Circus Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
153 free Circus trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
45 free circus trivia questions with answers. The circus is 250 years old and stranger than the posters. It began with a cavalry sergeant riding in a circle in a London field, its most famous elephant gave English a new word, its worst day was caused by waterproofing a tent with gasoline, and its biggest modern name refuses to use animals at all. This quiz runs 153 questions from Philip Astley and the first American circus through Barnum, Bailey and the Ringling brothers, Jumbo, the clowns and trapeze pioneers, Blondin at Niagara, the Wallendas, the Hartford fire, Ringling's closure and animal-free return, Cirque du Soleil, and the odd corners like the flea circus, the calliope and why Piccadilly Circus is called a circus. It starts easy and works up to questions for people who know who Dan Rice was. Every answer has been checked against reference sources, shown under each question once you answer, so it works for a themed party, a classroom or a general-knowledge round at pub trivia.
30 of 153 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the name for an intense, irrational fear of clowns?
Coulrophobia
Coulrophobia is a recent coinage, apparently invented in the 1990s; psychologists point to make-up that hides a clown's real feelings behind a painted smile.
Q 02Philip Astley gave his first riding displays in 1768 in what kind of London venue?
An open field
An open field at Ha'penny Hatch in Lambeth was the venue: Astley and his wife Patty rode there in the open air from Easter Monday 1768, and a year later he moved to a fenced, more permanent site nearby.
Q 03The standard circus ring, sized for a horse cantering in a circle, measures how far across?
42 feet
42 feet (13 m) is the width at which a horse circling at speed leans in enough for a rider to stand on its back; Astley's first ring was larger, and the smaller size became the standard worldwide.
Q 04Where does the word 'circus' come from?
Latin for 'circle'
Latin for 'circle': circus meant a ring or circular line and is akin to Greek kirkos; Romans gave the name to their racing arenas, and London showmen revived it in the 1780s for shows built around a ring.
Q 05The word 'circus' was coined by a rival, so what did Philip Astley call his own London show?
An amphitheatre
An amphitheatre: Astley never used the newer word, which songwriter Charles Dibdin and rider Charles Hughes chose in 1782 for their rival Royal Circus, and their name stuck to the whole art.
Q 06What was Astley's job before he became a showman?
A cavalry sergeant major
A cavalry sergeant major: Astley walked out of his father's cabinetmaking workshop at 17 to join the 15th Light Dragoons, learned to train horses in the Seven Years' War and was discharged in 1766.
Q 07America's first circus opened in 1793 in which city, then the nation's capital?
Philadelphia
Philadelphia: English rider John Bill Ricketts opened his circus there on 3 April 1793, and President George Washington came to watch during that first season.
Q 08In circus slang, a cry of 'Hey, Rube!' summoned help for what?
A brawl with townspeople
A brawl with townspeople: 'rube', short for Reuben, was a stock name for a country local, and the shout called every circus hand within earshot to stand with the one in trouble.
Q 09Which star of London's Regency pantomimes is generally considered the first mainstream clown?
Joseph Grimaldi
Joseph Grimaldi made Clown the star of the pantomime at Drury Lane and Covent Garden in the early 1800s, so dominating the part that clowns are still nicknamed 'Joeys' after him.
Q 10Which American clown, a household name in the 1860s, toured with his own 'one-horse show'?
Dan Rice
Dan Rice was the best-known American clown of his day: rivals mocked him for owning a single horse, so he turned the 'one-horse show' jibe into his trademark and became a star.
Q 11Which Hollywood star, a circus acrobat in the 1930s, played a former trapeze star in the 1956 film Trapeze?
Burt Lancaster
Burt Lancaster joined a circus at 19 in an acrobatic act with his friend Nick Cravat; when Hollywood made Lancaster a star, Cravat went on to appear beside him in several of his films.
Q 12Who directed Disney's 2019 live-action remake of Dumbo?
Tim Burton
Tim Burton reunited two Batman Returns leads with their sides swapped: Danny DeVito, once the villainous Penguin, plays the kindly circus owner, while Michael Keaton, once Batman, plays the scheming tycoon.
Q 13Which tightrope walker crossed the Niagara Gorge in 1859, later blindfolded, on stilts and cooking an omelette?
Charles Blondin
Q 21In 2009 Cirque du Soleil's billionaire co-founder paid millions for a tourist trip to where?
The International Space Station
The International Space Station: Guy Laliberté rode a Russian Soyuz there in September 2009 as Canada's first space tourist, and used the flight to draw attention to the world's water problems.
Q 22What was the billing slogan of Barnum's, and later Ringling's, circus?
The Greatest Show on Earth
The Greatest Show on Earth began as one phrase in the sprawling title of Barnum's 1870s show; the Ringlings bought Barnum & Bailey in 1907 and carried the slogan over when the two circuses became one.
Q 23After the deadly Hartford circus fire of 1944, how did Ringling pay nearly $5 million in victims' claims?
Charles Blondin, born Jean François Gravelet, first crossed the gorge on a 1,100-foot rope on 30 June 1859 and later carried his manager Harry Colcord across on his back.
Q 14Which British comedy troupe's 'Flying Circus' ran on BBC television from 1969 to 1974?
Monty Python
Monty Python's Flying Circus had no circus acts at all: five Britons and the American Terry Gilliam, who drew its cut-out animations, made surreal sketches and sometimes ran the opening titles mid-show.
Q 15What lasting effect did Barnum's famous elephant have on the English language?
A new word for anything very large
A new word for anything very large: Barnum fanned the uproar over the elephant's 1882 sale so well that 'jumbo' was in print as a word for oversized that same year, long before jumbo jets.
Q 16How did Jumbo die in 1885?
Hit by a locomotive in Ontario
Jumbo was hit by a freight locomotive in the railway yard at St. Thomas, Ontario, on 15 September 1885; Barnum claimed he died shielding the smaller elephant Tom Thumb.
Q 17Which university's sports teams are nicknamed the Jumbos, after Barnum's elephant?
Tufts
Barnum, an early Tufts trustee, gave Jumbo's stuffed hide to the university's Barnum Hall; it burned in a 1975 fire, but Tufts teams kept the Jumbos name.
Q 18What did Barnum's partner W. C. Coup add to their circus in 1872?
A second ring
A second ring: Coup had lengthened the tent to seat more people, which left many too far from a single ring; a third followed in 1881, and the three-ring circus was born.
Q 19In which town did five of the seven Ringling brothers start their circus in 1884?
Baraboo, Wisconsin
Baraboo, Wisconsin, was the Ringlings' home town: they opened there with a small wagon show in 1884 and kept the circus's winter quarters in the town until 1918.
Q 20Why did the Ringlings merge their circus with Barnum & Bailey in 1919?
Wartime shortages
Wartime shortages of labour and rail capacity forced the move: with the First World War limiting the trains a circus could use, the brothers folded both shows into one for the 1919 season.
With ten years of its profits
With ten years of its profits: the circus accepted full financial responsibility, a court-supervised receivership kept it on the road, and its earnings went to the claims until the last was paid in 1954.
Q 24Why did the Hartford big top burn so fast?
Paraffin-and-gasoline waterproofing
Paraffin-and-gasoline waterproofing was a common method then: the canvas had been coated with paraffin wax thinned with gasoline, so once the flames reached the roof they raced across the whole big top.
Q 25A photo of which Ringling clown carrying a water bucket gave the Hartford fire the name 'the day the clowns cried'?
Emmett Kelly
Emmett Kelly was making up for the matinee when the fire broke out and ran toward the blaze with a bucket; the newspaper photograph of him became the lasting image of the disaster.
Q 26Which pop star released the album Circus in 2008, with the chart-topping single 'Womanizer'?
Britney Spears
Britney Spears released Circus on her 27th birthday, in the year a court placed her under a conservatorship; 'Womanizer' became her first US number one since her debut single.
Q 27What did Irvin Feld found in 1968 to revive a neglected craft?
A Clown College
A Clown College: by 1968 Ringling was down to a handful of clowns, most of them over fifty, so Irvin Feld opened the school in Venice, Florida; it trained about 1,400 clowns before closing in 1997.
Q 28Which composer wrote the Circus Polka for a 1942 Ringling ballet danced by fifty elephants?
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky took the commission from choreographer George Balanchine, reportedly asking how old the elephants were and agreeing because they were young; fifty of them danced with fifty ballerinas.
Q 29Which American sculptor staged a miniature wire circus for friends in the 1920s?
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder packed his Cirque Calder into suitcases and worked its wire acrobats and animals by hand for friends, years before the mobiles that made his name.
Q 30How did Ringling return in September 2023?
As an animal-free touring circus
As an animal-free touring circus: Ringling had shut down in 2017 after 146 years on the road, and six years later it came back built entirely around human performers.