Savannah Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
This Savannah trivia quiz has 100 free questions with answers and covers Georgia's oldest city from Oglethorpe's landing at Yamacraw Bluff in 1733 to the yellow-tuxedoed Bananas at Grayson Stadium. In between: the 22 squares and the plan that laid them out, the Christmas gift Sherman telegraphed to Lincoln, the fountain in Forsyth Park, the Bird Girl and 'the Book', the bench where Forrest Gump waited for a bus, the Girl Scouts' birthplace, the oldest bar in Georgia, the hydrogen bomb lying off Tybee Island and the girl who waved at every ship for 44 years. Early questions suit anyone who has walked River Street once. Later ones are for locals and SCAD alumni: which governor the bridge is named for, what the Owens-Thomas House hides, and how many soldiers from Saint-Domingue fought in the 1779 siege. Use it for a bar trivia round, a Hostess City welcome party or a road-trip warm-up. Every answer has been checked against a documented source that appears beneath the explanation.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Savannah holds which distinction among Georgia's cities?
Oldest city
Oldest city: founded in 1733, Savannah was Georgia's colonial capital and then its first state capital, a role it later gave up to Augusta.
Q 02Which Yamacraw chief let Oglethorpe's colonists settle at Savannah and later sailed to England to meet King George II?
Tomochichi
Tomochichi gave the newcomers land on his bluff, and when he died in 1739 the colony buried him with military honours in the centre of one of Savannah's squares.
Q 03What was the name of the ship that carried Oglethorpe and the first colonists to Savannah?
The Anne
The Anne took two months to cross with 114 colonists, who then waited up the coast while Oglethorpe went ahead and chose Yamacraw Bluff for their town.
Q 04Alongside slavery, which drink did Georgia's Trustees ban from their young colony at Oglethorpe's urging?
Rum
Rum was outlawed along with slavery, but neither ban lasted: the Trustees relaxed the rum law in 1742 and admitted slavery in 1751, both over Oglethorpe's objections.
Q 05How many of Savannah's original public squares survive in its Historic District?
22
22 squares remain of the 24 laid out by 1851. Three were lost to road works and parking in the 20th century, but Ellis Square was rebuilt in 2010 once its garage came down.
Q 06In the Oglethorpe Plan, what were the residential units of ten houses around each square called?
Tythings
Tythings doubled as defence units: the ten households in each trained together as militia and shared guard duty under a tythingman.
Q 07Which Savannah square was the first to be laid out, in 1733, and remains the largest?
Johnson
Johnson Square also holds Revolutionary War general Nathanael Greene, who was reburied beneath his monument there in 1902 after more than a century in a nearby cemetery.
Q 08Forrest Gump's bus-stop bench scenes were filmed on the north side of which Savannah square?
Chippewa
Chippewa Square has no such bench to sit on: the film used fibreglass props, and one of them was given to the city and now sits in the Savannah History Museum.
Q 09Savannah's bronze statue of Oglethorpe stands sword in hand, facing which old threat to his colony?
Spanish Florida
Spanish Florida lay to the south, so the statue faces that way. Oglethorpe beat back Spain's invasion at Bloody Marsh in 1742, its last offensive against Georgia.
Q 10After capturing Savannah in 1864, General Sherman telegraphed Lincoln to offer him the city as what?
A Christmas present
A Christmas present, his telegram said, along with about 25,000 bales of cotton. Savannah was spared a siege because its defenders slipped away and the mayor rode out to surrender it.
Q 11Forsyth Park's famous fountain, installed in 1858, was long said to copy the fountains of which Paris square?
Place de la Concorde
Place de la Concorde was the model Savannah long claimed, but the fountain was ordered from a New York foundry's catalogue, and near-twins stand in Poughkeepsie and in Cusco, Peru.
Q 12Forsyth Park is named after John Forsyth, who held what office?
Governor of Georgia
Governor of Georgia from 1827 to 1829, John Forsyth later backed Andrew Jackson in the nullification crisis, and Jackson rewarded him by making him secretary of state.
Q 13Which naturalist, nearly penniless on a long walk to the Gulf in 1867, camped among the graves of Savannah's Bonaventure Cemetery?
Q 21Juliette Gordon Low founded which organisation in Savannah on 12 March 1912?
The Girl Scouts
The Girl Scouts began with a phone call to her cousin: 'I've got something for the girls of Savannah, and all America, and all the world, and we're going to start it tonight.' Eighteen girls signed up.
Q 22What was Juliette Gordon Low's lifelong nickname?
Daisy
Her family also called her 'Crazy Daisy'; a mishap with a grain of rice at her wedding left her deaf in one ear.
Q 23The Savannah college founded in 1978 specialises in which field?
Art and design
Art and design: SCAD opened in 1979 with 71 students in a converted armory, and it has since spread through more than sixty restored buildings around the city.
John Muir
John Muir slept there for nearly a week while he waited for money from home, reasoning that fear of ghosts would keep troublemakers out of a graveyard.
Q 14Which 1994 bestseller made Savannah's Bonaventure Cemetery famous?
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 216 weeks and set off a tourist boom in Savannah, where locals simply call it 'the Book'.
Q 15Savannah antiques dealer Jim Williams stood trial four times for the 1981 shooting of whom?
Danny Hansford
Danny Hansford was shot in Williams's home in May 1981. Williams pleaded self-defence through four murder trials and was acquitted only after the last was moved out of Savannah.
Q 16Which director filmed the 1997 adaptation of Savannah's famous true-crime bestseller, with Kevin Spacey as Jim Williams?
Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood shot it around Savannah's squares in 1997 and had two locals from the story, singer Emma Kelly and drag performer The Lady Chablis, play themselves.
Q 17The Bird Girl statue was moved out of Bonaventure Cemetery in 1997 and lent to which Savannah institution?
The Telfair
The Telfair took her in for safekeeping: after a photograph of her appeared on a bestselling book's cover, tourists overran the family plot where she had stood for decades.
Q 18The Monterey Square mansion restored by Jim Williams was built for which songwriter's great-grandfather?
Johnny Mercer
Johnny Mercer's great-grandfather, General Hugh Mercer, began the house in 1860, but the Civil War halted the work and he sold it unfinished, so no Mercer ever lived there.
Q 19The Savannah-born lyricist of 'Moon River' co-founded which record label?
Capitol Records
Capitol Records, set up in Hollywood in 1942 with a film producer and a record-shop owner, was a West Coast upstart that took on RCA Victor, Columbia and Decca before its sale to Britain's EMI in 1955.
Q 20As a boy, the future 'Moon River' lyricist worked at which Savannah institution, founded in 1919 a block from his home?
Leopold's Ice Cream
Leopold's Ice Cream was revived by a founder's son, Stratton Leopold, who left for Hollywood, produced films such as Mission: Impossible III and opened its Broughton Street parlour in 2004.
Q 24In the Savannah Bananas' Banana Ball, what happens when a fan in the stands cleanly catches a foul ball?
The batter is out
The batter is out, as long as the fan doesn't bobble it. Banana Ball also bans bunting and lets no inning start after two hours, all to keep the game fast.
Q 25Which team was introduced in 2020 as the Savannah Bananas' first rival in Banana Ball?
The Party Animals
The Party Animals were created in 2020 so the Bananas would have a regular opponent. More rivals followed, and in 2026 six teams began touring as the Banana Ball Championship League.
Q 26Which barrier island town, 18 miles east of Savannah, was for decades officially called 'Savannah Beach'?
Tybee
Tybee owes its resort trade to doctors: in the late 1800s they sent patients with asthma and allergies there for the salt air, and Savannah's holidaymakers followed.
Q 27In February 1958 the U.S. Air Force lost what in Wassaw Sound near Savannah?
An atomic bomb
An atomic bomb: a B-47 crew jettisoned it after a fighter struck their plane in mid-air, so they could land safely. It was never found, though the Air Force says its nuclear capsule had been removed.
Q 28Which weapon breached the brick fort on Cockspur Island near Savannah in 1862, making such forts obsolete?
Rifled cannon
Rifled cannon made brick forts obsolete: Robert E. Lee, who had helped build this one, judged its walls safe from guns a mile off, yet Union shells holed them in under two days.
Q 29Which Polish nobleman was mortally wounded leading cavalry in the 1779 Siege of Savannah?
Casimir Pulaski
Casimir Pulaski, often called the father of the American cavalry, was cut down by British grapeshot and died within two days. Whether he was buried at sea or ashore is still disputed.
Q 30The SS Savannah, which left its Georgia home port in May 1819, was the first steamship to do what?
Cross the Atlantic
Cross the Atlantic, in 29 days, though her engine ran for under 90 hours of the voyage and she made the trip without a single passenger or any cargo.