Q 01/05

Which nickname did Washington Irving give New York City in an 1807 issue of his satirical magazine?

A) Big Apple

B) Empire City

C) Metropolis

D) Gotham

Answer · why

D) Gotham

Gotham, an Anglo-Saxon name meaning Goat's Town, came from an English village whose people were proverbially foolish. The joke outlived the magazine b...

Q 02/05

Which New York sports team is named after a fictional Dutch historian invented by Washington Irving in 1809?

A) Knicks

B) Yankees

C) Rangers

D) Mets

Answer · why

A) Knicks

The Knicks are short for Knickerbockers, after Diedrich Knickerbocker, the crusty narrator of Irving's comic A History of New York. His surname became...

Q 03/05

Which lanky schoolmaster is chased by the Headless Horseman in Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow?

A) Natty Bumppo

B) Arthur Dimmesdale

C) Ichabod Crane

D) Tom Sawyer

Answer · why

C) Ichabod Crane

Ichabod Crane is never seen in the valley again after the midnight chase. The tale hints that a rival for a rich farmer's daughter, not a ghost, was t...

Q 04/05

In Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle, how long does Rip sleep after drinking with strangers in the mountains?

A) Ten years

B) Twenty years

C) Forty years

D) A hundred years

Answer · why

B) Twenty years

Twenty years slip by in what feels to Rip like a single night. He walks home with a foot-long grey beard to a village where nobody knows his face.

Q 05/05

Which false belief about medieval Europeans was spread by Washington Irving's 1828 biography of Christopher Columbus?

A) They thought Earth was flat

B) They never took baths

C) They drank beer, never water

D) They used chastity belts

Answer · why

A) They thought Earth was flat

They thought Earth was flat only in Irving's largely fictional scene of scholars doubting Columbus. The real dispute in the 1490s was over the planet'...