Presidents' Day Trivia
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100 free Presidents' Day trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Presidents' Day trivia quiz covers the February holiday from every angle: the 1879 act that made Washington's Birthday the first federal holiday honouring a president, the Uniform Monday Holiday Act that shifted it to the third Monday and guaranteed it never falls on February 22, the tangle of state names from 'Washington–Lincoln Day' to 'George Washington/Thomas Jefferson Birthday', and the traditions that have grown around it, from cherry pie to the Senate reading of the Farewell Address. Because the day honours George Washington above all, half the questions dig into the man himself: Mount Vernon, Trenton, Valley Forge, Yorktown, his unanimous elections and the legends Parson Weems attached to him. The easy rounds work for a classroom; the later rounds reward real history buffs. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Monday of February is Presidents' Day?
3rd
3rd: that Monday always arrives before Washington's real birthday comes round, so the holiday held in his honour can never fall on the day itself.
Q 02Which 1794 agreement with Britain did Washington back despite French Revolution tensions?
Jay Treaty
Jay Treaty: Chief Justice John Jay sailed to London and settled quarrels left over from independence. The deal proved unpopular with the American public, yet it kept the young country out of a war.
Q 03The 1879 Washington's Birthday holiday covered federal workers only where?
The capital
The capital alone: the first law covered only federal offices in the District of Columbia. Congress extended it to federal workers everywhere in 1885.
Q 04Which 1968 law gave federal workers a three-day weekend in February?
Uniform Monday Holiday Act
Uniform Monday Holiday Act: its backers argued that more long weekends would lift trade and spare business and labour the cost of midweek shutdowns.
Q 05Which president signed the 1968 law that turned Washington's Birthday into a long weekend?
Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson signed the bill in June 1968, but it did not take effect until 1971. So the first of the new long weekends arrived under his successor, Richard Nixon.
Q 06George Washington chose the site in 1791 for which building?
The White House
The White House took eight years to build, and Washington died in 1799 with the work unfinished. It was his successor who moved in, to rooms that were still not ready.
Q 07Why did George Washington's birthday move from February 11 to February 22?
Britain changed calendars
Britain changed calendars in 1752, adopting the Gregorian, which skipped eleven days and moved New Year from March to January. So February 11, 1731, became February 22, 1732.
Q 08Every elector voted for Washington in 1789; which runner-up became vice president?
John Adams
John Adams: each elector cast two votes, and all 69 gave one to Washington. Adams's 34 were the next most, which under the rules of the day made him vice president.
Q 09Besides George Washington, which American's birthday is marked by a US federal holiday?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. is the only other American on the list. Congress added his birthday in 1983 and, as with Washington's, fixed it by weekday rather than by date, so the holiday often misses the real birthday.
Q 10Which president's birthday, February 12, do some states fold into Presidents' Day?
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln's birthday has never been a federal holiday. Congress dropped a plan to merge it with Washington's in 1968, though Illinois and a few other states keep February 12 for themselves.
Q 11Mount Rushmore shows four presidents: which of these is one of them?
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt stands for the country's development on a mountain meant to show its birth, growth and preservation. He had set the Panama Canal in motion, linking the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Q 12Which state's February holiday honours civil rights leader Daisy Bates alongside George Washington?
Arkansas
Arkansas added Daisy Gatson Bates Day in 2001. She had guided the Little Rock Nine, the Black students who integrated the city's Central High School in 1957, while segregationists attacked her home.
Q 13Which state officially calls the February holiday "George Washington Day"?
Virginia
Q 21Which group is credited with pushing "Presidents' Day" into public use by the mid-1980s?
Advertisers
Advertisers found 'Presidents' Day' a handy banner for a long weekend of sales. Congress never adopted the name: in federal law the holiday is still Washington's Birthday.
Q 22Which food is traditionally linked to Washington's Birthday?
Cherry pie
Cherry pie recalls the tale of the boy who took a hatchet to his father's cherry tree and owned up at once. The story was invented after his death, but the pie caught on anyway.
Q 23Which medal bearing Washington's image was revived on his 200th birthday in 1932?
Purple Heart
Purple Heart: the medal revived Washington's own Badge of Military Merit, a heart cut from purple cloth that he had created for his soldiers during the Revolutionary War.
Virginia was his home from birth to death, and its law leaves the other presidents out: the day is set aside simply 'to honor George Washington, the first President of the United States'.
Q 14Which president served the shortest term, dying just a month after his inauguration?
William Henry Harrison
William Henry Harrison spoke for nearly two hours at his inauguration, in the cold without coat or hat, and was dead on his 32nd day as president.
Q 15Which army did Congress put George Washington in command of in 1775?
The Continental Army
The Continental Army was created by Congress in June 1775. Washington was picked to lead it for his military experience, and because a southerner in command would help bind the colonies together.
Q 16Which state's governor issues a "Presidents Day" proclamation on May 29, JFK's birthday?
Massachusetts
Massachusetts keeps the day for four presidents of its own: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Calvin Coolidge and Kennedy. George H. W. Bush was born in the state too, but the law does not list him.
Q 17Who is the only person to have served as both US president and chief justice?
William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft was voted out of the presidency in 1912, then named chief justice nine years later. He led the Supreme Court until shortly before his death in 1930.
Q 18In New Mexico, when is Presidents' Day taken as a paid state holiday?
The Friday after Thanksgiving
The Friday after Thanksgiving: New Mexico's official holiday list puts 'Presidents' Day' in late November, which hands state workers a four-day Thanksgiving weekend.
Q 19Which US president was the first to serve two non-consecutive terms?
Grover Cleveland
Grover Cleveland lost the 1888 election despite winning the popular vote, then took the presidency back four years later. That is why he is counted as both the 22nd and the 24th president.
Q 20Before becoming president, which 1787 gathering did George Washington chair?
The Constitutional Convention
The Constitutional Convention chose him unanimously to preside. Its organisers had thought his presence essential to success, since no other name carried the same trust.
Q 24Which document has a senator read aloud in the US Senate every Washington's Birthday since 1896?
Farewell Address
Farewell Address: the custom began in 1862 as a way to lift spirits in the darkest days of the Civil War. Senators of each party now take turns to read all 7,641 words.
Q 25The Washington Monument was the world's tallest structure in 1884; what overtook it five years later?
The Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower took the record in 1889 and kept it for four decades. The monument has a title left, though: nothing built of stone has ever risen higher.
Q 26In which war did the young George Washington first see combat, in a skirmish that helped start it?
The French and Indian War
The French and Indian War grew out of his 1754 ambush of a French patrol in the Ohio backcountry. Weeks later he was cornered at Fort Necessity, the only time he ever surrendered to an enemy.
Q 27Which sports league holds its All-Star festivities over the Presidents' Day weekend?
NBA
No games are played on the holiday itself; the season resumes the following Thursday.
Q 28Which NASCAR race is traditionally run the day before Presidents' Day?
Daytona 500
Daytona 500: NASCAR opens its season with its most prestigious race rather than ending on it. In 2024 rain washed out the Sunday, and the whole race was run a day late, on the holiday itself.
Q 29Which style guide uses the form "Presidents Day" with no apostrophe?
Associated Press Stylebook
Associated Press Stylebook: the guide most American newsrooms follow drops the apostrophe. Federal law sidesteps the whole argument, because officially the holiday is still Washington's Birthday.
Q 30Which holiday did Congress move in 1968, only to restore its old date ten years later?
Veterans Day
Veterans Day spent a few years in late October, but November 11 is the day the fighting stopped in the First World War, and many states simply went on marking it. Congress gave way and restored the date.