Q 01/05

New Orleans is Louisiana's largest city, but which is its capital?

A) Shreveport

B) Baton Rouge

C) Alexandria

D) Monroe

Answer · why

B) Baton Rouge

Baton Rouge took over as capital in 1849, lost the job when Union forces captured the city during the Civil War, and did not get the government back u...

Q 02/05

Louisiana is the only U.S. state whose county-equivalent subdivisions are called what?

A) boroughs

B) cantons

C) districts

D) parishes

Answer · why

D) parishes

Parishes are a holdover from colonial days: the colony was officially Catholic and ran local affairs through church parishes, and the name outlasted t...

Q 03/05

La Salle named Louisiana in 1682 in honor of which reigning French king?

A) Louis XIII

B) Louis XV

C) Louis XIV

D) Louis XVI

Answer · why

C) Louis XIV

Louis XIV got the honor when La Salle claimed the Mississippi basin for France; sailing back to settle it, La Salle missed the river's mouth, landed i...

Q 04/05

Napoleon sold Louisiana in 1803 after yellow fever wrecked his army fighting rebels in which present-day country?

A) Cuba

B) Haiti

C) Jamaica

D) Trinidad

Answer · why

B) Haiti

Haiti was then the French colony of Saint-Domingue; with his army dying there and war with Britain looming, Napoleon offered American envoys all of Lo...

Q 05/05

Which U.S. president oversaw the Louisiana Purchase?

A) John Quincy Adams

B) Thomas Jefferson

C) James Madison

D) Andrew Jackson

Answer · why

B) Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson sent his envoys to buy little more than the port of New Orleans, and he believed the Constitution gave him no power to buy territory,...