Virginia Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
8correct to beat the crowd
This Virginia trivia quiz has 100 free questions with answers and covers the whole Commonwealth: Jamestown and the House of Burgesses, the eight presidents born in the state, Yorktown, Richmond as Confederate capital and Appomattox, the split with West Virginia, Loving v. Virginia, Arlington and the Pentagon, Monticello and Mount Vernon, Colonial Williamsburg, Shenandoah's Skyline Drive, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, Virginia Beach, the Chincoteague ponies and the state symbols from the cardinal to the dogwood. It suits Virginia history classes, pub quizzes in Richmond or Norfolk, and anyone who wants to test how well they know the Old Dominion beyond the tourism slogan. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries and official sources before publishing.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Jamestown, founded in 1607, holds what distinction?
First permanent English settlement in the Americas
First permanent English settlement in the Americas: the Virginia Company of London landed on 14 May 1607, and barely 60 colonists survived the 'Starving Time' winter of 1609-10.
Q 02Which crop, pioneered by John Rolfe from 1612, made the Virginia colony profitable?
Tobacco
Tobacco: John Rolfe's sweeter Caribbean strain, first shipped to England in 1614, became the colony's cash crop and served as currency for much of the colonial period.
Q 03Virginia's colonial assembly, first elected in 1619, was known as what?
The House of Burgesses
The House of Burgesses first met in Jamestown's church on 30 July 1619, the first elected legislative assembly in the Americas; it sat until 1776.
Q 04Virginia is named after which English monarch?
Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I, the 'Virgin Queen': Walter Raleigh's 1584 expedition named the land Virginia in her honour, more than twenty years before Jamestown was founded.
Q 05How many US presidents were born in Virginia, more than any other state?
Eight
Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, William Henry Harrison, Tyler, Taylor and Wilson; Ohio is next with seven.
Q 06Which city is the capital of Virginia?
Richmond
Richmond has been the capital since the government moved from Williamsburg during the Revolution; its State Capitol was designed by Thomas Jefferson on the model of the Maison Carrée at Nîmes.
Q 07Which is the Commonwealth's most populous city?
Virginia Beach
Virginia Beach, with about 460,000 residents; Guinness lists it as home to the world's longest pleasure beach, and its Neptune Festival draws about half a million visitors.
Q 08Where did the Jamestown settlers first make landfall in April 1607 before moving upriver?
Cape Henry
The spot in today's Virginia Beach is marked by First Landing State Park and the Cape Henry lighthouses.
Q 09Virginia ratified the US Constitution on 25 June 1788, becoming which state to join the Union?
Tenth
Tenth: Virginia's convention ratified 89-79 on 25 June 1788, four days after New Hampshire had become the ninth state and put the Constitution into effect.
Q 10Where did Patrick Henry deliver his 'Give me liberty, or give me death!' speech in March 1775?
St. John's Church, Richmond
St. John's Church, Richmond, hosted the Second Virginia Convention on 23 March 1775; Henry later became Virginia's first and sixth governor and opposed the Constitution for lacking a Bill of Rights.
Q 11Which British general surrendered at Yorktown on 19 October 1781?
Cornwallis
Cornwallis: Washington and Rochambeau besieged Lord Cornwallis's army while de Grasse's French fleet blocked the sea; Yorktown was the war's last major land battle.
Q 12The state capital served as the seat of which government from 1861 to 1865?
The Confederate States
The Confederate States: Richmond was the Confederate capital from May 1861; evacuating troops burned its tobacco warehouses in April 1865 and the fires destroyed a quarter of the city.
Q 13In whose parlour at Appomattox Court House did the Confederate commander surrender to Grant on 9 April 1865?
Wilmer McLean
Q 21George Washington's Potomac estate was named after whom?
A British admiral
A British admiral: Washington's half-brother Lawrence named the estate for Vice Admiral Edward Vernon, under whom he had served in the 1741 Cartagena expedition.
Q 22Which organisation bought Washington's Potomac estate in 1858?
The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association
The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association has run the estate ever since; by 2020 more than 85 million people had visited it.
Q 23Which philanthropist bankrolled the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg from the late 1920s?
John D. Rockefeller Jr.
McLean had moved there to escape the war after the First Battle of Bull Run was fought near his previous farm at Manassas.
Q 14West Virginia broke away from Virginia and joined the Union in which year?
1863
Lincoln admitted it on 20 June 1863 on condition that its constitution provided for the gradual abolition of slavery.
Q 15Loving v. Virginia (1967) struck down state laws banning what?
Interracial marriage
Richard and Mildred Loving of Caroline County had been convicted under the 1924 Racial Integrity Act; 12 June is now Loving Day.
Q 16The Pentagon, headquarters of the US Department of Defense, is in which Virginia county?
Arlington
Arlington County: ground was broken on 11 September 1941 and the building was finished in about 16 months; its 17.5 miles of corridors sit across the Potomac from Washington.
Q 17Arlington National Cemetery was established in 1864 on land confiscated from which Confederate general's family?
Robert E. Lee
Robert E. Lee: the Arlington House estate belonged to his wife Mary Custis Lee; the Union seized it for unpaid taxes and began burials in 1864 to keep the Lees from returning.
Q 18Which two US presidents are buried in Arlington National Cemetery?
Taft and Kennedy
Taft and Kennedy: William Howard Taft was buried there in 1930 and John F. Kennedy in 1963, his grave marked by an eternal flame; no other president lies at Arlington.
Q 19Jefferson's home Monticello takes its name from Italian words meaning what?
Little mountain
Little mountain: monticello is Italian for 'little mountain', the 850-foot hill near Charlottesville on which Jefferson began building his house in 1769.
Q 20Which US coin shows Monticello on its reverse?
The nickel
The nickel: Monticello's west front has been the reverse of the Jefferson nickel since 1938, apart from the 2004-05 Westward Journey designs.
John D. Rockefeller Jr., persuaded by the Reverend W. A. R. Goodwin in 1926, funded the restoration; the 301-acre living-history museum forms the Historic Triangle with Jamestown and Yorktown.
Q 24Williamsburg was Virginia's capital from 1699 until which year?
1780
1780: Governor Thomas Jefferson moved the seat of government to Richmond in April 1780 for safety from British attack by sea, ending Williamsburg's 81 years as capital.
Q 25The College of William & Mary, chartered in 1693, is the second-oldest US college after which?
Harvard
Harvard, founded in 1636, is the only older US college; William & Mary's 1693 charter came from King William III and Queen Mary II, and Phi Beta Kappa was founded there in 1776.
Q 26Which founding father established the University of Virginia in 1819?
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson founded the university in 1819 and designed its Academical Village and Rotunda, which share a UNESCO World Heritage listing with his home Monticello.
Q 27Which is Virginia's official state bird?
Northern cardinal
Northern cardinal, adopted in 1950; it is the state bird of seven states, more than any other, and Virginia also made the American dogwood both its state flower and state tree.
Q 28Which breed is Virginia's official state dog?
American Foxhound
American Foxhound, adopted in 1966; George Washington bred foxhounds at Mount Vernon, and the breed descends from English hounds brought to Virginia in the 1650s.
Q 29Which spirit did Virginia name its official state spirit in 2017?
George Washington's Rye Whiskey
George Washington's Rye Whiskey, made at the reconstructed Mount Vernon distillery to Washington's 1790s recipe, was named the state spirit by the General Assembly in 2017.
Q 30Virginia's tourism slogan 'Virginia is for Lovers' dates from which year?
1969
1969: the Richmond agency Martin & Woltz coined it that year, having considered 'Virginia is for History Lovers'; the slogan joined the Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame in 2009.