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50 free October trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
45 free October trivia questions with answers. October is the month of falling leaves, pumpkins, the World Series and a strange name: it means 'eighth' but comes tenth. This quiz covers all of it. There are questions on the month itself (why the name, the birthstones and birth flower, the zodiac signs, the hunter's moon), on the holidays that fill it (Halloween and its turnip lanterns, Oktoberfest, Canadian Thanksgiving, Columbus Day and its rivals, German Unity Day, Diwali, United Nations Day, the pink ribbon), and on the things that happened in October: the Great Chicago Fire, Sputnik, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Wall Street crashes of 1929 and 1987, Trafalgar, Hastings, the Statue of Liberty and the opening day of Walt Disney World. Roughly a third of the questions are easy enough for a classroom calendar lesson or a family table, a third are medium, and the rest will stretch a pub-quiz regular. It works as an October-themed round for a trivia night, a senior-centre activity, or a solo test. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and other reference sources, and each question shows its citation once you have answered, so you can settle any argument on the spot.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01October takes its name from the Latin word for which number?
Eight
The early Roman calendar began in March, so October really was the eighth month until January and February were inserted at the front.
Q 02How many days does October have?
31
It was one of the four 31-day months even in the ten-month calendar attributed to Romulus, alongside March, May and Quintilis (later July).
Q 03Which two gemstones are the birthstones for October?
Opal and tourmaline
The second of the pair can be green at one end and pink at the other, a variety sold as 'watermelon' stone.
Q 04Which country produces around 95 percent of the world's precious opal, its national gemstone?
Australia
The largest gem opal ever found, the 3.4-kilogram Olympic Australis, came out of the ground at Coober Pedy in 1956.
Q 05October's birth flower, the calendula, is better known by what common name?
Marigold
Its Latin name comes from calendae, the first day of the month, because it seems to be in bloom at the start of every one; cooks once used the petals as 'poor man's saffron'.
Q 06Which two zodiac signs fall in October?
Libra and Scorpio
The first of the two is the only sign in the zodiac represented by an object, a set of scales, rather than an animal or a person.
Q 07In the Southern Hemisphere, October is the seasonal equivalent of which Northern Hemisphere month?
April
So while New Englanders are raking leaves, Australians and South Africans are in the middle of spring.
Q 08The full moon after the harvest moon, usually in October, is named after whom?
Hunters
The harvest moon is defined as the full moon nearest the autumn equinox, so about once every three years it slips into early October and this one is pushed into November.
Q 09Halloween on 31 October is the eve of which Christian feast day?
All Saints' Day
'Hallow' is an old word for a saint, and the 'een' is Scots for evening, which is where the whole name comes from.
Q 10Before pumpkins, which vegetable was traditionally carved into Halloween lanterns in Ireland and Scotland?
The turnip
Immigrants switched to pumpkins because they were bigger and far easier to hollow out.
Q 11Which ancient Gaelic harvest festival is usually cited as the pagan root of Halloween?
Samhain
Trick-or-treating is more likely descended from medieval 'souling', when the poor went door to door offering prayers for the dead in exchange for soul cakes.
Q 12Botanically speaking, a pumpkin is which of these?
A berry
The technical term is a pepo, a berry with a hard rind; the whole thing is about 92 percent water.
Q 13Which US state grows about 41 percent of the country's pumpkins?
Illinois
Most of it is processing pumpkin for canning, and Morton, Illinois, home of a large Libby's plant, calls itself the Pumpkin Capital of the World.
Q 21Which health campaign, symbolised by a pink ribbon, runs every October?
Breast cancer month
The campaign began in 1985 as a partnership between the American Cancer Society and a pharmaceutical company; the ribbon came later, popularised by Estée Lauder in the early 1990s.
Q 22United Nations Day on 24 October marks the anniversary of what 1945 event?
The UN Charter coming into force
The date was chosen by the General Assembly in 1947, and in 1971 the UN recommended that member states make it a public holiday, though very few do.
Q 23World Teachers' Day commemorates a 1966 recommendation on teachers' status issued by UNESCO with which body?
Q 14The heaviest pumpkin on record, weighed in October 2023, tipped the scales at roughly how much?
About 1,250 kg
That is 2,749 pounds, heavier than a small car, grown by a Minnesota horticulture teacher.
Q 15Despite its name, most of Oktoberfest actually takes place in which month?
September
It runs from mid-September to the first Sunday in October so that revellers get better weather, and only beer brewed inside Munich's city limits may be served.
Q 16Oktoberfest began in 1810 as the public celebration of what event?
A royal wedding
Crown Prince Ludwig married Princess Therese, and the meadow where Munich still holds the festival is named the Theresienwiese, Therese's Meadow, after her.
Q 17Canada celebrates its Thanksgiving on which day in October?
The second Monday
Parliament fixed the date in 1957; before that it wandered around the calendar and was sometimes held in November.
Q 18On which date in 1492 did Columbus's expedition make landfall in the Americas?
12 October
In Spain the same date is the national holiday, Día de la Hispanidad, and a growing number of US states now mark it as Indigenous Peoples' Day instead.
Q 19Which president signed the 1968 law that moved the federal Columbus Day holiday to a Monday?
Lyndon B. Johnson
The Uniform Monday Holiday Act also shifted Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day and Veterans Day to Mondays to create long weekends.
Q 20Germany's national holiday, the Day of German Unity, falls on which October date?
The 3rd
The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November was considered but rejected because that date is also the anniversary of the 1938 Nazi pogroms.
The International Labour Organization
Australia moves its celebration to the last Friday of October because 5 October usually lands in school holidays there.
Q 24World Mental Health Day, first held in 1992, falls on which day of October?
10th
The same date is Double Ten Day, Taiwan's national day, marking the 1911 Wuchang Uprising that brought down the Qing dynasty.
Q 25Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, is most widely associated with which goddess of prosperity?
Lakshmi
Homes are lit with small oil lamps called diyas, and Jains, Sikhs and Newar Buddhists mark the same days for reasons of their own.
Q 26Why are the Nobel Prizes handed over on 10 December?
It is the anniversary of Alfred's death
Five of the prizes are presented in Stockholm; the Peace Prize is given in Oslo, as Nobel's 1895 will instructed.
Q 27Which animal was long blamed, unfairly, for starting the 1871 Great Chicago Fire?
A cow
The city council formally exonerated Mrs O'Leary in 1997; on the same night the far deadlier Peshtigo fire in Wisconsin killed well over a thousand people.
Q 28Roughly how big was Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, launched in October 1957?
A 58 cm metal sphere
It weighed 83.6 kilograms, beeped for 22 days until its batteries died, and burned up in January 1958 after 1,440 orbits.
Q 29The Cuban Missile Crisis pitted John F. Kennedy against which Soviet leader?
Nikita Khrushchev
The public deal removed Soviet missiles from Cuba; the secret half removed American Jupiter missiles from Turkey, and a direct hotline between Moscow and Washington followed.
Q 30What did Kennedy call the October 1962 naval cordon around Cuba, avoiding the word 'blockade'?
A quarantine
The missiles had been spotted on 14 October by a U-2 spy plane, whose photographs showed what analysts identified as medium-range ballistic missiles.