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50 free Illinois trivia questions with answers. Illinois is where the skyscraper, the Ferris wheel, the Twinkie and the first nuclear reactor were built, where a river was made to run backwards, and where a former state capital ended up on the wrong side of the Mississippi. This quiz covers the whole state, not just Chicago: 1818 statehood and the three capitals, Lincoln's Springfield and his tomb, Cahokia's mounds, Nauvoo and Galena, the John Deere plow, Reagan's hometown, and the start of Route 66. Easy questions cover the state bird, the slogan, the Cubs' 2016 title and the river dyed green each March; harder ones get into the Black Hawk War, the Tully monster, the ORD airport code, the Sanitary and Ship Canal and the Illinois town that claims 99 percent of the world's canned pumpkin. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia or an official page and the citation is shown under each question, so you can settle a Land of Lincoln argument on the spot. Good for road trips down I-55, bar trivia in Chicago and anyone who says IL-ih-NOY.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which year did Illinois become a U.S. state?
1818
It came in as the 21st state, and its northern border was pushed up to include the future site of Chicago partly with a canal route in mind.
Q 02Which phrase is Illinois's official state slogan?
Land of Lincoln
The slogan was made official in 1955 and has appeared on Illinois license plates ever since.
Q 03Illinois's official motto pairs 'National Union' with which phrase?
State Sovereignty
The motto dates to 1818, and the order of the two phrases on the state seal was quietly a Civil War-era political fight.
Q 04The name Illinois comes from a Miami-Illinois verb meaning what?
He speaks the regular way
The old 'tribe of superior men' gloss was popular for decades before linguists traced the word to irenwe·wa.
Q 05Which village, Illinois's first state capital, now sits west of the Mississippi with a Missouri ZIP code?
Kaskaskia
An 1881 flood shifted the Mississippi into a new channel east of the town, and the 2020 census counted only a couple dozen residents.
Q 06Springfield became the capital in 1839, replacing which town that had held the job for two decades?
Vandalia
The town was also the western end of the National Road, the first federal highway from the East Coast.
Q 07Which legislator led the Sangamon County delegation that got the capital moved to Springfield in 1837?
Abraham Lincoln
The tall Sangamon delegation was nicknamed the 'Long Nine' because their combined height was said to top 54 feet.
Q 08In 1876 two Chicago criminals were caught trying to do what at Lincoln's tomb in Springfield?
Steal his body for ransom
The plot led caretakers to hide the coffin under debris and later bury it inside the tomb; a bronze bust outside now has a shiny nose from visitors rubbing it for luck.
Q 09The 1908 Springfield race riot directly led to the founding of which organization?
NAACP
The violence in Lincoln's hometown shocked northern reformers, who issued a call that produced the new organization the following year.
Q 10Which open-faced sandwich of toast, meat, French fries and cheese sauce originated in Springfield?
Horseshoe
A smaller version is called a ponyshoe, and Springfield also claims the corn dog under the name Cozy Dog.
Q 11The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 is said to have started in a barn belonging to which family?
The O'Learys
The cow story was a newspaper invention, and the City Council formally exonerated Catherine O'Leary in 1997.
Q 12Roughly how many people were killed by the Great Chicago Fire?
300
The same October week saw the far deadlier Peshtigo Fire in Wisconsin, which killed well over a thousand people but got far less press.
Q 13Under what name did Chicago's 110-story Willis skyscraper open in 1973?
Sears Tower
It was the world's tallest building for nearly 25 years, and the retractable glass boxes on its 103rd-floor Skydeck are called The Ledge.
Q 21The first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in 1942 took place under the stands of what?
Stagg Field
Enrico Fermi's Chicago Pile-1 was, in his words, a crude pile of black bricks and wooden timbers; a Henry Moore sculpture marks the spot.
Q 22Fermilab near Batavia is famous for physics and for a herd of which animal roaming its grounds?
Bison
Its Tevatron collider announced the discovery of the top quark in 1995 and ran until 2011.
Q 23Which is the official state bird of Illinois?
Northern cardinal
Chosen in 1929, it is shared with six other states, making it the most popular state bird in the country.
Q 14In which year was the flow of the Chicago River fully reversed away from Lake Michigan?
1900
The point was to stop sewage flowing into the lake that supplied the city's drinking water; it now drains toward the Mississippi.
Q 15For which holiday is the Chicago River dyed green each year?
St. Patrick's Day
The tradition began after plumbers noticed the fluorescein dye they used to trace leaks turned the water bright green.
Q 16The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago marked the 400th anniversary of what?
Columbus's arrival in the Americas
The fair drew 27.5 million visitors and its white plaster facades earned it the nickname the White City.
Q 17Which ride made its debut at the 1893 Chicago fair?
Ferris Wheel
Its 36 cars each held 40 people, and the wheel was later dynamited for scrap in 1906 after a stint at the St. Louis fair.
Q 18Who designed Chicago's Home Insurance Building, often called the world's first skyscraper?
William Le Baron Jenney
It rose ten stories in 1885 on a steel skeleton and was demolished in 1931 to make way for the Field Building.
Q 19Deep-dish pizza was invented in 1943 at which Chicago restaurant?
Pizzeria Uno
The style puts the chunky tomato sauce on top of the cheese, and 'stuffed' pizza with a second dough layer came along in the 1970s.
Q 20The name Chicago comes from a Miami-Illinois word for what?
A wild onion relative
The plant, a wild relative of onion and garlic, grew thickly along the riverbanks; the 'Windy City' nickname came much later.
Q 24Thanks to an elementary school project, which food became Illinois's official state snack in 2004?
Popcorn
Fitting for a state that is one of the country's top corn producers and later named sweet corn its state vegetable.
Q 25What is Illinois's state fossil, from the Mazon Creek beds, nicknamed after its 1955 discoverer?
Tully monster
Scientists still argue whether the soft-bodied creature was a vertebrate, and its picture rides around on Illinois U-Haul trucks.
Q 26Which Illinois town claims that 99 percent of the world's canned pumpkin is produced there?
Morton
It is home to a Libby's cannery and throws a four-day Pumpkin Festival every September.
Q 27What is the name of Cahokia's ten-story central platform, the largest man-made earthwork north of Mexico?
Monks Mound
The ten-story platform got its name from Trappist monks who farmed on it in the early 1800s; UNESCO listed the site in 1982.
Q 28Black Hawk, whose 1832 war was fought in Illinois and Wisconsin, was a leader of which nation?
Sauk
A 23-year-old militia volunteer named Lincoln was elected captain of his company during the war but never saw combat.
Q 29Ronald Reagan was born in 1911 in an apartment in which small Illinois town?
Tampico
The family later settled in Dixon, where his first job was lifeguarding on the Rock River at Lowell Park.
Q 30Before his presidency, Barack Obama served as an Illinois state senator beginning in which year?
1997
He had earlier worked as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago.