February Trivia
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175 free February trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
47 free February trivia questions with answers. Forty-seven questions on the shortest month of the year. They cover why February has 28 days and how leap years work, the Roman purification festival that gave the month its name, and the holidays that fill it: Groundhog Day, Candlemas, Valentine's Day, Presidents' Day, Black History Month, the Super Bowl and Japan's bean-throwing Setsubun and Sapporo Snow Festival. There are questions on things that happened in February, from the discovery of Pluto and John Glenn's orbit to the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, Nelson Mandela walking free and the launch of Facebook, plus famous February birthdays including two giants born on the very same day in 1809. Easier questions suit a family or classroom quiz; the later ones on the Roman calendar, Sweden's February 30th and Irish leap-day proposals will test seasoned quizzers. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia, and the sentence that establishes it appears under each explanation, so you can use these February facts for a quiz night, a newsletter or a bulletin board with confidence.
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Q 01February is named after Februa, a Roman ritual of what?
Purification
Purification gave the month its name: Romans called the things they cleansed with februa, and a priestess who asked for februa might be handed a twig of pine.
Q 02Which Roman king is credited with adding January and February to the calendar?
Numa Pompilius
Numa Pompilius, Rome's second king, is credited with filling a gap: by Roman tradition the older ten-month year ran from March to December and simply left winter uncounted until January and February were added.
Q 03Before a reshuffle made it the second month, February was which month of the Roman calendar year?
Twelfth
Twelfth and last: Roman writers disagree on who later moved February up to second place, and it was inside February that priests slotted in an extra month when the calendar slipped.
Q 04In the Southern Hemisphere, February is the last month of which meteorological season?
Summer
Summer in the south runs from December to February on the meteorologists' calendar, which counts seasons in whole months so that one year's records can be compared with the next.
Q 05Which gemstone is February's birthstone?
Amethyst
Amethyst takes its name from the Greek for 'not drunk': the ancient Greeks believed the wine-coloured stone kept its wearer sober, and tied it to their god of wine.
Q 06Which of these is one of February's birth flowers?
Violet
Violet shares February with the primrose, two of the few flowers out at the tail of winter; carnations belong to January, daffodils to March and lily of the valley to May.
Q 07Under the Gregorian calendar's century rule, which of these years will skip its leap day?
2100
2100 will have no 29 February: century years keep their leap day only if they divide by 400, so 2000 and 2400 qualify while 1900 did not and 2100 will not.
Q 08Francis Crick is said to have walked into a Cambridge pub on 28 February 1953 and announced the structure of what?
DNA
DNA: by James Watson's account, Crick told lunchtime drinkers at the Eagle that the pair had 'found the secret of life' after working out the double helix that morning.
Q 09The papal bull of 24 February 1582 that created the Gregorian calendar aimed mainly to fix the date of which festival?
Easter
Easter was the worry: the old calendar had slipped ten days against the spring equinox that sets its date, so the bull struck ten days from October 1582 and trimmed future leap years.
Q 10Which country's calendar once had a 30 February, in the year 1712?
Sweden
Sweden had botched a gradual switch to the Gregorian calendar, so it added a double leap day to fall back in line with the Julian one.
Q 11By Irish tradition, what are women permitted to do on 29 February?
Propose marriage
Propose marriage: legend has Saint Patrick granting the right, and custom later held that a man who said no owed the woman several pairs of gloves, to hide her ringless hand.
Q 12Which Italian opera composer, famous for The Barber of Seville, was born on 29 February 1792?
Gioachino Rossini
Gioachino Rossini was born in Pesaro on 29 February 1792; by his death in 1868 he had seen only eighteen true leap-day birthdays, because 1800 was not a leap year.
Q 13Groundhog Day on 2 February grew out of the superstitions of which community?
Pennsylvania Dutch
Q 21Which state, admitted on 14 February 1912, completed the contiguous 48?
Arizona
Arizona got in only after dropping a clause letting voters recall judges, which President Taft had vetoed; once admitted on Valentine's Day 1912, Arizonans voted the clause back in that same year.
Q 22The 1929 Saint Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago targeted the gang of which rival of Al Capone?
Bugs Moran
Bugs Moran was running late and turned away when he saw what looked like a police raid; the gunmen, some dressed as officers, lined seven of his men and hangers-on against a garage wall and shot them.
Q 23What is the official federal name of the US holiday most people call Presidents' Day?
Washington's Birthday
Pennsylvania Dutch settlers brought their German Candlemas weather lore with them and handed the forecasting job to the groundhogs they found in their new home.
Q 14Punxsutawney Phil makes his prediction from a spot with what name?
Gobbler's Knob
Phil emerges at Gobbler's Knob, a wooded hill just outside Punxsutawney; the top-hatted Inner Circle prepares two scrolls in advance so either verdict is ready to read.
Q 15By club lore, what has kept Punxsutawney Phil alive since his first forecast in 1887?
A magic elixir
A magic elixir, the club insists: there has only ever been one Phil, kept going since 1887 by a sip of 'groundhog punch' at each year's Groundhog Picnic.
Q 16Groundhog Day (1993) was shot almost entirely in which Illinois town standing in for Punxsutawney?
Woodstock
Woodstock now marks spots from the film with plaques that visitors can follow on a walking tour, down to the pothole Bill Murray keeps stepping in.
Q 17Candlemas, on 2 February, commemorates which event from the Gospel of Luke?
The presentation of Jesus at the Temple
The presentation of Jesus at the Temple by Joseph and Mary; churchgoers bring candles to be blessed for the year, a symbol of Christ as 'Light of the World'.
Q 18Imbolc, the Gaelic festival on 1 February, is the feast day of which saint?
Brigid
Brigid, Ireland's patroness, has her feast on 1 February, the old first day of spring; households mark it by weaving crosses from rushes in her name.
Q 19Which Roman festival, held in mid-February, is often cited as a pagan ancestor of Valentine's Day?
Lupercalia
Lupercalia had priests in goatskins run through Rome striking women with strips of goat hide, a blow thought to bring fertility; the rite outlived paganism and was still being run in the 490s.
Q 20Which medieval English poet is credited with first linking Saint Valentine's Day to romantic love?
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer's Parlement of Foules has birds gathering on Saint Valentine's Day to choose their mates; it is generally taken as the earliest record linking the saint's feast with love.
Washington's Birthday is still the legal name: a 1968 bid in Congress to rename it Presidents' Day was dropped, and the label spread anyway through advertisers and calendar makers.
Q 24Which two famous men were both born on 12 February 1809?
Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin
Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin arrived on the same day an ocean apart, one in a one-room Kentucky log cabin, the other in a wealthy doctor's house in Shrewsbury; 12 February now doubles as Darwin Day.
Q 25Which historian created Negro History Week in 1926, the forerunner of Black History Month?
Carter G. Woodson
Carter G. Woodson, the son of formerly enslaved parents, worked in West Virginia coal mines and only started high school at 20, yet went on to a Harvard doctorate and launched Negro History Week in 1926.
Q 26Negro History Week's February date held the birthdays of Lincoln and which other man?
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass, born into slavery, never knew his real birthday and chose 14 February for himself; Black communities were already celebrating both men's birthdays by the late 1800s.
Q 27Which country observes Black History Month in October rather than February?
United Kingdom
United Kingdom: its first Black History Month was held in London in October 1987, organised by the Ghanaian-born Akyaaba Addai-Sebo; Ireland also keeps October, the US and Canada February.
Q 28Which team won the first Super Bowl played in February, pushed back a week after the 9/11 attacks?
New England Patriots
New England Patriots: 9/11 postponed a week of games, moving Super Bowl XXXVI to 3 February 2002, where Adam Vinatieri's 48-yard kick as time ran out beat the heavily favoured Rams 20-17.
Q 29Which quarterback played his final game in Super Bowl 50, held on 7 February 2016?
Peyton Manning
Peyton Manning bowed out a winner as his Broncos beat the Panthers 24-10; the NFL shelved Roman numerals for that one game so the logo could show a '50' instead of a lone 'L'.
Q 30Which Japanese festival on or around 3 February involves throwing roasted beans to drive out demons?
Setsubun
Setsubun sees families fling roasted soybeans out of the door, or at a relative in a demon mask, shouting 'Demons out, fortune in'; each person then eats one bean for every year of their age.