Summer Solstice
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40 free Summer Solstice trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The summer solstice is the longest day of the year and, for many people, the first day of summer. It has been watched for thousands of years, by scholars measuring the sky and by villagers lighting fires on hilltops, and it fills calendars with festivals every June. This quiz covers both sides of the day. There are questions on the science, such as why the day is so long, where the Sun appears in the sky and what happens near the poles, and questions on the celebrations, from ancient sun-watching sites to midsummer customs across Europe, the Americas and beyond. It is written for anyone planning a solstice party, a classroom activity or a June quiz night, and for anyone who simply likes knowing why the evenings are so light. Every answer comes with a short explanation, and the whole set can be played online or printed.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which African animal is celebrated with a World Day on 21 June, chosen as the longest day of the year?
Giraffe
Giraffe conservationists matched the tallest animal with the longest day. The Giraffe Conservation Foundation, which began its work in Namibia, launched World Giraffe Day.
Q 02Huge crowds mark each summer solstice in New York's Times Square by joining a mass session of which activity?
Yoga
Yoga fills Times Square each solstice in an event called Mind over Madness, drawing up to 15,000 people. The United Nations also keeps 21 June as the International Day of Yoga.
Q 03In which country do Midsummer revellers dance around a leafy maypole to a song about little frogs?
Sweden
Sweden's frog dance, Små grodorna, has dancers mime the ears and tails that frogs lack. Midsummer is so loved there that some have proposed making it the national day.
Q 04Which property of planet Earth, rather than its changing distance from the Sun, causes the summer solstice and seasons?
Axial tilt
Axial tilt leans the Northern Hemisphere toward the Sun in June, so sunlight strikes it more directly and for longer. Six months later the same lean points it away.
Q 05Which senior British royal has a birthday on 21 June, the date most associated with the summer solstice?
Prince William
Prince William was born at 9:03 pm on 21 June 1982 at St Mary's Hospital in London. Queen Elizabeth II, his grandmother, was on the throne at the time.
Q 06Which prehistoric monument on England's Salisbury Plain is aligned with the sunrise on the summer solstice?
Stonehenge
Stonehenge frames the solstice sunrise: an observer among the stones sees the Sun come up near the outlying Heel Stone. An open solstice event in 2000 drew about seven thousand people.
Q 07In Australia and the rest of the Southern Hemisphere, the summer solstice falls in which month of the year?
December
December brings the Southern Hemisphere its longest day, on the 21st or 22nd. The very same moment is the shortest day of the year for everyone north of the Equator.
Q 08Which fruit gives its name to June's full moon, the one that rises around the time of the summer solstice?
Strawberry
Strawberry Moon is the traditional name for June's full moon, and it has nothing to do with colour. Algonquian peoples used it to mark the weeks when ripe berries are ready to gather.
Q 09On which continent is Midwinter Day, marked with a grand meal at the June solstice, the main holiday of the year?
Antarctica
Antarctica treats Midwinter Day as its main holiday, because the June solstice is the darkest point of the polar year. Early explorers feasted on penguin and seal, which is now illegal.
Q 10North of which line of latitude does the Sun stay above the horizon all night on the June solstice?
The Arctic Circle
The Arctic Circle marks the southern limit of the midnight sun on the June solstice. Farther north the effect lasts longer: Tromsø in Norway has it from about 20 May to late July.
Q 11On the June solstice, the noon Sun sits directly overhead along which imaginary line around the globe?
Tropic of Cancer
Tropic of Cancer is the northernmost line where the Sun can be seen directly overhead. It was named when the solstice Sun sat in the zodiac sign of the Crab; today it sits in Taurus.
Q 12The word solstice comes from two Latin words describing the Sun doing what at the top of its yearly climb?
Stands still
The Sun stands still, or seems to: solstice joins the Latin sol and sistere. Its seasonal drift across the sky reaches a limit, pauses, then reverses direction.
Q 13In the Northern Hemisphere, toward which compass direction does the Sun rise on the morning of the summer solstice?
Northeast
Q 21Which city, the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state, stays light all night around the June solstice?
Reykjavik
Reykjavik has essentially permanent daylight from 20 May to 24 July, because the Sun never dips more than 5 degrees below the horizon. It lies just over 64 degrees north.
Q 22Which robed order, once mocked by the press for fake beards, leads summer solstice rites at British megaliths?
Druids
Druids of the modern revival admitted 259 new members in one mass ceremony in 1905. Their faith has no real continuity with the ancient Celtic priesthood whose name it borrows.
Q 23In Nordic Midsummer folklore, a young woman who sleeps with seven flowers under her pillow will dream of whom?
Her future husband
Northeast is where the midsummer Sun comes up, not due east as many assume. It then climbs high across the southern sky and sets in the northwest.
Q 14Unlike a solstice, which twice-yearly event in March and September brings nearly equal hours of day and night?
Equinox
Equinox comes from the Latin for equal night. Day and night are not quite equal even then, because the Sun's disc has width and the atmosphere bends its light.
Q 15Which scientists begin Northern Hemisphere summer on 1 June instead of waiting three weeks for the solstice?
Meteorologists
Meteorologists group the seasons into whole calendar months, so their summer runs from June through August. An early international weather society set out the scheme in 1780.
Q 16On Sankthansaften, Denmark's midsummer bonfire night, an effigy of what figure is traditionally set on top of the fire?
A witch
A witch tops many Danish bonfires, and as she burns she is said to fly off to the Brocken, a mountain in Germany. The fires were once lit to keep witches away.
Q 17Which Alaskan city hosts the Midnight Sun Game, a solstice baseball game played late at night without artificial lights?
Fairbanks
Fairbanks has staged the game on the summer solstice since 1906. First pitch comes at about 10:30 pm and play runs on past 1 am in natural daylight.
Q 18Inti Raymi, the Inca sun festival held days after the June solstice, draws huge crowds to Cusco in which country?
Peru
Peru lies south of the Equator, so its June solstice is the shortest day of the year. The Inca treated it as their new year, when the hours of light begin to lengthen again.
Q 19Which country started World Music Day, the festival of free street concerts held on the June solstice each year?
France
France launched it in Paris in 1982 as the Fête de la Musique, an idea backed by culture minister Jack Lang. It has since spread to about 120 countries.
Q 20Which Russian city marks the weeks around the summer solstice with its White Nights Festival?
St Petersburg
St Petersburg lies so far north that from late April to late August its night sky never gets fully dark. The festival has been held every year since 1993.
Her future husband is the hoped-for vision, and the custom is practised to this day. Italy has a twin tradition: rose petals under the pillow on the night before St John's Day.
Q 24Which country chose 21 June, the summer solstice, as the date of its National Indigenous Peoples Day?
Canada
Canada first marked the day in 1996, honouring First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. The solstice was chosen partly because many communities already celebrated their heritage then.
Q 25Which South American country's June festivals, with bonfires and straw hats, grew out of Europe's midsummer feasts?
Brazil
Brazil's Festas Juninas arrived with Portuguese settlers, but June there is midwinter. Men dress as farm boys in big straw hats while women wear pigtails and red checked dresses.
Q 26In which Portuguese city do midsummer revellers hit each other with garlic flowers or soft plastic hammers?
Porto
Porto throws its biggest street party on the night of 23 June, with grilled sardines and bonfire jumping. Many revellers then walk to the coast and wait by the sea for sunrise.
Q 27The hot 'dog days' that follow the summer solstice are named after which star, the brightest in the night sky?
Sirius
Sirius, the Dog Star, returns to the dawn sky in high summer, and ancient astrology blamed it for heat, drought and mad dogs. Egyptians took the same return as a sign the Nile would flood.
Q 28Which ancient Greek contest, held every four years, originally began at a full moon soon after the summer solstice?
The Olympic Games
The Olympic Games opened on the first or second full moon after the solstice, in the heat of a Greek summer. The four-year span that each festival began was known as an olympiad.
Q 29Which Greek scholar used the noon Sun at Syene on the summer solstice to estimate Earth's circumference?
Eratosthenes
Eratosthenes learned that rods at Syene cast no shadow at solstice noon, while rods in Alexandria threw one. The difference in angle let him work out the size of the whole planet.
Q 30What is the name for Earth's farthest point from the Sun, reached about two weeks after the June solstice?
Aphelion
Aphelion falls in early July, which shows that distance from the Sun does not make summer. Earth's closest approach comes in January, in the middle of the northern winter.