Q 01/05

What is the capital of Louisiana?

A) New Orleans

B) Baton Rouge

C) Shreveport

D) Lafayette

Answer · why

B) Baton Rouge

The city sits on the first natural bluff upriver from the Mississippi delta, which kept its business district safe from seasonal floods.

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

The term comes from the French paroisse and dates to the colonial church-parish boundaries; Alaska, with its boroughs, is the only other state without...

Q 03/05

Louisiana was named in honor of which French king?

A) Louis XIII

B) Louis XV

C) Louis XIV

D) Louis XVI

Answer · why

C) Louis XIV

The explorer La Salle named the Mississippi drainage 'La Louisiane' in 1682; the -ana suffix roughly means 'relating to Louis'.

Q 04/05

In what year did the United States buy the Louisiana Territory from France?

A) 1803

B) 1819

C) 1836

D) 1848

Answer · why

A) 1803

Napoleon sold the territory after his army failed to retake Saint-Domingue (Haiti) and he abandoned plans for a Caribbean sugar empire.

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

Jefferson only sent envoys to buy the port of New Orleans; the French offer of the entire territory caught him by surprise.