US Senate
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50 free US Senate trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The US Senate is the smaller, slower and stranger half of Congress. Its members serve six-year terms, its rules let a determined minority stall almost anything, and its traditions run from a well-stocked desk drawer to a lunch special that has outlasted a century of menus. This quiz mixes the people with the institution. You will be asked to name the senator behind famous speeches, hearings, scandals and firsts, from the giants of the 1800s through the Watergate-era figures of the 1970s to recent household names. Other questions cover how the chamber works: who presides, how debate ends, how seats were once filled and what the Constitution demands. It suits civics students, political junkies and anyone who has watched a confirmation hearing and wondered how it all works. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play it straight through or print it for a lesson or a quiz night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Since 1965, what has one Republican senator kept in a desk drawer by the Senate chamber's entrance?
Candy
Candy has filled the drawer ever since California's George Murphy began sharing his stash with colleagues, even though eating is banned on the Senate floor.
Q 02The name of the US Senate traces back to the Latin word 'senex', which means what?
Old man
Old man is the meaning of 'senex', the root that Rome's council of elders shares with the English words senior and senile.
Q 03Which piece of Senate jargon comes from a Dutch word once used for pirates raiding the Caribbean?
Filibuster
Filibuster comes from the Dutch for 'freebooter' and began turning up in American legislative debates in the 1850s as a label for talking a bill to death.
Q 04Which South Carolina senator spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957?
Strom Thurmond
Strom Thurmond's solo stand remained the Senate's longest speech until 2025. He later became the only member of Congress to turn 100 while in office.
Q 05Which future president won a Delaware Senate seat in 1972 at age 29, too young to take office yet?
Joe Biden
Joe Biden turned 30, the Constitution's minimum age for a senator, less than two weeks after election day and well before he was sworn in.
Q 06Which dish is on the Senate restaurant's menu every day, a tradition dating to the early 1900s?
Bean soup
Bean soup became a daily fixture because one senator insisted on it, though rival stories credit either Idaho's Fred Dubois or Minnesota's Knute Nelson.
Q 07Which president, impeached in 1868, became the only former president to later serve in the Senate?
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson won a Tennessee seat in 1875, six years after leaving the White House, but died just five months into his term.
Q 08Which Ohio senator, the first American to orbit Earth, flew on the Space Shuttle at age 77?
John Glenn
John Glenn was still a sitting senator when he rode Discovery in 1998, 36 years after his Mercury flight, and became the oldest person to fly in space at that time.
Q 09Which official chairs the Senate under the Constitution but may vote only to break a tie?
The vice president
The vice president doubles as president of the Senate, a job its first holder, John Adams, called 'the most insignificant office' ever contrived.
Q 10Who is the only First Lady to win a Senate seat, sworn in while her husband was still president?
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton took her oath 17 days before her husband's presidency ended, so for a short spell she was a senator and First Lady at the same time.
Q 11Before a 1913 constitutional amendment, which bodies rather than voters chose US senators?
State legislatures
State legislatures sometimes deadlocked so badly that seats stayed empty, and one Indiana vacancy in the 1850s lasted two years. Such stalemates helped build support for direct elections.
Q 12Which 1787 deal gave every state equal votes in the Senate while basing House seats on population?
Connecticut Compromise
The Connecticut Compromise, also called the Great Compromise, grew from a two-chamber plan put forward by the state's delegate Roger Sherman.
Q 13Which Senate procedure, created by Rule 22 in 1917, lets 60 senators end debate and force a vote?
Cloture
Q 21Which Mississippi minister became the first African American senator when he took his seat in 1870?
Hiram Revels
Hiram Revels had helped raise two regiments of Black soldiers and served as an army chaplain during the Civil War.
Q 22Which Georgian, sworn in at 87, became the first woman in the Senate yet served only one day?
Rebecca Felton
Rebecca Felton's seat really belonged to Walter George, who had already won the election but let her be sworn in first.
Q 23Which Kentucky senator, known as the Great Compromiser, ran for president three times and never won?
Henry Clay
Henry Clay earned the nickname by brokering deals over slavery in 1820 and again in 1850 that each put off a national crisis.
Cloture was adopted at President Woodrow Wilson's urging and at first needed a two-thirds vote. Senators lowered the bar to three-fifths in 1975.
Q 14Which official must preside when a sitting president is tried in the Senate after impeachment?
The chief justice
The chief justice who presided in 1999, William Rehnquist, later summed up his role: 'I did nothing in particular, and I did it very well.'
Q 15Which peace deal did the Senate reject in 1919, keeping America out of the League of Nations?
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was the first peace treaty the Senate had ever rejected, so the United States later made a separate peace with Germany.
Q 16Which Senate committee holds the televised hearings that question nominees for the Supreme Court?
Judiciary
The Judiciary Committee's 1987 fight over nominee Robert Bork gave English a new verb: the Oxford English Dictionary added 'bork' in 2002.
Q 17Which word names the minimum of 51 senators who must be present for the Senate to do business?
Quorum
A quorum is always presumed to be present unless a senator asks for the roll to be called, so business can carry on in a nearly empty chamber.
Q 18Which Senate leadership title comes from the fox-hunting rider who keeps the hounds from straying?
Whip
Whip is short for 'whipper-in', a hunting term used in Britain's Parliament by 1828. In the Senate the job is rounding up a party's votes.
Q 19What are the three groups of Senate seats that take turns facing election every two years called?
Classes
Classes were first drawn by lot in May 1789, and each new state's two seats still go into different groups by a random draw.
Q 20Which Senate officer can be ordered to track down absent senators and bring them to the chamber?
Sergeant at arms
The sergeant at arms was sent after missing members in 1988, and Oregon's Bob Packwood ended up being carried into the chamber feet first.
Q 24Which Massachusetts senator ended a famous 1830 speech with 'Liberty and Union, now and for ever'?
Daniel Webster
Daniel Webster was answering South Carolina's Robert Hayne, who had argued that states could nullify federal law. The reply was reprinted thousands of times.
Q 25Which Illinois senator, the Little Giant, kept his seat by beating Abraham Lincoln in 1858?
Stephen A. Douglas
Stephen A. Douglas stood just 5 feet 4 inches tall, and two years later the same pair faced off again for the presidency, with Lincoln coming out on top.
Q 26Which Mississippi senator called it 'the saddest day of his life' when he resigned his seat in 1861?
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Davis left because Mississippi had seceded, and within weeks he was chosen as president of the Confederacy.
Q 27Which antislavery senator from Massachusetts was beaten with a cane at his Senate desk in 1856?
Charles Sumner
Charles Sumner needed three years to recover, and Massachusetts refused to replace him, leaving his empty desk as a public reminder of the attack.
Q 28Which former president of the Republic of Texas went on to be one of the state's first two senators?
Sam Houston
Sam Houston is also the only person elected governor of two different states: Tennessee before his Texas years, and Texas after he left the Senate.
Q 29In which city did the Senate first meet in 1789, in a room upstairs at Federal Hall?
New York
New York also saw George Washington inaugurated at the same building weeks later, but Congress had moved to Philadelphia before its first two-year term ended.
Q 30Which material was the Senate's hourglass-shaped gavel, retired after it began coming apart in 1954?
Ivory
Ivory proved fragile with age, so the presiding officer of India's upper house came that November to present the Senate with a replacement gavel.