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50 free Missouri trivia questions with answers. Missouri trivia for the Show Me State, whether you are a St. Louisan, a Kansas Citian or somewhere in the Ozarks between. The quiz covers how the state got its name and nicknames, the Missouri Compromise, the Gateway Arch, the 1904 World's Fair and its ice cream cones and iced tea, and famous Missourians from Mark Twain and Harry Truman to Chuck Berry and Walt Disney. It also takes in Branson's theatres, Lake of the Ozarks and Bagnell Dam, Kansas City barbecue and toasted ravioli, Anheuser-Busch, the Pony Express, the Dred Scott case, Cahokia, the New Madrid earthquakes, the Cardinals' eleven World Series and the Chiefs' beginnings as the Dallas Texans. Easy questions come first; the harder ones will stretch lifelong Missourians. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the state, its cities, landmarks and people, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
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Q 01What is the capital of Missouri?
Jefferson City
Jefferson City, named for Thomas Jefferson and sited on the Missouri River, has been the capital since 1826 and with roughly 43,000 people is one of the smallest state capitals.
Q 02What is Missouri's famous unofficial nickname, printed on its licence plates?
The Show Me State
Congressman Willard Vandiver is credited with the phrase in an 1899 speech: 'I'm from Missouri, and you have got to show me.'
Q 03Missouri is also called the Cave State because it has more than how many recorded caves?
7,300
Missouri has more than 7,300 recorded caves, second only to Tennessee; Perry County has the most of any county and the state's longest, Crevice Cave.
Q 04What does the name of the Missouria people, from which the state's name derives, mean?
One who has dugout canoes
French colonists adapted the Illinois-language name wimihsoorita, 'one who has dugout canoes'; the 'muddy water' gloss often given is a folk etymology.
Q 05Missouri joined the Union in 1821 on what terms?
Slave-holding, under the 1820 Compromise
Maine was admitted as a free state to keep the balance, and slavery was banned in Louisiana Purchase lands north of 36°30'.
Q 06Which free state was admitted alongside Missouri under the Missouri Compromise?
Maine
Maine, until then part of Massachusetts, entered as a free state in March 1820; the Senate tied the two admissions together and Henry Clay steered the compromise through the House.
Q 07Where was Missouri's temporary capital before the 1826 move to its Missouri River home?
St. Charles
St. Charles was also the starting point of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1804.
Q 08Which was the first permanent European settlement in Missouri, founded by the French in 1735?
Ste. Genevieve
Ste. Genevieve, founded by French Canadians on the Mississippi around 1735, came first; St. Louis followed in 1764 as a fur-trading post under Pierre Laclède.
Q 09How tall is the Gateway Arch in St. Louis?
630 feet
The Gateway Arch is 630 feet tall and 630 feet wide at its base, the world's tallest arch and the tallest man-made monument in the Western Hemisphere, clad in stainless steel.
Q 10Which Finnish-American architect designed the Gateway Arch?
Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen won the 1947-48 design competition; he died in 1961, before construction ran from 1963 to 1965 at a cost of about $13 million.
Q 11What is the Gateway Arch's mathematical shape?
A weighted catenary
The arch is a weighted (flattened) catenary, the curve of a hanging chain whose links grow heavier toward the ends, which is why it thickens from 17 feet across at the top to 54 feet at the base.
Q 12Mark Twain's boyhood home, the setting for Tom Sawyer, was which Missouri river town?
Hannibal
The family moved to Hannibal on the Mississippi in 1839, when Sam was four; it became St. Petersburg in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
Q 13In which tiny Missouri village was Samuel Clemens, later Mark Twain, born in 1835?
Florida
Florida, in Monroe County, had about a hundred people when Clemens was born there on 30 November 1835, the sixth of seven children; Missouri also has towns called Paris and Mexico.
Q 21Which drink's popularity 'rapidly increased' after Richard Blechynden served it at the 1904 fair?
Iced tea
Iced tea had appeared in cookbooks since the 1860s, but Blechynden, promoting Indian tea to the fair's sweltering crowds, poured it over ice and helped make it a national habit.
Q 22The barbecue style of the state's biggest western city is known for a thick, sweet sauce made with what?
Brown sugar, molasses, tomatoes
Kansas City sauce is thick and sweet, built on tomatoes, brown sugar and molasses; Henry Perry is credited as the style's originator, and burnt ends are the local speciality.
Q 23Which brewing giant has been headquartered in St. Louis since the 1850s?
Q 14Twain was born shortly after the appearance of what, and predicted he would 'go out with it'?
Halley's Comet
Halley's Comet reached perihelion on 20 April 1910 and Twain died the next day, having been born two weeks after its 1835 appearance; he had said he expected to go out with it.
Q 15Which US president was born in Lamar, Missouri, and raised in Independence?
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman, born in Lamar in 1884 and raised in Independence, became president when Franklin Roosevelt died in April 1945.
Q 16What does the 'S' in the 33rd president's name stand for?
Nothing; it honours both grandfathers
Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young both got a nod, a common Southern practice.
Q 17What business did Truman open after returning from World War I?
A haberdashery
Truman & Jacobson, a haberdashery he opened in Kansas City in 1919 with army friend Eddie Jacobson, failed in the 1921-22 recession; he then became a Jackson County judge and US senator.
Q 18St. Louis hosted a World's Fair in 1904 to mark the centennial of what?
The Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, named for the 1803 deal that brought the territory into the US, opened a year late in April 1904 on 1,200 acres of Forest Park.
Q 19Which sporting event did St. Louis host in 1904, a first for the United States?
The Summer Olympics
The 1904 Summer Olympics, the third modern Games and the first outside Europe, ran for months alongside the World's Fair, with most competitors American.
Q 20Which treat was reputedly born at the 1904 St. Louis fair when a vendor ran out of paper cups?
The ice cream cone
Syrian concessionaire Ernest Hamwi supposedly rolled a waffle into a cone; historians still argue about it.
Anheuser-Busch
Anheuser-Busch, brewer of Budweiser since 1876, grew from a St. Louis brewery bought by Eberhard Anheuser in 1860 and has been owned by Belgium's AB InBev since a 2008 takeover.
Q 24Adolphus Busch was the first American brewer to do what, in the 1870s?
Use refrigerated railroad cars
Busch pioneered refrigerated railroad cars and a network of icehouses to ship Budweiser nationally in the late 1870s; he was also the first American brewer to pasteurise beer and to bottle it extensively.
Q 25Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag was published in 1899 by John Stark in which Missouri town?
Sedalia
Scott Joplin wrote Maple Leaf Rag while living in Sedalia, where music publisher John Stark issued it in 1899, naming it for the Maple Leaf Club where Joplin played.
Q 26Which 'Father of Rock and Roll' was born into a middle-class St. Louis family in 1926?
Chuck Berry
Chuck Berry was born in the Ville district of St. Louis in October 1926, son of a contractor and a school principal, and later ran his own club there, Berry's Club Bandstand.
Q 27Walt Disney was born in Chicago but raised largely in which Missouri metropolis from 1911?
Kansas City
The Disneys moved from Marceline to Kansas City in 1911; Walt attended Benton Grammar School there and discovered vaudeville and movies through classmate Walter Pfeiffer.
Q 28The Pony Express ran from Sacramento to which Missouri city?
St. Joseph
Riders left St. Joseph, the westernmost point then reached by rail and telegraph, and covered the roughly 1,900 miles to Sacramento in about ten days.
Q 29How long did the Pony Express operate?
18 months
It ran only 18 months, from April 1860 to October 1861, closing two days after the transcontinental telegraph was completed; it cut cross-country message time to about ten days.
Q 30In which Missouri city did the 1857 Dred Scott case begin?
St. Louis
Scott's owner had settled in St. Louis in 1830; Chief Justice Taney wrote the 7-2 opinion.