Ohio Trivia
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129 free Ohio trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
71 free Ohio trivia questions with answers. These Ohio trivia facts run the length of the Buckeye State: the swallowtail flag that no other state shares, the seven presidents born here, the tomato juice and ladybug in the state symbols list, and the 1953 discovery that Congress had never quite finished admitting Ohio at all. Then the questions head out across the state, from Cedar Point on Lake Erie and Serpent Mound in Adams County to Hocking Hills, the Amish country of Holmes County and the Ohio Caverns near West Liberty. The cities get their due too: Wright brothers' Dayton, rock and roll Cleveland, Porkopolis Cincinnati, Glass City Toledo, Rubber Capital Akron and the capital itself. Sports fans get The Game, Archie Griffin and the 2016 Cavaliers; foodies get three-way chili and buckeye candy. About a third of the questions are easy enough for a classroom or a family road trip across I-71, a third are medium, and the rest will test people who think they already know Ohio. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and official Ohio sources, and each question shows the sentence that confirms it once you have answered.
30 of 129 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Ohio baseball team takes its name from the 1869 club that was the sport's first all-professional team?
Reds
Reds: the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings were the first club to put every player on a salary; in the 1950s the modern team called itself the Redlegs for a few seasons to avoid any hint of communism.
Q 02Which city is both Ohio's capital and its most populous?
Columbus
Columbus became Ohio's capital in 1816, chosen for its central location, and has been the state's most populous city since the 1990 census, well ahead of Cleveland.
Q 03Ohio's state flag is unique among the 50 US state flags for what reason?
It is not rectangular
It is not rectangular: the swallowtail 'burgee' is so awkward to fold that in 2005 Ohio wrote a two-person folding method into law, one worked out by a Boy Scout earning his Eagle rank.
Q 04The 17 stars on Ohio's flag mark its place in what order?
Statehood
Statehood: thirteen stars ring the flag's central 'O' for the original states, and four more at the triangle's tip carry the count on to Ohio, the seventeenth state to join the Union.
Q 05Which bird has been Ohio's official state bird since 1933?
Cardinal
Cardinal: when settlers arrived it was an uncommon bird seen mainly along the Ohio River, and it spread across the state only in the late 1800s; six other states have chosen it as their bird too.
Q 06What is Ohio's official state flower?
Red carnation
Red carnation: Ohio chose it in memory of President William McKinley, an Ohioan assassinated in 1901, who is said to have worn one on his lapel for luck after an election rival handed him one.
Q 07Since 1965, what has been Ohio's official state beverage?
Tomato juice
Tomato juice: the 1965 law coincided with the Tomato Festival in Reynoldsburg, where Alexander Livingston introduced the Paragon, his first commercial tomato variety, in 1870.
Q 08Which creature is Ohio's official state insect?
Ladybug
It was adopted in 1975; the ladybug is a farmer's friend because it eats aphids.
Q 09Ohio's official state fossil, Isotelus maximus, is what kind of ancient animal?
A trilobite
A trilobite: Isotelus was a marine arthropod of the seas that covered Ohio in the Ordovician period, and the state's law singles out a giant specimen dug up at Huffman Dam in Montgomery County.
Q 10What is Ohio's official state mammal?
White-tailed deer
White-tailed deer: hunted out of Ohio altogether by 1904, it came back through restocking in the 1920s and 1930s and now lives in all 88 counties; it was made the state animal in 1988.
Q 11Ohio's name comes from a Seneca word meaning what?
Good river
Good river: Ohio comes from the Seneca (Iroquoian) word ohi:yo', usually rendered 'good river' or 'great river', the native name of the Ohio River.
Q 12Which president signed the 1803 act of Congress recognising Ohio's constitution?
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson signed the act on 19 February 1803, yet Ohio counts its birthday as 1 March, the day its first General Assembly met.
Q 13What did Congress do about Ohio's statehood in 1953?
Backdated its admission to 1803
Backdated its admission to 1803: planning for Ohio's 150th birthday showed that Congress had never passed a formal act of admission, so in 1953 it passed one, dated back to 1 March 1803.
Q 21Which Cleveland DJ, credited with popularising the term 'rock and roll', helped the city land the Rock Hall?
Alan Freed
Alan Freed, a DJ at Cleveland's WJW from 1951, popularised the term 'rock and roll' and staged the 1952 Moondog Coronation Ball there, often called the first major rock concert, the basis of Cleveland's Rock Hall bid.
Q 22Which architect designed Cleveland's glass-pyramid Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, opened in 1995?
I. M. Pei
I. M. Pei said he wanted the building 'to echo the energy of rock and roll'; its glass pyramid is meant to suggest a guitar neck rising to the sky, and the plaza in front of it a turntable.
Q 23The Pro Football Hall of Fame stands in which Ohio city, where the NFL was founded in 1920?
Canton
Q 14Ohio was the first state carved out of which federal domain, governed under a famous 1787 ordinance?
Northwest Territory
Northwest Territory: the 1787 ordinance outlawed slavery across the territory, so Ohio, the first state carved from it, came into the Union as a free state on the north bank of the Ohio River.
Q 15Ohio shares the nickname 'Mother of Presidents' with which state, the only one where more presidents were born?
Virginia
Virginia: eight presidents were born there to Ohio's seven, and one of the eight, William Henry Harrison, had long since made his home in Ohio by the time he won the White House.
Q 16Which Cincinnati-born president is the only person to have also been chief justice?
William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft, born in Cincinnati in 1857, never much wanted the presidency his wife pressed him towards; the post he had always hoped for was chief justice, which he held from 1921 to 1930.
Q 17Before building airplanes, Orville and Wilbur Wright ran what kind of business in Dayton?
A bicycle shop
A bicycle shop: the Wright Cycle Company began with sales and repairs in 1892, was building its own bicycles by 1896, and its profits helped pay for the flying experiments.
Q 18Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the Moon, grew up in which small Ohio town?
Wapakoneta
Wapakoneta: Armstrong was born there in 1930 and became a licensed pilot on his 16th birthday, before he had a driver's licence.
Q 19Ohio-born astronaut John Glenn became the first American to do what, in 1962?
Orbit the Earth
Orbit the Earth: Glenn circled it three times in Friendship 7, then came down with his retro-rocket pack still strapped on, because a faulty signal suggested the heat shield had come loose.
Q 20Which office did John Glenn hold when he flew aboard shuttle Discovery in 1998?
Senator
Senator: Glenn was finishing 24 years in the Senate for Ohio when he joined the crew as a test subject for studies of ageing, at 77 the oldest person who had yet flown in space.
Canton: Ralph Hay, owner of the hometown Bulldogs, hosted the founding meeting on 17 September 1920 in his Hupmobile car showroom, where some of the team owners sat on the cars' running boards.
Q 24Cedar Point, 'America's Roller Coast', sits on a Lake Erie peninsula in which Ohio city?
Sandusky
Sandusky: Cedar Point began in 1870 as a beer garden, bathhouse and dance floor reached by steamboat from the city, and waited until 1892 for its first roller coaster.
Q 25Which future coach practised forward passes as a Cedar Point lifeguard in 1913?
Knute Rockne
Knute Rockne and Notre Dame teammate Gus Dorais spent the summer of 1913 as Cedar Point lifeguards drilling pass routes on the sand, then stunned Army with their passing attack that November.
Q 26What is the annual Ohio State vs Michigan football rivalry match known as?
The Game
The Game: since 1934 every Ohio State player who beats Michigan gets a tiny gold pants charm, after coach Francis Schmidt shrugged that the Wolverines put their pants on one leg at a time like everyone else.
Q 27Which Ohio State running back is the only player ever to win the Heisman Trophy twice?
Archie Griffin
Archie Griffin announced himself in only his second game as a freshman by running for a school-record 239 yards, then won the Heisman in 1974 and 1975.
Q 28What is the name of Ohio State University's buckeye-nut mascot?
Brutus Buckeye
Brutus Buckeye: two students built the first one out of papier-mâché in 1965, and a campus contest gave the giant nut its name only after its debut at that year's homecoming game.
Q 29Which magazine's 1969 story on the burning Cuyahoga River helped spur the environmental movement?
Time
Time launched its new Environment section with the Cuyahoga story; the river had burned many times before, a 1952 fire doing far more damage, but this coverage helped bring about the EPA in 1970.
Q 30The Ohio River begins at Pittsburgh where which two rivers meet?
Allegheny and Monongahela
Allegheny and Monongahela: they meet at Pittsburgh's Point to start the Ohio's 981-mile run, a fork so strategic that France built Fort Duquesne there and Britain, once the French had burned it and gone, raised Fort Pitt.