Delaware Trivia
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94 free Delaware trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
41 free Delaware trivia questions with answers. Delaware is the second-smallest state, but it punches far above its size in trivia. It was the first to ratify the Constitution, it hosts more corporations than people, it has no sales tax, three counties and a border drawn with a compass, and it gave the world nylon, the broiler chicken industry and a president. This quiz covers all of it. You will find questions on Dover and Wilmington, Dutch and Swedish colonists, Caesar Rodney's midnight ride, the Blue Hen, DuPont and Winterthur, horseshoe crabs in Delaware Bay, the Monster Mile, Return Day in Georgetown, Punkin Chunkin, and the state's official milk, peach pie and rescue dogs. Difficulty runs from easy classroom facts to stumpers only a lifelong Delawarean would know. Every answer has been checked against a primary source, mostly the relevant Wikipedia article, and the citation is attached to each question.
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Q 01Delaware is nicknamed 'The First State' because it was the first to do what?
Ratify the US Constitution
Ratify the US Constitution: Delaware did so on December 7, 1787, but the nickname became official only in 2002, after a first-grade class at a local elementary school asked for it.
Q 02What is the capital of Delaware?
Dover
Dover took over as capital in 1777, chosen for its central location and because it was safer from British raiders on the Delaware River than the old riverside capital.
Q 03Which US state is the only one smaller in area than Delaware?
Rhode Island
Rhode Island, the smallest state, was officially the 'State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations' until voters cut 'and Providence Plantations' from the name in 2020.
Q 04How many counties does Delaware have?
Three
Three is the fewest of any state, and the southernmost got its present name when the colony's new proprietor called it after his home county of Sussex in England.
Q 05Delaware takes its name from Thomas West, Baron De La Warr, who became governor of which English colony?
Virginia
Virginia's starving settlers had abandoned Jamestown and were sailing away in June 1610 when De La Warr's relief ships arrived and turned them back; the bay, river and state later took his name.
Q 06Which state lies directly south of Delaware?
Maryland
Maryland wraps around Delaware's western and southern sides, which is how the peninsula they share got its name: Delmarva is a clipped blend of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.
Q 07Most Fortune 500 companies use tiny Delaware for which purpose?
Legal incorporation
Legal incorporation takes only a registered agent's address, so one low building at 1209 North Orange Street in Wilmington was listed in 2012 as home to at least 285,000 companies.
Q 08Delaware is one of only five US states with no statewide what?
Sales tax
Delaware levies no sales tax, a distinction it shares with Alaska, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon; tax-free shopping draws visitors from neighbouring states.
Q 09Most of Delaware's northern border is a rare curved boundary called what?
The Twelve-Mile Circle
The Twelve-Mile Circle dates from William Penn's 1681 charter, which fixed the boundary at a 12-mile radius; within the arc Delaware owns the river out to New Jersey's low-tide mark.
Q 10Fort Christina, founded at present-day Wilmington in 1638, was the first North American settlement of which nation?
Sweden
Sweden's settlers named the fort for their queen, and the colony is often said to have brought the log cabin to America, where it became the typical pioneer home.
Q 11Until 1776 Delaware shared a governor with which other colony?
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania's governor still had to sign the laws of the 'Lower Counties', which had kept their own assembly since 1704; in June 1776 that assembly cut ties with both Britain and its neighbour.
Q 12Which Delaware delegate rode overnight through a storm in July 1776 to break his delegation's tie on independence?
Caesar Rodney
Caesar Rodney arrived still booted and spurred to side with Thomas McKean against George Read, despite a facial cancer; his ride is on Delaware's 1999 quarter.
Q 13Delaware's state bird, the Blue Hen, gets its name from what?
Fighting cocks carried by Revolutionary soldiers
Q 21Delaware Bay holds the world's largest population of which ancient marine animal?
Horseshoe crab
Horseshoe crab eggs, laid on the bay's beaches each spring, feed vast flocks of migrating red knots, and a compound in the crabs' blood is used to check vaccines and medicines for bacterial toxins.
Q 22Which ferry links southern Delaware with New Jersey across the mouth of Delaware Bay?
Cape May–Lewes
The Cape May–Lewes Ferry officially counts as part of US Route 9: the highway stops at one terminal and picks up again 17 miles away on the far shore.
Q 23The Delaware Memorial Bridge to New Jersey is a pair of twin what?
Suspension bridges
Fighting cocks carried by Revolutionary soldiers were said to be the brood of one famous blue hen, and Captain Jonathan Caldwell's men fought so well that they too were called the Blue Hen's Chickens.
Q 14Which chemical company was founded in 1802 as a gunpowder mill on the Brandywine Creek near Wilmington?
DuPont
DuPont's founder had learned powder-making in France under the chemist Lavoisier; the story goes that a hunting trip with poor American gunpowder convinced him to build his own mill.
Q 15Which synthetic fibre was first produced at a Wilmington research station on February 28, 1935?
Nylon
Nylon came out of Wallace Carothers's laboratory, though he died in 1937 before it reached the public; it first went on sale as toothbrush bristles in 1938, ahead of the famous stockings.
Q 16Fort Delaware, on Pea Patch Island, is best remembered for which Civil War role?
Prison for Confederate captives
Prison for Confederate captives was not the plan: the fort was built to protect the ports of Philadelphia and Wilmington, yet it ended up holding many of the men captured at Gettysburg.
Q 17Wilmington was renamed in 1739 after Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, who held which office?
British prime minister
Spencer Compton was British prime minister from 1742 to 1743, succeeding Walpole; he took his title from Wilmington in Sussex, and Thomas Penn renamed Willingtown in his honour in 1739.
Q 18A 1981 Delaware law scrapping usury limits made Wilmington a national centre for which industry?
Credit-card banking
The Financial Center Development Act of 1981 lifted interest-rate caps, drawing credit-card banks such as Chase and MBNA, and later Barclays, to Wilmington; corporate law and banking underpin the state's economy.
Q 19Which future president represented Delaware in the US Senate from 1973 to 2009?
Joe Biden
Joe Biden won the seat at 29, the youngest person elected to the Senate since 1934 and too young to serve: he reached the required age of 30 only two weeks after the election.
Q 20Which future music legend worked on a Chrysler assembly line while living near his mother in Wilmington in the 1960s?
Bob Marley
Bob Marley's mother had moved to Delaware, and on stays with her he worked as a lab assistant and on the Chrysler line under the alias Donald Marley.
Suspension bridges both, the twin spans are a war memorial, hence the name: they honour soldiers from Delaware and New Jersey killed in the Second World War, Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf War.
Q 24Dover Motor Speedway, a concrete NASCAR oval in Delaware, is nicknamed what?
The Monster Mile
The Monster Mile has a mascot to match: Miles the Monster, a creature made of concrete who has fronted the one-mile track since 2000 and was inspired by its surface.
Q 25At Georgetown, Delaware's post-election 'Return Day', what do rival party leaders do together?
Bury a hatchet in sand
Party leaders bury a hatchet in sand after winners and losers parade together in horse-drawn carriages, and an ox roast feeds the crowd.
Q 26Which craft brewery was founded in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, in 1995?
Dogfish Head
Dogfish Head began, by its own account, as the smallest commercial brewery in America: co-founder Sam Calagione brewed the first batches in little kegs over propane burners.
Q 27Which Delaware industry began in 1923 when Cecile Steele was sent ten times the order she had placed?
Broiler chickens
Broiler chickens were an accident: Steele ordered 50 chicks for her laying flock, received 500, raised them for meat instead, and her neighbours soon copied her.
Q 28Which is the only state whose highest point is lower than Delaware's Ebright Azimuth?
Florida
Florida's Britton Hill, at 345 feet, is the only lower state summit; Delaware's 448-foot high point is just a survey marker at a suburban road junction, at the entrance to a housing development.
Q 29What is Delaware's official state flower?
Peach blossom
Peach blossom won the title in 1895 because Delaware was then nicknamed the Peach State for its vast commercial orchards.
Q 30What did Delaware make its official state beverage in 1983?
Milk
Milk was joined in 2024 by an official state cocktail, the Orange Crush, even though the drink was invented in a neighbouring state.