Trenton, New Jersey
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40 free Trenton, New Jersey trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Trenton is easy to pass on the train between New York and Philadelphia, but New Jersey's capital has a longer story than most cities many times its size. George Washington's army won two fights here within about a week, and for a short while after the Revolution the whole country was governed from the town. This quiz collects the fun facts that locals love to share: the glowing slogan over the Delaware, the mills and potteries that supplied a growing nation, the dishes invented in its kitchens, and the athletes, judges, generals and entertainers who were born in the city. It also visits the landmarks, from the domed State House to the monument on the battlefield. The questions suit New Jersey students, teachers planning a state history lesson, and anyone getting ready for a visit or a local quiz night. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The glowing slogan on Trenton's Delaware River bridge boasts about the city's role as a center of what?
Manufacturing
Manufacturing is the boast, coined by lumberman S. Roy Heath for a 1910 Chamber of Commerce contest. Neon letters went up on the present bridge in 1935.
Q 02John Roebling, who moved his wire rope mill to Trenton in 1848, designed which famous New York span?
Brooklyn Bridge
Brooklyn Bridge designer Roebling died of tetanus in 1869, after a ferry crushed his foot at the site. He is buried in Trenton's Riverview Cemetery.
Q 03Which New Jersey breakfast meat did John Taylor of Trenton develop in 1856 and first sell as a "Prepared Ham"?
Pork roll
Pork roll lost the word ham after the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 set a legal definition it failed to meet. North Jersey still calls it Taylor ham, a naming feud that divides the state.
Q 04When Trenton served as capital of the United States for two months in 1784, where did Congress meet?
A tavern
A tavern hosted the Congress of the Confederation from November 1 to December 24. Northern states wanted the city as the permanent capital, but the southern states held out for a site farther south.
Q 05Trenton composer George Antheil developed a frequency-hopping torpedo guidance system with which Hollywood actress?
Hedy Lamarr
Hedy Lamarr and Antheil used a code on punched paper tape to keep the transmitter and receiver changing frequency together, so the torpedo's radio control could not be jammed.
Q 06Chase, the Trenton Thunder baseball team's famous bat-fetching dog from 2002 to 2013, was which breed?
Golden Retriever
Golden Retriever Chase handed the job on to his son Derby and his grandson Rookie, making three generations of bat dogs at the riverside ballpark.
Q 07Which rebounding specialist, a winner of five NBA championships, was born in Trenton in 1961?
Dennis Rodman
Dennis Rodman got his nickname, the Worm, from his mother, for the way he wiggled while playing pinball. He grew up in Dallas and worked as an overnight airport janitor before turning professional.
Q 08Who raised the money in the 1990s to regild the dome of the New Jersey State House in Trenton?
Schoolchildren
Schoolchildren paid for it through the Dimes for the Dome drive, with each of the 48,000 pieces of gilding costing one dollar. The dome was rededicated in honor of the state's children.
Q 09On which holiday night in 1776 did George Washington's army begin crossing the icy Delaware River to attack Trenton?
Christmas
Christmas night's crossing let the army surprise the Hessian garrison the next morning. A second battle was fought in the town a week later, on January 2, 1777.
Q 10Which disease drove federal government offices out of Philadelphia to temporary quarters in Trenton in 1799?
Yellow fever
Yellow fever was sweeping the capital for the fourth time that decade. From August to November the Department of State worked out of the New Jersey State House.
Q 11Which inventor gives his name to the Trenton state university that enrolls adult students from around the country?
Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison suits a university for adult learners: he lived in New Jersey for most of his adult life and built his encyclopedic knowledge through self-directed learning.
Q 12Which major league club had the Trenton Thunder as its Double-A farm team from 2003 until 2020?
New York Yankees
New York Yankees stars on the mend filled the ballpark: Derek Jeter's rehab start in July 2011 drew a paid crowd of 9,212, a new attendance record at the time.
Q 13Which general, born in Trenton in 1934, commanded all coalition forces in the Gulf War against Iraq?
Norman Schwarzkopf
Q 21Trenton-born pitcher Al Downing gave up the record-breaking 715th career home run of which slugger in 1974?
Hank Aaron
Hank Aaron's blast on April 8, 1974, broke the all-time record set by Babe Ruth. Downing, an All-Star in 1967, pitched in the major leagues from 1961 through 1977.
Q 22The Trenton Nationals were the first champions of the first professional league in which sport, founded in 1898?
Basketball
Basketball was only seven years old when the six-team league began play. The Nationals took the first title with a record of 18 wins and 2 losses.
Q 23Which Trenton-born politician won the 1989 election to become the first African American mayor of New York City?
David Dinkins
Norman Schwarzkopf was the son of the founding superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, a lead investigator in the 1932 Lindbergh baby kidnapping case.
Q 14Which future US president nearly bled to death from a musket ball wound at the Battle of Trenton?
James Monroe
James Monroe, then a lieutenant, was hit in the left shoulder while leading the charge down King Street. The ball severed an artery, and he was carried from the field bleeding badly.
Q 15Which landscape architect designed Cadwalader Park, Trenton's largest city park, in the late 1800s?
Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted, best known for New York's Central Park, planned it after the city bought the Ellarslie estate in the 1880s. The mansion at its center now houses the Trenton City Museum.
Q 16Which Supreme Court justice, appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1986, was born in Trenton to an Italian American family?
Antonin Scalia
Antonin Scalia was the first Italian American on the court, confirmed unanimously by the Senate. Samuel Alito, a later justice, was born in the same city.
Q 17Which bounty hunter heroine of Janet Evanovich's bestselling mystery novels lives and works in Trenton?
Stephanie Plum
Stephanie Plum is a laid-off lingerie buyer who starts chasing bail jumpers to make ends meet. Katherine Heigl played her in the 2012 film One for the Money, set in the Chambersburg neighborhood.
Q 18Which Trenton style of thin-crust pizza puts the mozzarella and toppings on first and the sauce on top?
Tomato pie
Tomato pie in this style goes back to Joe's, which opened in 1910. Papa's followed two years later, started by a cook who had learned the trade at Joe's.
Q 19Which religious group, persecuted in England, founded the first European settlement at Trenton in 1679?
Quakers
Quakers led by Mahlon Stacy of Sheffield settled a spot then called the Falls of the Delaware. Stacy's family later sold much of the land to William Trent, whose name the town took.
Q 20Which Trenton-born actress played advertising executive Angela Bower on the long-running sitcom Who's the Boss?
Judith Light
Judith Light arrived from the daytime soap One Life to Live, where her role as Karen Wolek had won her two Daytime Emmy Awards in a row.
David Dinkins moved to Harlem as a child, came back to Trenton for high school, and served with the Montford Point Marines, the first African Americans in the Marine Corps.
Q 24The River Line, whose trains start beside Trenton Transit Center, runs down the Delaware to which New Jersey city?
Camden
Camden is the southern end of the route, which follows part of the old Camden and Amboy Railroad. That railroad's arrival in the 1830s helped turn Trenton into a factory town.
Q 25Trenton's Old Barracks, now a museum, were built in 1758 to house British soldiers during which conflict?
French and Indian War
French and Indian War troops had been quartered on local households until colonists complained. The stone building later sheltered Hessians, and is the only colonial barracks left in New Jersey.
Q 26Which reformer founded New Jersey's first public mental hospital in Trenton in 1848 and later lived out her days there?
Dorothea Dix
Dorothea Dix toured every county, jail and almshouse in New Jersey in 1844 to make her case for the hospital. She moved into it in 1881 and spent her last six years there.
Q 27Which man was executed at the state prison in Trenton for kidnapping and killing Charles Lindbergh's baby son?
Bruno Hauptmann
Bruno Hauptmann went to the electric chair there in April 1936, protesting his innocence to the end. The prison has operated on the same Trenton site since 1798.
Q 28John Fitch, a Trenton silversmith honored in the name of a city parkway, ran America's first service of which vehicle?
Steamboat
Steamboat trials on the Delaware began in 1787, watched by delegates to the Constitutional Convention. British troops had destroyed Fitch's Trenton workshop during the Revolution.
Q 29Trenton singers Sarah Dash and Nona Hendryx joined Patti LaBelle in the trio behind which 1974 disco hit?
Lady Marmalade
Lady Marmalade followed the group's switch to glam rock and space-age costumes. Dash and Hendryx had first sung together in a Trenton group called the Del-Capris.
Q 30Scores of pottery factories earned Trenton a nickname as the American version of which English county?
Staffordshire
Staffordshire of America was the tag from the 1850s to the 1950s, when ceramics was the city's largest industry. American Standard ran its largest bathroom fixture plant there.