This Virginia trivia quiz has 50 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 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Jamestown, founded in 1607, holds what distinction?
First permanent English settlement in the Americas
The Virginia Company of London landed on 14 May 1607; only 60 of 214 settlers survived the 'Starving Time' winter of 1609-10.
Q 02Which crop, first cultivated successfully by John Rolfe after 1614, made the Virginia colony profitable?
Tobacco
1619 then brought America's first representative assembly, its first recorded labour strike and the first documented Africans in English North America.
Q 03Virginia's colonial assembly, first elected in 1619, was known as what?
The House of Burgesses
It is regarded as the first elected legislative body in the Americas.
Q 04Virginia is named after which English monarch?
Elizabeth I
The 'Virgin Queen' gave her nickname to the colony; the state motto, Sic semper tyrannis, means 'thus always to tyrants'.
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
The capital moved there from Williamsburg in 1780; the State Capitol was designed by Thomas Jefferson.
Q 07Which is the Commonwealth's most populous city?
Virginia Beach
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
The Commonwealth had already produced the Virginia Declaration of Rights, written by George Mason in 1776.
Q 10Where did Patrick Henry deliver his 'Give me liberty, or give me death!' speech in March 1775?
St. John's Church, Richmond
Henry went on to be Virginia's first and sixth governor and opposed the US Constitution for lacking a Bill of Rights.
Q 11Which British general surrendered at Yorktown on 19 October 1781?
Cornwallis
Washington and Rochambeau besieged him while de Grasse's French fleet blocked the sea; it 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
Evacuating Confederate troops burned 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
Washington's half-brother Lawrence named it for Vice Admiral Edward Vernon; a rye whiskey distillery became the estate's most profitable venture.
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
Ground was broken on 11 September 1941 and it was finished in about 16 months; it has 17.5 miles of corridors.
Q 17Arlington National Cemetery was established in 1864 on land confiscated from which Confederate general's family?
Robert E. Lee
More than 400,000 people are buried there, and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier has been guarded around the clock since 1937.
Q 18Which two US presidents are buried in the national cemetery on the former Lee estate?
Taft and Kennedy
Kennedy's grave is marked by an eternal flame; astronauts from Challenger and Columbia also rest there.
Q 19Jefferson's home Monticello takes its name from Italian words meaning what?
Little mountain
Its west front has appeared on the nickel since 1938, and it shares a UNESCO listing with Jefferson's University of Virginia.
Q 20Which US coin has carried an image of Monticello since 1938?
The nickel
Jefferson is buried on the grounds in a cemetery still run by his descendants.
The Reverend W. A. R. Goodwin persuaded him; 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
The seat of government moved to Richmond during the Revolutionary War.
Q 25The College of William & Mary, chartered in 1693, is the second-oldest US college after which?
Harvard
Phi Beta Kappa was founded there in 1776 and Jefferson created the nation's first student honour code there in 1779.
Q 26Which founding father established the University of Virginia in 1819?
Thomas Jefferson
He also designed its Academical Village, part of a UNESCO World Heritage listing with Monticello.
Q 27Which is Virginia's official state bird?
Northern cardinal
Adopted in 1950; the state is one of only two whose state flower and state tree are the same plant, the American dogwood.
Q 28Which breed is Virginia's official state dog?
American Foxhound
Adopted in 1966; other symbols include the eastern oyster as state shell and milk as state beverage.
Q 29Which spirit did Virginia name its official state spirit in 2017?
George Washington's Rye Whiskey
It is distilled at the reconstructed Mount Vernon distillery; the state fossil is the scallop Chesapecten jeffersonius.
Q 30Virginia's tourism slogan 'Virginia is for Lovers' dates from which year?
1969
Richmond agency Martin & Woltz nearly went with 'Virginia is for History Lovers'; the line joined the Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame in 2009.