Baltimore Trivia
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56 free Baltimore trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
54 free Baltimore trivia questions with answers. Baltimore gave America its national anthem, its first railroad, its first research university, its first six-pack and the Ouija board. This Baltimore trivia quiz covers all of it: Fort McHenry and Francis Scott Key, the B&O and Charles Carroll's first stone, the Great Fire of 1904, Poe's mysterious death, the Colts' midnight exit and the Ravens' two Super Bowls, the Orioles and Cal Ripken, Camden Yards and Pimlico. There is plenty of food and local colour too: Old Bay's 18 spices, Berger Cookies, pit beef, Natty Boh, the chicken box, formstone rowhouses, duckpin bowling and Mobtown. Famous natives run from Babe Ruth and Billie Holiday to Thurgood Marshall, Frederick Douglass, H. L. Mencken, Michael Phelps and John Waters, and the screen gets its due with Hairspray and The Wire. Roughly a third of the questions are for anyone who has visited, a third for locals, and the rest for people who know which London tavern Pimlico is named after. Every answer is checked against a cited source shown under the question.
30 of 56 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Baltimore takes its name from the Calvert family's barony in which country?
Ireland
Ireland: the Calverts were Barons Baltimore in the Irish peerage. Cecil Calvert, the lord the city honours, sent his brother to govern Maryland and never visited the colony himself.
Q 02The bombardment of which Baltimore stronghold in 1814 inspired 'The Star-Spangled Banner'?
Fort McHenry
Fort McHenry held; Francis Scott Key watched from a ship and wrote 'Defence of Fort M'Henry'; the flag now hangs in the Smithsonian.
Q 03What shape is the fort that guarded Baltimore's harbor in 1814?
A five-pointed star
A five-pointed star: its French designer, Jean Foncin, put a bastion at each point so that every wall could be swept by crossfire from its neighbours.
Q 04'The Star-Spangled Banner' borrowed its tune from a song written for which English gentlemen's club?
The Anacreontic Society
The Anacreontic Society, a club of amateur musicians, sang John Stafford Smith's tune in praise of Anacreon, a Greek poet of love and wine, decades before it carried patriotic words.
Q 05Which president signed the 1931 law making 'The Star-Spangled Banner' the national anthem?
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover signed it 117 years after Francis Scott Key wrote the words, though the Army and Navy had treated the song as the national anthem for years.
Q 06The B&O Railroad was chartered in 1827 so that Baltimore could compete with which newly opened canal?
Erie Canal
The Erie Canal had begun pulling western trade to New York in 1825, so Baltimore's merchants answered with one of America's first railroads, later one of the four on the Monopoly board.
Q 07Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who laid the B&O Railroad's first stone in 1828, was the last living signer of what?
The Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence: Carroll, then 90, was a director of the new railroad, and its first bridge, the Carrollton Viaduct, is named for him and still carries trains.
Q 08About how many buildings did the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 level?
1,500
1,500: the fire burned for about 30 hours, and dynamiting buildings to clear a firebreak failed to stop it.
Q 09What was the lasting national legacy of the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904?
Standardised hose couplings
Standardised hose couplings: fire companies came by rail from Washington, Philadelphia and New York, but many could not connect their hoses to Baltimore's hydrants.
Q 10Which writer died in Baltimore in 1849, aged 40, under mysterious circumstances?
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was found delirious at a Baltimore tavern on 3 October 1849 and died four days later; the city's NFL team took its name from his poem 'The Raven'.
Q 11The Baltimore Ravens were established in 1996 after which team's owner announced a move to the city?
The Cleveland Browns
Art Modell announced in November 1995 that he was moving the Cleveland Browns; Cleveland kept the Browns name and history, and the relocated team became the Ravens in 1996.
Q 12Which quarterback was MVP of the Ravens' Super Bowl XLVII win?
Joe Flacco
Joe Flacco threw three touchdown passes as the Ravens built a 28-6 lead, then held off the 49ers 34-31 after a power failure stopped the game for 34 minutes.
Q 13Which Ravens defender was named MVP of Super Bowl XXXV?
Ray Lewis
Q 21Which company bought Baltimore's Old Bay seasoning brand in 1990?
McCormick
McCormick, itself founded in Baltimore, bought the crab spice half a century after Gustav Brunn, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, created it there and named it for a local steamship line.
Q 22Baltimore's Berger Cookies are famous for a thick, hand-spread topping of what?
Chocolate fudge
Chocolate fudge: the Berger brothers brought the recipe from Germany in 1835, and DeBaufre Bakeries still makes the cookies by hand in Baltimore.
Q 23How is Baltimore pit beef cooked?
Quickly at high heat and served rare
Ray Lewis anchored a defence that allowed 165 points, a record low for a 16-game season, then kept New York's offence off the scoreboard: the Giants' only touchdown came on a kickoff return.
Q 14Which moving company's trucks carried the Colts out of Baltimore overnight in March 1984?
Mayflower Transit
Mayflower Transit's trucks reached the Colts' complex around 10 p.m., a day after Maryland's Senate voted to let Baltimore seize the team by eminent domain; by morning the Colts were gone.
Q 15The Colts' 1958 title win over the Giants is remembered as what?
The Greatest Game Ever Played
'The Greatest Game Ever Played' was the NFL's first sudden-death overtime game: Johnny Unitas marched the Colts 80 yards and Alan Ameche plunged in from the one for a 23-17 win.
Q 16The Orioles arrived in 1954 when a last-place American League club moved from which city?
St. Louis
St. Louis: the club had lost 100 games in 1953, and its new Baltimore owners dropped the old nickname for Orioles, a name the city's ball clubs had worn since the 1880s.
Q 17Which Orioles third baseman was named MVP of the 1970 World Series against Cincinnati?
Brooks Robinson
Brooks Robinson, 'the Human Vacuum Cleaner', robbed the Reds of hit after hit with his glove and still batted .429; he won 16 straight Gold Gloves at third base.
Q 18Cal Ripken Jr. became baseball's 'Iron Man' by breaking whose consecutive-games record?
Lou Gehrig
Lou Gehrig's mark of 2,130 straight games had stood for 56 years; Ripken pushed the streak to 2,632 games and ended it himself in 1998 by asking out of the lineup.
Q 19Oriole Park at Camden Yards, opened in 1992, is notable as what?
The first of the 'retro' ballparks
The first of the 'retro' ballparks: its brick, exposed steel and old warehouse beyond right field broke with the concrete multi-purpose bowls, and the parks of the 1990s and 2000s followed its lead.
Q 20Johns Hopkins, opened in 1876, is considered the first American what?
Research university
Research university: Johns Hopkins, a Quaker merchant, left $7 million to found it alongside a hospital, and its first president, Daniel Coit Gilman, built it on the European research model.
Quickly at high heat and served rare: unlike slow-smoked barbecue, the beef is grilled over hot charcoal, shaved thin and piled on a roll with horseradish.
Q 24Which John Waters film starred Divine, Debbie Harry and Ricki Lake in her debut?
Hairspray
Hairspray (1988) was rated PG, a mainstream turn for a director known for far cruder comedies, and it was Divine's last triumph: the star died days after it opened.
Q 25The Wire was created by David Simon, who spent twelve years doing what?
Reporting for The Baltimore Sun
Reporting for The Baltimore Sun on the police beat; his book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets became an NBC series, while writing partner Ed Burns was the ex-detective and teacher.
Q 26Which institution did The Wire's second season examine?
The docks
The docks: season two left the drug corners for the port, where union leader Frank Sobotka turns to crime to raise the money to save his stevedores' union.
Q 27In 1914 the minor-league Orioles sold Baltimore-born Babe Ruth to which major-league club, years before he became a Yankee?
Boston Red Sox
Boston Red Sox: Orioles owner Jack Dunn, losing money to a rival Federal League club, sold his young pitcher less than five months after signing him out of St. Mary's Industrial School.
Q 28Baltimore's airport is named after which native son?
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall grew up in Baltimore but could not attend the all-white University of Maryland law school; in 1935 he helped win the lawsuit that forced it to admit a Black student.
Q 29As an enslaved teenager, Frederick Douglass was hired out to work as what in Fell's Point?
A ship caulker
A ship caulker: he learned the trade in Fell's Point shipyards and by 1838 was hiring out his own time, before escaping north that year and taking the name Douglass in New Bedford.
Q 30Which Olympic champion trained at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club?
Michael Phelps
Michael Phelps, raised in nearby Rodgers Forge, followed his two older sisters into the pool at seven and met coach Bob Bowman at the club; he retired with 28 Olympic medals, 23 of them gold.