80 free Ohio trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
71 free Ohio trivia questions with answers. These Ohio trivia facts run the length of the Buckeye State: the swallowtail flag that no other state shares, the seven presidents born here, the tomato juice and ladybug in the state symbols list, and the 1953 discovery that Congress had never quite finished admitting Ohio at all. Then the questions head out across the state, from Cedar Point on Lake Erie and Serpent Mound in Adams County to Hocking Hills, the Amish country of Holmes County and the Ohio Caverns near West Liberty. The cities get their due too: Wright brothers' Dayton, rock and roll Cleveland, Porkopolis Cincinnati, Glass City Toledo, Rubber Capital Akron and the capital itself. Sports fans get The Game, Archie Griffin and the 2016 Cavaliers; foodies get three-way chili and buckeye candy. About a third of the questions are easy enough for a classroom or a family road trip across I-71, a third are medium, and the rest will test people who think they already know Ohio. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and official Ohio sources, and each question shows the sentence that confirms it once you have answered.
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Q 01Ohio's official nickname, taken from a tree, is what?
Buckeye State
The nickname doubles as a name for Ohioans themselves, and for Ohio State's teams.
Q 02Which city is both Ohio's capital and its most populous?
Columbus
It became the capital in 1816, chosen for its central location; it is now the second-largest city in the Midwest after Chicago.
Q 03Ohio's state flag is unique among the 50 US state flags for what reason?
It is not rectangular
The swallowtail 'burgee' was designed by John Eisenmann for the 1901 Pan-American Exposition and became law in 1902.
Q 04How many stars appear on Ohio's state flag, marking its place in the order of statehood?
17
Thirteen stars stand for the original colonies and four more at the point of the triangle push the count to Ohio's number.
Q 05Which bird has been Ohio's official state bird since 1933?
Cardinal
Six other states also chose the cardinal, making it the most popular state bird in the country.
Q 06What is Ohio's official state flower?
Red carnation
It was adopted in 1904 in memory of assassinated president William McKinley, an Ohioan who wore one on his lapel.
Q 07Since 1965, what has been Ohio's official state beverage?
Tomato juice
The choice honours Reynoldsburg, Ohio, where Alexander Livingston developed the modern commercial tomato in the 1800s.
Q 08Which creature is Ohio's official state insect?
Ladybug
It was adopted in 1975; the ladybug is a farmer's friend because it eats aphids.
Q 09Ohio's official state fossil, Isotelus maximus, is what kind of ancient animal?
A trilobite
Isotelus was a marine arthropod that lived some 450 million years ago when Ohio lay under a shallow tropical sea.
Q 10What is Ohio's official state mammal, adopted in 1987?
White-tailed deer
The species is also the state animal of ten other states, including neighbouring Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Q 11Ohio's name is a Seneca word for the waterway on its southern border. What does it mean?
Good river
The Iroquoian word ohiːyo has also been translated as 'great river' or 'large creek'.
Q 12Ohio joined the Union as the 17th state in which year?
1803
President Jefferson signed the act approving Ohio's boundaries and constitution on 19 February of that year.
Q 13What did Congress do about Ohio's statehood in 1953?
Backdated its admission to 1803
Preparations for the state's 150th birthday revealed Congress had never formally admitted Ohio, so a bill fixed the oversight retroactively.
Q 21Which Cleveland DJ, credited with popularising the term 'rock and roll', helped the city land the Rock Hall?
Alan Freed
Cleveland also hosted the 1952 Moondog Coronation Ball, often called the first major rock concert, and put up $65 million for the museum.
Q 22Which architect designed Cleveland's glass-pyramid Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, opened in 1995?
I. M. Pei
Pei admitted he knew little about rock music when hired, so the museum's founders took him to concerts to educate him.
Q 23The Pro Football Hall of Fame stands in which Ohio city, where the NFL was founded in 1920?
Canton
The league was born in a Hupmobile car showroom there, and the local Bulldogs won back-to-back titles in 1922 and 1923.
Q 14Ohio was the first state carved out of which federal domain, governed under a famous 1787 ordinance?
Northwest Territory
The 1787 Northwest Ordinance set the rules for turning the land north of the Ohio River into states; Ohio went first.
Q 15Ohio is called the 'Mother of Presidents' because how many US presidents were born there?
7
Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, McKinley, Taft and Harding were all Ohio-born; only Virginia has produced more.
Q 16Which Cincinnati-born president is the only person to have also been chief justice?
William Howard Taft
He reportedly enjoyed the Supreme Court far more than the White House, and historians rate his judicial career higher too.
Q 17Before they built airplanes, Orville and Wilbur Wright ran what kind of business in Dayton?
A bicycle shop
The Wright Cycle Company opened as a repair shop in 1892 and was making its own bicycles by 1896; the profits funded the flying experiments.
Q 18Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the Moon, grew up in which small Ohio town?
Wapakoneta
He earned his pilot's licence there at 16, before he had a driver's licence.
Q 19Ohio-born astronaut John Glenn became the first American to do what, in 1962?
Orbit the Earth
Friendship 7 circled the planet three times; Glenn later served 24 years as a US senator from Ohio.
Q 20In 1998 John Glenn became the oldest person to reach orbit, aboard Discovery. How old was he?
77
That made him the only person to fly in both the Mercury and Space Shuttle programmes.
Q 24Cedar Point, 'America's Roller Coast', sits on a Lake Erie peninsula in which Ohio city?
Sandusky
Its 18 roller coasters tie for the most of any amusement park in North America.
Q 25Cedar Point, the second-oldest operating amusement park in the US, opened in which year?
1870
Only Lake Compounce in Connecticut is older; Cedar Point began as a bathing beach and beer garden.
Q 26What is the annual Ohio State vs Michigan football rivalry match known as?
The Game
Ohio State plays at Ohio Stadium, nicknamed 'the Horseshoe', which holds more than 100,000 people.
Q 27Which Ohio State running back is the only player ever to win the Heisman Trophy twice?
Archie Griffin
He won it in 1974 and 1975 under coach Woody Hayes, who racked up 205 wins and five national titles in Columbus.
Q 28Ohio State's mascot is a walking nut with a big smile. What is he called?
Brutus Buckeye
The university opened in 1870 as the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College and now enrols more than 60,000 students in Columbus.
Q 29Which magazine's story on the burning Cuyahoga River, which 'oozes rather than flows', spurred the green movement?
Time
The river had burned at least a dozen times before; the 1969 fire helped drive the Clean Water Act and the creation of the EPA.
Q 30The Ohio River begins at Pittsburgh where which two rivers meet?
Allegheny and Monongahela
From there it runs 981 miles to the Mississippi and carries more water than any other tributary of that river.