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59 free JFK trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
John F. Kennedy served less than three years as president, yet few Americans have generated more trivia. This John F. Kennedy trivia quiz follows the whole arc: the sickly Harvard graduate whose PT boat was cut in half by a Japanese destroyer, the senator who won a Pulitzer he may not have written, the youngest man ever elected to the White House, and the president who stared down Khrushchev over Cuba and pointed the country at the Moon. It also covers Jackie, Camelot, the pink suit, Marilyn Monroe's birthday song, the eternal flame at Arlington and the airport, coin, space centre and library that carry his name, along with the events of November 22, 1963 and the Warren Commission that followed. Questions range from easy ones anyone who has watched a documentary can answer to hard ones for Kennedy obsessives. 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 01John F. Kennedy was which number president of the United States?
35th
He served from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. His vice president, who became the 36th, was sworn in that same afternoon.
Q 02In which Massachusetts town was JFK born on May 29, 1917?
Brookline
Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts; the house at 83 Beals Street is preserved as the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site.
Q 03JFK graduated from which university in 1940?
Harvard
Kennedy graduated cum laude from Harvard College in 1940 with a degree in government, having earlier attended Choate, a boarding school in Connecticut.
Q 04What was the title of Kennedy's first book, published in 1940 from his senior thesis?
Why England Slept
Why England Slept, expanded from Kennedy's Harvard senior thesis, examined why Britain was so slow to rearm against Hitler and became a bestseller in 1940.
Q 05In August 1943 the patrol boat JFK commanded, PT-109, was cut in half by what?
A Japanese destroyer
Kennedy towed a burned crewman to an island with the man's life-jacket strap in his teeth.
Q 06Stranded after the PT-109 sinking, Kennedy carved a rescue message into what?
A coconut shell
Solomon Islands scouts Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana carried it to the PT base at Rendova, and the crew was rescued on August 8. He kept the coconut in a glass paperweight on his Oval Office desk.
Q 07Which decoration did Kennedy receive for his actions after the PT-109 sinking?
Navy and Marine Corps Medal
Kennedy received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for leading his PT-109 crew to safety; his injuries also qualified him for a Purple Heart.
Q 08Kennedy's older brother Joseph Jr., killed in 1944, was serving in what role?
Navy pilot
Joe Jr. was a Navy pilot, killed in August 1944 when his explosive-laden bomber detonated over England; the family's political ambitions then passed to Jack, who won a House seat in 1946.
Q 09How many US senators does Kennedy's Pulitzer-winning Profiles in Courage profile?
Eight
Profiles in Courage profiles eight senators, from John Quincy Adams to Robert Taft; speechwriter Ted Sorensen later admitted he wrote the first draft of most chapters.
Q 10Who did Kennedy narrowly defeat in the 1960 presidential election?
Richard Nixon
Kennedy beat Richard Nixon by just 112,827 popular votes, 0.17 percent, though the Electoral College split 303 to 219.
Q 11How old was Kennedy when he was elected president in November 1960?
43
Kennedy was 43 at his election in November 1960; Theodore Roosevelt took office younger, at 42, but succeeded the assassinated McKinley rather than winning an election. Kennedy was also the first Catholic president.
Q 12Who was Kennedy's running mate in 1960?
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson, the Senate majority leader from Texas, joined the ticket and helped Kennedy carry Texas and much of the South.
Q 13What did Robert Frost end up doing at Kennedy's inauguration on January 20, 1961?
Reciting an older poem from memory
Q 21To end the Cuban Missile Crisis, the US secretly agreed to pull its Jupiter missiles from where?
Turkey
Publicly, Kennedy pledged not to invade Cuba in return for the Soviet withdrawal. The scare led directly to the Moscow–Washington hotline.
Q 22Kennedy declared 'Ich bin ein Berliner' in June 1963 in front of which West Berlin building?
Rathaus Schöneberg
An estimated 120,000 people heard him at the city hall. The story that he accidentally called himself a jelly doughnut is a myth: Berliners call the pastry a Pfannkuchen anyway.
Q 23What did Kennedy sign in 1963 that was the first agreement of its kind?
A nuclear test ban
Glare from the sun and fresh snow made it impossible for him to read the new dedication he had written, so he recited 'The Gift Outright'. Eight inches of snow had fallen overnight.
Q 14Which line comes from Kennedy's inaugural address?
Ask not what your country can do for you
'Ask not what your country can do for you' comes near the end of Kennedy's 1,366-word inaugural, delivered in bitter cold after an overnight snowstorm; he wore a top hat, removing it only to be sworn in and speak.
Q 15Kennedy signed the executive order creating which volunteer organisation on March 1, 1961?
The Peace Corps
The Peace Corps was created by Executive Order 10924; Kennedy had floated the idea in a late-night campaign speech at the University of Michigan in October 1960, and his brother-in-law Sargent Shriver became its first director.
Q 16The failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961 was carried out by whom?
CIA-trained Cuban exiles
Brigade 2506, about 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles, was defeated within three days; the plan had been drawn up under Eisenhower, and Kennedy approved it but withheld further air support.
Q 17At the June 1961 Vienna summit, which Soviet leader did Kennedy admit had 'beat the hell out of me'?
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev hammered Kennedy over Berlin at the Vienna summit; Kennedy told reporter James Reston 'he beat the hell out of me', and two months later East Germany began building the Berlin Wall.
Q 18In his May 25, 1961 address to Congress, Kennedy set the goal of landing a man on the Moon by when?
Before the decade was out
He returned to the theme at Rice University in September 1962, telling 40,000 people the nation chose to go to the Moon 'not because they are easy, but because they are hard'. Apollo 11 landed in July 1969.
Q 19Where did Kennedy give his famous 'We choose to go to the Moon' speech on September 12, 1962?
Rice University, Houston
About 40,000 people packed the stadium in Texas. Two weeks after his death the Florida launch complex was renamed the John F. Kennedy Space Center.
Q 20How many days did the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 last?
13
The crisis ran 13 days, from October 16, when Kennedy saw U-2 photos of Soviet missile sites in Cuba, to October 28, when Khrushchev agreed to withdraw them, the closest the Cold War came to nuclear war.
The Partial Test Ban Treaty with Britain and the Soviet Union came just months after the missile crisis, and only months before Dallas.
Q 24Which serious illness of the adrenal glands did Kennedy hide from the public throughout his career?
Addison's disease
His health was so poor at times that he received Catholic last rites more than once while a senator. He also wore a back brace, which some believe kept him upright after the first shot in Dallas.
Q 25What colour was the Chanel suit Jacqueline Kennedy wore in the Dallas motorcade on November 22, 1963?
Bright pink
She paired it with a pillbox hat and refused to change out of the blood-stained suit for hours afterwards. She died in 1994 and is buried at Arlington beside her husband.
Q 26Jacqueline Kennedy likened her husband's presidency to what in a Life interview after his death?
Camelot
She quoted the closing line of the Lerner and Loewe musical to correspondent Theodore White in November 1963. In 1968 she married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.
Q 27Which star sang 'Happy Birthday, Mr. President' to Kennedy at Madison Square Garden in 1962?
Marilyn Monroe
The gala marked his 45th birthday. Her rhinestone-covered dress sold for $4.8 million in 2016 and was controversially worn by Kim Kardashian at the 2022 Met Gala.
Q 28Which post did Kennedy's younger brother Robert hold in his administration?
Attorney General
He served from 1961 to 1964, staying on briefly under Johnson. He was himself shot by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles in June 1968, hours after winning the California primary.
Q 29Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 while riding in a motorcade through which Dallas location?
Dealey Plaza
He was in the back of a 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible. Governor John Connally, riding in front of him, was wounded but recovered.
Q 30From which building did Lee Harvey Oswald fire at the presidential motorcade?
The Texas School Book Depository
He fired a Carcano rifle from a sixth-floor window. Abraham Zapruder's 26 seconds of silent 8 mm film became the most studied home movie in history.