Q 01/05

The name Topeka is usually traced to a Kansa phrase about a good place to dig which food crop?

A) Sweet corn

B) Potatoes

C) Peanuts

D) Wild onions

Answer · why

B) Potatoes

Potatoes give Topeka its name, which the town's founders chose in 1855 because it was novel, of Indian origin and pleasant to the ear.

Q 02/05

Which tech company did Topeka unofficially rename itself after for a month in 2010, hoping to win a fiber network?

A) Google

B) Apple

C) Microsoft

D) Verizon

Answer · why

A) Google

Google returned the compliment on April Fools' Day 2010, announcing that it was changing its own name to Topeka and relabeling its home page.

Q 03/05

Which New Mexico city completes the name of the railroad chartered in 1859, the Atchison, Topeka and what?

A) Albuquerque

B) Las Cruces

C) Santa Fe

D) Roswell

Answer · why

C) Santa Fe

Santa Fe ended up off the main line, because the railroad bypassed the mountains around the city. A branch from Lamy finally reached it in 1880.

Q 04/05

Which NAACP chief counsel, later a Supreme Court justice himself, argued Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka?

A) Clarence Darrow

B) William Kunstler

C) Charles Evans Hughes

D) Thurgood Marshall

Answer · why

D) Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall won a unanimous ruling in 1954. In 1967 he joined the court he had argued before, as its first African American justice.

Q 05/05

Topeka is the capital of Kansas, but which city to its southwest is the state's most populous?

A) Wichita

B) Kansas City

C) Overland Park

D) Manhattan

Answer · why

A) Wichita

Wichita counted 397,532 residents at the 2020 census, about three times as many as Topeka's 126,587.