Los Angeles
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7correct to beat the crowd
This Los Angeles trivia quiz has 110 free questions with answers and covers the city from its founding by 44 settlers in 1781 to the 2028 Olympics: the aqueduct that let it grow, the merger that made Hollywood part of LA, the sign on Mount Lee, Griffith Observatory, the Getty, Dodger Stadium and the Coliseum, the concrete river, the first freeway in the West, LAX, the French dip, Kogi's Korean tacos, and the riots and earthquakes that shaped it. It is written for Angelenos who think they know their city, visitors who want to test what they picked up, and anyone hosting a California-themed quiz round. Easy questions cover the landmarks everyone knows; the hard ones dig into pobladores, funiculars, City Hall's concrete and a 99-foot tower built by one man with hand tools. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference such as Wikipedia or an official site, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 110 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The traditional full name of Los Angeles honours the Queen of the Angels, a title of which figure?
The Virgin Mary
The Virgin Mary: Franciscan Juan Crespí named the river here for Our Lady of the Angels in 1769, and the pueblo founded beside it on 4 September 1781 took its name from the river.
Q 02Which mountain range, home to Mount Wilson Observatory, rises north of Los Angeles?
San Gabriel Mountains
The San Gabriel Mountains wall off the Los Angeles basin to the north; from Mount Wilson in the 1920s, Edwin Hubble's work with the 100-inch telescope revealed that the universe is expanding.
Q 03Los Angeles ranks where among US cities by population?
Second
It passed the previous number two for the spot in early 1984, and only New York City is larger.
Q 04Which city did Los Angeles overtake in the 1980s to become the second-largest in the United States?
Chicago
Chicago already had more than a million people in 1890; Los Angeles, still a city of only about 100,000 in 1900, grew past it during the 1980s and has stayed ahead since.
Q 05Which Indigenous people lived in villages across the Los Angeles basin before the Spanish arrived?
Tongva
The Tongva had their largest village, Yaanga, near where downtown now stands; the Spanish pueblo of 1781 was planted beside it and drew on its people for forced labour.
Q 06Which explorer led the first European voyage along the Los Angeles coast in 1542, claiming California for Spain?
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo reached Santa Catalina Island and the nearby mainland in October 1542, yet Spain sent no settlers for more than two centuries, until Portolá's overland march of 1769.
Q 07The Los Angeles Aqueduct, completed in 1913, carries water from which river in the eastern Sierra?
Owens
The Owens River, 233 miles to the north, feeds the aqueduct; draining its valley to supply the city set off the long fight known as the California water wars.
Q 08Which engineer built the Los Angeles Aqueduct and later saw the St. Francis Dam collapse in 1928?
William Mulholland
William Mulholland, the self-taught chief engineer, delivered the aqueduct in 1913; the 1928 St. Francis Dam failure killed more than 400 people and ended his career, though Mulholland Drive keeps his name.
Q 09Why did the town of Hollywood vote to merge into Los Angeles in 1910?
To secure water
To secure water: incorporated only in 1903, Hollywood gave up its independence after seven years to tap the bigger city's supply and sewers, a year before its first film studio opened.
Q 10The Hollywood Sign was erected in 1923 to advertise what?
A housing development
The sign advertised Hollywoodland, a housing development in the hills above Beachwood Canyon; it originally read HOLLYWOODLAND, and the last four letters came down when the sign was restored in 1949.
Q 11The Hollywood Sign stands on the slope of which Los Angeles peak?
Mount Lee
Mount Lee carries the letters on its slope; on New Year's Day 1976 a prankster draped them to read HOLLYWEED, marking the day California's relaxed marijuana law took effect.
Q 12Which magazine founder donated the final $900,000 in 2010 to save the land around the Hollywood Sign?
Hugh Hefner
Hugh Hefner, Playboy's founder, gave the last $900,000 of the $12.5 million needed to keep the ridge beside the sign free of houses; in 1978 he had hosted the fundraiser that paid to rebuild the sign.
Q 13Why has admission to Griffith Observatory been free since it opened in 1935?
The donor's will
Q 21The Dodgers' ballpark, opened in 1962, was built on top of which historic Los Angeles neighbourhood?
Chavez Ravine
The ballpark rose on Chavez Ravine, where a Mexican American community had been cleared in the 1950s for a public-housing project that was never built; it opened in April 1962 with 56,000 seats.
Q 22Which Dodgers pitcher became the first player to win the Cy Young Award and Rookie of the Year together, in 1981?
Fernando Valenzuela
Fernando Valenzuela, a 20-year-old left-hander from Sonora, won both awards in 1981, when his screwball sparked Fernandomania and the Dodgers won the World Series.
Q 23The Lakers' name, odd in Los Angeles, was inspired by the nickname of which state?
Minnesota
The donor's will is the reason: Griffith J. Griffith died in 1919 leaving money for the observatory on condition it be free to all; he had already given the city 3,015 acres for Griffith Park in 1896.
Q 14A bust of which actor stands on the grounds of Griffith Observatory because of a 1955 film shot there?
James Dean
James Dean starred in Rebel Without a Cause, which staged its knife fight and its finale at the observatory in 1955; his bronze bust stands on the west lawn, and La La Land revisited the site in 2016.
Q 15Which director's biblical epic The King of Kings opened Grauman's Chinese Theatre in May 1927?
Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil B. DeMille's silent life of Jesus premiered there on 18 May 1927 behind a live stage prologue devised by Sid Grauman, in what the theatre calls the most spectacular opening in film history.
Q 16Which company paid $5 million in 2013 for the naming rights to Grauman's Chinese Theatre?
TCL
TCL, the television maker, paid more than $5 million in January 2013 for a ten-year deal that helped fund a refit of the 1927 picture palace, which reopened that year as an IMAX theatre.
Q 17Which singing cowboy is the only person with a star in all five original categories of the Hollywood Walk of Fame?
Gene Autry
Gene Autry earned stars for film, television, radio, recording and live performance; a sixth category, sports entertainment, has since been added, so his sweep now covers only the original five.
Q 18The Packers beat which team in the first Super Bowl at the LA Coliseum in January 1967?
Kansas City Chiefs
The Kansas City Chiefs lost 35–10 to Green Bay before 61,946 fans, with about a third of the Coliseum's seats unsold: the first Super Bowl is the only one that failed to sell out.
Q 19A crowd of 115,300 at the Coliseum set a Guinness World Record for attendance at what kind of event?
A baseball game
A baseball game: the Dodgers drew 115,300 to a March 2008 exhibition against the Boston Red Sox, marking 50 years in Los Angeles; they had played at the Coliseum from 1958 to 1961 while their own ballpark was built.
Q 20The Dodgers moved to Los Angeles from which city before the 1958 season?
Brooklyn
The Brooklyn Dodgers left Ebbets Field after the 1957 season, as the Giants quit New York for San Francisco; the name is short for Trolley Dodgers, coined in the 1890s for a borough criss-crossed by streetcar lines.
The team took its name in Minneapolis from Minnesota's boast of being the land of ten thousand lakes; owner Bob Short moved the Lakers to Los Angeles in 1960 and kept the name.
Q 24The Clippers relocated to Los Angeles in 1984 from which other California city?
San Diego
San Diego was home to the Clippers from 1978 until 1984, when Donald Sterling, a Los Angeles property mogul who had bought the team in 1981, moved it to his own city to share a market with the Lakers.
Q 25The Raiders spent 13 seasons at the Los Angeles Coliseum before moving back to which city in 1995?
Oakland
Oakland got its Raiders back after 13 seasons that brought Los Angeles its first Super Bowl title, in January 1984; the Rams left for St. Louis in 1995 too, and the NFL stayed away until 2016.
Q 26In which stadium did the Rams win Super Bowl LVI in 2022 on their home field?
SoFi Stadium
SoFi Stadium opened in Inglewood in 2020, four years after the Rams came home from 21 seasons in St. Louis; their 23–20 win over the Cincinnati Bengals on 13 February 2022 gave Los Angeles its first Super Bowl title since the Raiders'.
Q 27The mascot of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics was Sam, what kind of animal?
A bald eagle
A bald eagle: organisers first chose a bear, California's emblem, but Moscow had used one in 1980, so Disney artist Bob Moore drew America's national bird instead.
Q 28The concrete channel of the Los Angeles River hosts the climactic drag race in which film?
Grease
Grease ran its Thunder Road race down the river's concrete bed between the First and Seventh Street bridges; the Army Corps of Engineers began lining the channel after the devastating floods of 1938.
Q 29The Los Angeles River runs from Canoga Park to its mouth in which city?
Long Beach
Long Beach is where the river meets the Pacific, beside the port, after crossing the San Fernando Valley and downtown; most of its course runs in the concrete channel begun after the floods of 1938.
Q 30The 1940 Arroyo Seco Parkway, the West's first freeway, linked Los Angeles to which city?
Pasadena
The parkway's last Los Angeles stretch was dedicated on 30 December 1940, just in time to carry crowds to Pasadena for the Rose Parade; signs called it the Pasadena Freeway from 1954 until the old name returned in 2010.