Summer
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183 free Summer trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
89 free summer trivia questions with answers. These summer trivia questions and answers cover the whole season, not just the beach. There is astronomy (why the solstice is the longest day, why the dog days are named after a star, why Earth is actually farthest from the Sun in July), summer holidays from the Fourth of July and Bastille Day to Midsummer in Sweden and Obon in Japan, summer food (the ice cream cone, the Popsicle, pink lemonade, s'mores), summer sports from Wimbledon to the Tour de France, and the songs and films that defined summers past. About a third of the questions are easy enough for a family barbecue or a classroom, a third are medium, and the rest will stretch a pub-quiz regular. Kids can play too: nothing here is violent or adult. Every answer has been checked against a primary or encyclopaedic source, and each question links to the page that confirms it, so you can settle arguments on the spot.
30 of 183 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which three whole calendar months make up meteorological summer in the Northern Hemisphere?
June, July and August
June, July and August make up meteorological summer because whole months keep the records tidy; astronomical summer, from the solstice to the equinox, starts about three weeks later.
Q 02In Australia and New Zealand, on what date does summer officially begin?
1 December
Australians spend Christmas Day at the beach for the same reason: their summer runs 1 December to the end of February.
Q 03The Northern Hemisphere summer solstice, the longest day of the year, usually falls on which two June dates?
The 20th or 21st
The 20th or 21st catches it almost every year, because the calendar and the tropical year do not match exactly; the solstice can land on the 22nd only very rarely.
Q 04In the Julian calendar of the Roman Empire, on what date did the summer solstice fall?
24 June
The Romans reckoned the summer solstice on 24 June (Pliny gives VIII Kal. Iul.), which is why European Midsummer and St John's Day festivals cluster on 23-24 June rather than on the astronomical solstice.
Q 05The 'dog days' of summer are named after the heliacal rising of which star?
Sirius
Sirius, the Dog Star in Canis Major, rises with the Sun in late July; the Romans blamed it for the heat and lethargy of the season and called the period dies caniculares.
Q 06On the June solstice, the noon Sun stands directly overhead along which line of latitude?
Tropic of Cancer
The Tropic of Cancer, at about 23.4 degrees north, is the northernmost latitude where the Sun is directly overhead at noon, which happens once a year on the June solstice.
Q 07Earth reaches aphelion, its farthest point from the Sun, in which month?
July
Aphelion falls in early July, about two weeks after the June solstice, when Earth is roughly 152 million km from the Sun against 147 million km at perihelion in January.
Q 08The midnight sun, when the Sun never sets in summer, can be seen north of which line of latitude?
The Arctic Circle
The Arctic Circle, at about 66.5 degrees north, is the edge: in Svalbard, Norway, the Sun does not set from roughly 19 April to 23 August.
Q 09The Perseid meteor shower, which peaks every August, is debris from which comet?
Swift–Tuttle
Comet Swift–Tuttle, which orbits the Sun about every 133 years, sheds the debris stream Earth crosses each August; the Perseids are also called the 'tears of Saint Lawrence' after the feast on 10 August.
Q 10What is the statistical peak date of the Atlantic hurricane season?
10 September
NOAA's climatology puts the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season on 10 September; the season officially runs 1 June to 30 November, and early September brings the warmest water and the most storms.
Q 11The highest air temperature ever recorded, 134 °F, was measured in 1913 at Furnace Creek in which place?
Death Valley, California
Death Valley, California, recorded 134 °F (56.7 °C) at Furnace Creek on 10 July 1913, the highest air temperature accepted by the WMO; the same valley holds Badwater Basin, 282 feet below sea level.
Q 12Which researcher developed the heat index in 1979?
Robert Steadman
Steadman's tables assume you are in the shade; in direct sun the perceived temperature can be up to 15 °F higher.
Q 13Which year is the 'Year Without a Summer', when snow fell in New England in June after a volcanic eruption?
1816
Q 21La Tomatina, the tomato-throwing festival held in Buñol each August, takes place in which country?
Spain
Spain's Buñol, near Valencia, now trucks in more than 100 tonnes of tomatoes; the fight began by accident in 1945 when young people at a parade started pelting each other.
Q 22Which author's writing helped make Pamplona's running of the bulls famous worldwide?
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway described the encierro in The Sun Also Rises (1926) and Death in the Afternoon; each morning run covers about 875 metres and averages around two and a half minutes.
Q 23At which Bay Area location did Burning Man begin in 1986?
Baker Beach
1816 was the Year Without a Summer: ash from Tambora's eruption chilled the globe, and the wet, gloomy weather kept Mary Shelley indoors at Lake Geneva, where she began writing Frankenstein.
Q 14Which country, with Austria-Hungary, first adopted daylight saving time nationally in 1916?
Germany
The idea had been floated decades earlier by New Zealand entomologist George Hudson, who wanted more evening light to collect insects.
Q 15In the Finnish Midsummer celebration Juhannus, what is traditionally burned at lakesides and by the sea?
Bonfires
Bonfires (kokko) are lit on Juhannus Eve beside lakes and the sea across Finland; the holiday took its name from John the Baptist (Johannes Kastaja) when the older pagan midsummer feast was Christianised.
Q 16Which date did John Adams predict would be 'the most memorable epoch in the history of America'?
The second of July
Congress voted for independence on 2 July 1776 but adopted the Declaration's text on the 4th, and the 4th is the date that stuck.
Q 17Which two Founding Fathers both died on 4 July 1826, the Declaration's 50th anniversary?
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on 4 July 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration; James Monroe would also die on a 4 July, five years later.
Q 18The Nathan's Famous hot dog eating contest is held in which New York neighbourhood?
Coney Island
The contest is held every 4 July outside Nathan's original stand at Coney Island, Brooklyn, where Joey Chestnut ate a record 76 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes in 2021.
Q 19Bastille Day, France's national day on 14 July, marks the storming of the Paris prison in which year?
1789
The Bastille fell on 14 July 1789 holding just seven prisoners; the Champs-Élysées parade is the oldest and largest regular military parade in Europe.
Q 20Obon, the Japanese summer festival honouring ancestors' spirits, is most commonly held around which August date?
The 15th
Small lanterns are floated down rivers to light the spirits' way back to the world of the dead.
Larry Harvey and Jerry James burned a wooden effigy on San Francisco's Baker Beach at the 1986 summer solstice; since 1990 the event has been held in Black Rock City, about 100 miles north of Reno.
Q 24The very first Labor Day celebration, in 1882, was held in which US city?
New York
The Central Labor Union staged the first Labor Day parade in New York City on 5 September 1882; it became a federal holiday in 1894 and marks the unofficial end of the American summer.
Q 25In which city's 1904 World's Fair did the ice cream cone go mainstream, per legend, when a vendor ran out of paper cups?
St. Louis
Syrian concessionaire Ernest Hamwi rolled a waffle cookie into a cup, though New Yorker Italo Marchiony had patented a cone mould a year earlier.
Q 26In which city did 11-year-old Frank Epperson accidentally invent the Popsicle in 1905?
Oakland, California
By the Popsicle company's own account, Frank Epperson left a cup of soda powder and water with a stirring stick outside overnight in Oakland, California; he called the frozen treat the Epsicle and patented it in 1924.
Q 27Roughly what percentage of a watermelon is water?
91%
Watermelon is about 91% water by weight in USDA nutrient tables; botanically the fruit is a pepo, a kind of modified berry, in the same family as cucumbers and pumpkins.
Q 28A 2021 genome study traced the domesticated watermelon's closest wild relative to which country?
Sudan
The Kordofan melon of Sudan, sequenced in a 2021 PNAS study, is the closest wild relative of domesticated watermelon; watermelon seeds and paintings appear in Egyptian tombs more than 4,000 years old.
Q 29Which city chartered a lemonade sellers' guild in 1676, its vendors carrying tanks on their backs?
Paris
Paris granted the Compagnie de Limonadiers its charter in 1676, with vendors dispensing lemonade from tanks strapped to their backs; an earlier lemon-drink recipe appears in a 12th-century Egyptian treatise, On Lemon, Its Drinking and Use.
Q 30In the United States, 10 August is designated as the national day of which campfire treat?
S'mores
National S'mores Day falls on 10 August; the name is a contraction of 'some more', and the earliest known recipe appeared in the 1927 Girl Scouts handbook Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts.