Eighth Grade Trivia Questions
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8correct to beat the crowd
100 free Eighth Grade trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
These 77 eighth grade trivia questions follow what most 8th graders in the United States actually study. The history half runs from Jamestown and the Mayflower Compact through the Revolution, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark, the War of 1812, the Trail of Tears, the Civil War and Reconstruction. Science covers atoms and the periodic table, cells, photosynthesis, Newton's laws, density, pH, plate tectonics and the layers of the Earth. Math questions touch the Pythagorean theorem, slope, primes, order of operations, circles and scientific notation, and the reading list includes The Outsiders, The Giver, Anne Frank's diary, To Kill a Mockingbird and Romeo and Juliet. Every question is multiple choice and written so a 13- or 14-year-old who has been paying attention can get it, with a few harder ones to separate the honor roll from the rest. It works as a class warm-up, a review game before a test, a family quiz night with a middle schooler in the house, or a nostalgic check on how much you still remember from eighth grade. Answers were checked against encyclopaedia and primary sources, and each question shows its explanation and citation after you answer.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In what city was the U.S. Constitution written and signed in 1787?
Philadelphia
Philadelphia hosted the Constitutional Convention at Independence Hall from May to September 1787; the national capital of Washington, D.C. did not yet exist.
Q 02The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution opens with which words?
We the People
We the People was first followed by a list of all thirteen states; in the convention's final days Gouverneur Morris's committee changed it to 'of the United States'.
Q 03The 27th Amendment, ratified in 1992 about 200 years after it was proposed, delays pay rises for whom?
Members of Congress
Members of Congress must wait until after the next House election for any pay change to take effect; a Texas student revived the forgotten 1789 proposal in 1982 after his paper on it earned a C.
Q 04What is the collective name for the first ten amendments to the Constitution?
The Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights was ratified on December 15, 1791; James Madison drafted the amendments and steered them through the House in 1789.
Q 05Which amendment protects freedom of speech, religion, the press, assembly and petition?
First
The First Amendment was third on the list sent to the states in 1789; it moved to the top only because the two ahead of it failed to win ratification.
Q 06The Fourth Amendment protects people against what?
Unreasonable searches and seizures
The Fourth Amendment bars unreasonable searches and seizures: police generally need a warrant based on probable cause, a rule born of British searches of colonial homes.
Q 07Which king does the Declaration of Independence accuse of 'repeated injuries and usurpations'?
George III
George III is the 'He' who opens most of the Declaration's charges, from taxing without consent to quartering troops; he reigned until 1820, decades after losing the colonies.
Q 08Who was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence?
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson's draft was edited by Franklin and Adams and then cut by the full assembly, which struck out his long passage blaming the British crown for the slave trade.
Q 09Per the Declaration of Independence, people have the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of what?
Happiness
Happiness stands where John Locke had 'estate': he wrote of 'life, liberty and estate' in 1689, and historians still debate whether the Declaration was reworking his line.
Q 10Where was the first fighting of the American Revolutionary War, in April 1775?
Lexington and Concord
The fighting at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775 opened the war; Paul Revere's ride the night before warned that British troops were marching from Boston.
Q 11Which 1781 siege was the decisive final victory of the Revolutionary War?
Yorktown
Cornwallis surrendered his army at Yorktown on October 19, 1781, after de Grasse's fleet blocked escape by sea; Britain then opened peace talks.
Q 12Which country signed a Treaty of Alliance with the American revolutionaries in 1778?
France
France agreed to the alliance once news of the British surrender at Saratoga reached its foreign minister; Benjamin Franklin signed for the Americans on February 6, 1778.
Q 13Which 1783 peace agreement ended the Revolutionary War and recognised American independence?
Treaty of Paris
The Treaty of Paris was signed on September 3, 1783, with Britain recognising American independence and ceding land west to the Mississippi; another Treaty of Paris in 1898 ended the Spanish-American War.
Q 21Which secretary of state largely wrote the 1823 Monroe Doctrine?
John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams wrote most of it and argued President Monroe out of Britain's offer of a joint statement, so the warning to Europe went out in America's name alone.
Q 22Which president signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830 that led to the Trail of Tears?
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson signed the act on May 28, 1830; the Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Chickasaw and Choctaw were then forced west of the Mississippi, and thousands died on the journey.
Q 23What was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas, founded in 1607?
Jamestown
Q 14The tea dumped into Boston Harbor in December 1773 belonged to which company?
East India Company
The East India Company was sitting on unsold tea, so Parliament's Tea Act let it ship the surplus to America free of its usual duty, while colonists still paid the tax on landing.
Q 15Which port city did the United States originally try to buy before the Louisiana Purchase?
New Orleans
New Orleans controlled the mouth of the Mississippi, the outlet for western farmers' goods; American envoys went to buy the city and were offered the whole territory instead.
Q 16Roughly how much did the United States pay for the Louisiana Purchase?
$15 million
$15 million bought some 828,000 square miles and about doubled the country's size; the American envoys had been cleared to spend only $10 million, and on far less land.
Q 17Which river did Lewis and Clark follow to reach the ocean in November 1805?
Columbia
The Corps of Discovery canoed down the Columbia River and sighted the ocean in November 1805, wintering at Fort Clatsop near its mouth before turning home.
Q 18The Lewis and Clark journals record their interpreter Sacagawea as born into which nation?
Shoshone
Shoshone by the explorers' account: seized by Hidatsa raiders as a girl, she was reunited with her people when the expedition reached them, and they supplied horses for crossing the Rockies.
Q 19Which building did the British burn in August 1814 during the War of 1812?
The White House
The White House burned on August 24, 1814, hours after American militia were routed at Bladensburg; staff got Stuart's portrait of Washington out first, a rescue long credited to Dolley Madison.
Q 20Francis Scott Key wrote 'The Star-Spangled Banner' after watching the bombardment of which fort in 1814?
McHenry
Key watched the British bombard Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbour on September 13–14, 1814; his poem, set to an English club tune, became the official anthem in 1931.
Jamestown was founded on May 14, 1607 by the Virginia Company; most settlers died in the 'Starving Time' winter of 1609–10, yet the colony survived and served as Virginia's capital until 1699.
Q 24Which crop, introduced by John Rolfe, made the Virginia colony profitable?
Tobacco
Tobacco grown from a sweeter Caribbean strain became Virginia's cash crop; Rolfe also married Pocahontas in 1614, bringing a few years of peace with the Powhatan.
Q 25The Mayflower Compact of 1620 was the first governing document of which colony?
Plymouth
Plymouth's settlers drew it up because storms had landed them outside Virginia's jurisdiction and some passengers said no one could command them there; 41 men signed on November 11, 1620.
Q 26Where did the American Civil War begin in April 1861?
Fort Sumter
Confederate guns opened fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in Charleston harbour on April 12, 1861; the garrison surrendered the next day and the war lasted until 1865.
Q 27Who was president of the Confederate States during the Civil War?
Jefferson Davis
Jefferson Davis had been the U.S. secretary of war in the 1850s; captured in Georgia in May 1865, he spent two years in prison but was never tried for treason.
Q 28Where did Robert E. Lee surrender to Ulysses S. Grant in April 1865?
Appomattox Court House
Appomattox Court House was the new home of Wilmer McLean, who had moved there to escape the war after its first major battle raged around his old farm; Lee surrendered in his parlor on April 9, 1865.
Q 29Which amendment, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery in the United States?
13th
The 13th Amendment was needed because the Emancipation Proclamation had freed enslaved people only in areas held by the Confederacy; ratified on December 6, 1865, it ended slavery throughout the United States.
Q 30What name is given to the era after the Civil War that ended when federal troops left the South in 1877?
Reconstruction
Reconstruction ended when Rutherford B. Hayes, handed the disputed 1876 election, withdrew the last federal troops from the South; Southern states then stripped most Black citizens of the vote.