Harvard Trivia
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45 free Harvard trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Harvard is the oldest university in the United States, the richest in the world, and the alma mater of eight presidents, but the fun facts are in the details: a founder statue modelled on a random student, a library built by a Titanic widow, a humor magazine that lives in a fake castle, and a football tie the student paper reported as a win. This quiz covers the whole story: the 1636 founding vote and John Harvard's bequest, the presidents from Increase Mather to Claudine Gay, the schools and museums, Harvard Yard and the residential houses, the Crimson, the Lampoon, Hasty Pudding, The Game against Yale, and famous alumni from W. E. B. Du Bois and Helen Keller to Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg. Questions range from easy ones any Legally Blonde fan can answer to genuinely hard ones about 18th-century presidents and old libraries. Every answer has been checked against the university's documented history and the source is shown after each question.
30 of 45 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Harvard was founded in 1636 by a vote of which colony's legislature?
Massachusetts Bay
Massachusetts Bay's Great and General Court voted £400 for a college in 1636, so John Harvard, whose name it took three years later, was its first great donor and not its founder.
Q 02Besides half his estate, what did John Harvard bequeath to the college in 1638?
His library of some 400 volumes
His library of some 400 volumes, together with half his estate, made the Charlestown minister the college's first major benefactor; it was renamed Harvard College in his honour in 1639.
Q 03What single Latin word appears on the three open books of Harvard's shield?
Veritas
Veritas, Latin for 'truth', was sketched on the books in a 1643 design that was forgotten until President Josiah Quincy rediscovered it in 1836; the 1650 charter seal instead read 'In Christi Gloriam'.
Q 04Which of these is Harvard's official school color?
Crimson
Crimson dates from an 1858 regatta, when rower Charles Eliot, a future Harvard president, and his crew captain bought six silk handkerchiefs to set their boat apart; the Corporation made the colour official in 1910.
Q 05As of 2025, which Harvard graduate is the only US president with an MBA?
George W. Bush
George W. Bush took the degree at Harvard Business School in 1975, after Yale and a spell in the Texas Air National Guard, then went home to Midland to try his luck in the oil business.
Q 06By Harvard's own accounts, roughly how large was its endowment, the biggest of any university, in mid-2025?
$57 billion
$57 billion, or $56.9 billion on Harvard's books at the end of June 2025, is the largest university endowment in the world; it is not one pot but roughly 14,000 separate funds.
Q 07Harvard's oldest surviving building, completed in 1720, is which one on Harvard Yard?
Massachusetts Hall
Massachusetts Hall, finished in 1720, housed Continental troops during the Siege of Boston; the president's offices occupy its lower floors and a handful of freshmen live on the top floor.
Q 08Which library, the anchor of the world's largest academic library system, sits in Harvard Yard?
Widener
Widener Library opened in 1915 on the site of Gore Hall, an older library that had been declared full back in 1863; it is the flagship of dozens of Harvard libraries.
Q 09Harvard's great library is a memorial to a 1907 graduate who died in what event?
The sinking of the Titanic
The sinking of the Titanic in April 1912 killed the 27-year-old book collector; his mother Eleanor survived and paid for the library, though the tale that she also demanded a swimming test for every student is a campus myth.
Q 10With changes to the exterior of Harvard's main library barred, a 1942 bridge entered through what?
A window
Through a window in the east stacks: that left the outer walls intact when the link to the rare-books library next door was built, and the 'temporary' bridge stayed until 2004.
Q 11Which sculptor of the Lincoln Memorial's seated Lincoln also made the John Harvard statue in Harvard Yard?
Daniel Chester French
Daniel Chester French unveiled the bronze in 1884, a decade after his Minute Man at Concord made his name; with no portrait of John Harvard to copy, the figure is an idealised invention.
Q 12With no likeness of John Harvard surviving, whose face inspired the sculptor of his statue?
A student named Sherman Hoar
A student named Sherman Hoar, class of 1882, sat for the face; the inscription 'John Harvard, Founder, 1638' underpins the tour-guide routine about the 'statue of three lies'.
Q 13What do tourists do to the John Harvard statue for luck?
Q 21Which Harvard rowers sued Mark Zuckerberg, claiming he had stolen their idea for Facebook?
The Winklevoss brothers
The Winklevoss brothers, twins Cameron and Tyler, had hired Zuckerberg to work on their site HarvardConnection; they settled in 2008 for a reported $65 million, then rowed at the Beijing Olympics that summer.
Q 22Zuckerberg's earlier site Facemash asked users to do what?
Rate students' attractiveness
Rate students' attractiveness was the game: Facemash paired ID photos lifted from online student 'facebooks' and asked who was hotter, drawing 450 visitors and 22,000 votes before the outcry made Zuckerberg pull it.
Q 23Which 2010 film dramatised the founding of Facebook at Harvard?
Rub the toe of his left shoe
Rub the toe of his left shoe, the guides say, passing it off as a student tradition, which it is not; the constant handling has polished that one spot of bronze bright gold.
Q 14After the 1968 Harvard–Yale football game ended 29–29, the student newspaper ran which famous headline?
Harvard Beats Yale, 29–29
'Harvard Beats Yale, 29–29' was the student paper's headline after Harvard scored 16 points in the final minute to salvage the draw; it later titled a 2008 documentary.
Q 15During the 1982 Harvard–Yale game, pranksters from which school inflated a weather balloon near midfield?
MIT
MIT students struck in the second quarter: a black weather balloon lettered 'MIT' rose from the field and kept swelling in front of the crowd until it exploded.
Q 16Harvard's undergraduate humor magazine, founded in 1876, is called what?
The Lampoon
The Lampoon spun off National Lampoon in 1970, and its alumni went on to write for Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons; it is still run from its own mock castle.
Q 17In 1953 Harvard's student newspaper stole the humor magazine's ibis and gave it to which government?
The Soviet Union
The Soviet Union got it: the newspaper's editors presented the stolen bird to a Soviet diplomat at the United Nations as a gift, one more round in the two publications' long feud.
Q 18Harvard's Memorial Hall was built to honour Harvard men who died in which war?
The Civil War
The Civil War dead it honours are those who fell for the Union; Harvard men who died for the Confederacy are left off its tablets, and Sanders Theatre sits inside the Victorian Gothic hall.
Q 19Harvard's Hasty Pudding Theatricals, active since 1844, claims what distinction?
Oldest theatrical organization in the US
Oldest theatrical organization in the US is the Pudding's claim, dating from a first show in 1844; its casts were all male, often in drag, until women were let in from 2018.
Q 20Which comedian did Harvard's Hasty Pudding honour as its first Man of the Year in 1967?
Bob Hope
Bob Hope took the first Man of the Year prize in 1967, sixteen years after Gertrude Lawrence became the first Woman of the Year; each honouree is then roasted by the student cast.
The Social Network
The Social Network, directed by David Fincher from Aaron Sorkin's script, could not film on campus because Harvard refused permission, so Johns Hopkins and other colleges stood in.
Q 24Which 1970 film pairs a wealthy Harvard hockey player with a dying music student?
Love Story
Love Story stars Ryan O'Neal as Oliver Barrett IV and Ali MacGraw as Jenny Cavilleri; Erich Segal wrote the screenplay first, then turned it into a novel that topped the bestseller lists before the film opened.
Q 25Who became Harvard's first female president in 2007?
Drew Gilpin Faust
Drew Gilpin Faust, a historian of the American South, took over after her predecessor resigned in the wake of a faculty no-confidence vote, fuelled in part by his remarks about women's aptitude for science.
Q 26Which Harvard president resigned in January 2024 after the shortest tenure in its history?
Claudine Gay
Claudine Gay stepped down on 2 January 2024, six months and a day after taking office, amid plagiarism allegations and criticism of her congressional testimony; Provost Alan Garber took over as interim president.
Q 27Which future late-night host was president of Harvard's humor magazine before graduating in 1985?
Conan O'Brien
Conan O'Brien led the magazine in his sophomore and junior years, then made comedy his living, writing for Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons before he got a show of his own.
Q 28Which future Supreme Court justice left Harvard Law School after two years and took her degree at Columbia?
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of nine women in a class of about 500, moved when her husband took a job in New York; Harvard's dean refused to let her finish its degree from Columbia.
Q 29Harvard Medical School's Longwood campus, opened in 1906, lies not in Cambridge but in which nearby city?
Boston
Boston has been the school's home since 1810: owning no hospital of its own, it moved with its clinical ties until settling in Longwood, where teaching hospitals now crowd around it.
Q 30Harvard's Graduate School of Public Administration was later renamed for which president?
John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy, class of 1940, gave the school his name in 1966; his presidential library was meant to rise beside Harvard too, until opposition in Cambridge sent it across town to Columbia Point.