August Fun Facts and Trivia
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99 free August Fun Facts and trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
42 free August Fun Facts and trivia questions with answers. Forty questions on August, the eighth month and one of high summer in the north, deep winter in the south. The first round is the month itself: how it got its name from Augustus, why it was once called Sextilis, the myth about its length, the peridot birthstone, the gladiolus, the Leo and Virgo signs, the Perseid meteors and the sultry 'dog days' named for the Dog Star. Then it turns to the events history stacked into August: Hiroshima, Woodstock, the March on Washington, Katrina, the Berlin Wall going up, the 19th Amendment, Krakatoa, Nixon's resignation, Indian independence and the launch of MTV. A run of famous August birthdays closes it out, from Napoleon and Louis Armstrong to Obama, Madonna, Michael Jackson and Coco Chanel. It works for a classroom, a quiz night or a monthly newsletter. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the month, the events and the people involved, and the sentence that establishes it is shown under each explanation.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Senate named August after Augustus partly because that month had brought him which conquest?
Egypt
Egypt came under Roman rule in that month, the Senate's decree noted, so Augustus took it for his name rather than September, the month of his birth.
Q 02What was August called in the early Roman calendar, when the year began in March?
Sextilis
Sextilis means 'sixth'; the name outlived the calendar change that made it the eighth month and lasted until the Senate renamed it for the emperor.
Q 03August's best-known birthstone is which yellow-green gem?
Peridot
Peridot has often passed for emerald: the big green gems on the Shrine of the Three Kings in Cologne Cathedral, long believed to be emeralds, are in fact peridots.
Q 04Which flower, nicknamed the sword lily, is a birth flower of August?
Gladiolus
Gladiolus is Latin for 'little sword', a name earned by its blade-shaped leaves; the poppy shares the month with it.
Q 05The two Western zodiac signs that fall in August are Virgo and which other?
Leo
Leo the sign runs from about 23 July to 22 August, but Earth's slow wobble has shifted the sky since those dates were set: the Sun now crosses Leo's stars from 10 August to mid-September.
Q 06Which meteor shower, peaking in mid-August, comes from debris left by Comet Swift-Tuttle?
Perseids
The Perseids take their name from the constellation Perseus, the point they seem to streak from; the dust was shed by Comet Swift-Tuttle on its 133-year orbit.
Q 07The hot, sultry 'dog days' of August are named after the rising of which star?
Sirius
Sirius, the Dog Star, returned to the dawn sky in high summer; its Greek name is said to mean 'scorcher', and the Greeks blamed it for heat, fever and mad dogs.
Q 08On the last Wednesday of August, crowds in Buñol, Spain, pelt one another with which fruit?
Tomatoes
Tomatoes are the ammunition at La Tomatina, which is said to have begun in 1945 when a scuffle at a town parade spilled over into a vegetable stall.
Q 09Which Japanese city was hit by the first atomic bomb used in war, on 6 August 1945?
Hiroshima
Hiroshima was bombed by the B-29 Enola Gay; three days later Nagasaki was hit only because cloud and smoke hid the crew's first choice, Kokura.
Q 10Which August 1969 music festival was held on Max Yasgur's dairy farm, miles from the town it was named after?
Woodstock
Woodstock kept its name though it never played there: the town of Wallkill blocked the planned site that summer, and Yasgur rented the organisers his fields in Bethel.
Q 11From the steps of which landmark did Martin Luther King Jr. give his 'I Have a Dream' speech in August 1963?
The Lincoln Memorial
The Lincoln Memorial's steps were his stage on 28 August 1963; the famous 'dream' passage was improvised after he reached the end of his prepared text.
Q 12Which music star died on 16 August 1977, aged 42?
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley was found at Graceland, his Memphis mansion, and mourning fans soon crowded its gates; the medical examiner blamed his heart that night, and the part drugs played has been argued over ever since.
Q 13Hurricane Katrina flooded most of a major Gulf Coast city in August 2005 when what gave way?
The city's levees
Q 21Diana, Princess of Wales, died after a car crash in which city on 31 August 1997?
Paris
Paris was where her car crashed in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel while trying to shake off photographers; a 2008 inquest blamed the driver and the pursuing paparazzi.
Q 22Which canal opened to shipping in August 1914, as the First World War began?
Panama
The Panama Canal opened when the SS Ancon made the first official transit, ten years after the United States took over a project that its first builders had abandoned.
Q 23The US Open tennis tournament starts in late August at a park in which New York borough?
Queens
Queens is home to Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, laid out over a former ash dump for the 1939 World's Fair; the US Open moved there from nearby Forest Hills in 1978.
The city's levees and floodwalls failed in over 50 places, flooding about 80 percent of it; investigators blamed design errors by the Army Corps of Engineers that built them.
Q 14What was the first Berlin Wall, put up overnight on 13 August 1961, made of?
Barbed wire
Barbed wire and fencing came first, strung by East German troops in a single night; concrete blocks began to replace them within days, and the Wall stood until 1989.
Q 15In August 1920, Harry Burn cast Tennessee's deciding suffrage vote after a letter from whom?
His mother
His mother, Febb Burn, wrote telling him to 'be a good boy' and vote for ratification; he arrived wearing the opponents' red rose, then voted aye, and Tennessee became the 36th state.
Q 16Which volcano's eruption in 79 AD, traditionally dated to 24 August, buried Pompeii and Herculaneum?
Vesuvius
Vesuvius's date comes from copies of Pliny the Younger's letters; a charcoal graffito found at Pompeii in 2018 is dated to mid-October, which suggests the eruption came later.
Q 17The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, in late August, produced a sound heard how far away?
About 3,000 miles
About 3,000 miles away, on Rodrigues near Mauritius, the blast was taken for cannon fire from a ship; the eruption and its tsunamis killed about 36,000 people.
Q 18Which country celebrates Independence Day on 15 August, marking the end of British rule in 1947?
India
India's independence took effect on 15 August 1947; Pakistan, created by the same act of Parliament, marks its own a day earlier, on the 14th.
Q 19Richard Nixon became the first US president to do what, in August 1974?
Resign from office
Nixon became the first president to resign from office, announcing it on 8 August 1974 and leaving at noon on the 9th, after the House Judiciary Committee had approved three impeachment articles.
Q 20MTV launched in August 1981 by playing which song first?
Video Killed the Radio Star
'Video Killed the Radio Star' by the Buggles opened MTV at 12:01 am on 1 August 1981; the song is a nostalgic lament for an older medium pushed aside by new technology.
Q 24The Little League World Series is played each August in South Williamsport, in which US state?
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania is where Carl Stotz started Little League in Williamsport in 1939, with three teams, so local boys could play organised baseball; the first series followed in 1947.
Q 25The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is held each August in which state?
South Dakota
Sturgis is a small city in the Black Hills of South Dakota; the rally began in 1938 when local dealer Clarence 'Pappy' Hoel and his Jackpine Gypsies club staged races and stunts.
Q 26Which city's Fringe, held every August, is billed as the world's largest performing arts festival?
Edinburgh
Edinburgh's Fringe began in 1947, when eight theatre companies turned up uninvited at the first Edinburgh International Festival and performed on its fringe.
Q 27Which American sprinter won four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics in August 1936?
Jesse Owens
Jesse Owens won the 100 m, 200 m, long jump and 4x100 m relay in the first nine days of August 1936, a public rebuke to the Nazi hosts' racial ideology.
Q 28Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the Moon, was born in August 1930 in which state?
Ohio
Ohio's Neil Armstrong was hooked by a plane ride he took as a small boy; as a teenager he took flying lessons at the airfield in his home town of Wapakoneta.
Q 29Which pop superstar was born on 16 August 1958 in Bay City, Michigan?
Madonna
Madonna Louise Ciccone was born in Bay City, Michigan, on 16 August 1958 and moved to New York in 1978 to pursue dance before her self-titled 1983 debut album.
Q 30Which TV comedy legend, born in August 1911, later ran her own Hollywood studio?
Lucille Ball
Lucille Ball bought out Desi Arnaz's share of Desilu in 1962 and ran it alone; as its head she approved the pilots that became Star Trek and Mission: Impossible.