q 28Which beach-ball-sized Soviet satellite opened the Space Age when it was launched on 4 October 1957?
Sputnik 1
Sputnik 1. It did little but beep for three weeks until its batteries ran down, yet the shock led directly to the creation of NASA the following year.
Q 29The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 pitted John F. Kennedy against which Soviet leader?
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev. He agreed in public to pull his missiles out of Cuba, while Kennedy promised in secret to take American Jupiter missiles out of Turkey.
Q 30What did Kennedy call the October 1962 naval cordon around Cuba, avoiding the word 'blockade'?
A quarantine
A quarantine. In international law a blockade is an act of war, so the milder word let Kennedy stop ships bound for Cuba without declaring one, and won him the backing of the Organization of American States.