Omaha
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6correct to beat the crowd
This Omaha trivia quiz has 95 free questions with answers and covers the whole story of Nebraska's biggest city: the Lone Tree Ferry and the 1854 founding, the Union Pacific building west, the stockyards that were once the largest on earth, the 1898 world's fair, and the Fortune 500 firms and Oracle who call it home. There are questions on the Henry Doorly Zoo's record-breaking dome, the College World Series, Boys Town, Offutt Air Force Base and the D-Day beach that borrowed the city's name. It also tests you on famous Omahans (Malcolm X, Gerald Ford, Fred Astaire, Marlon Brando, Andy Roddick, Terence Crawford), Omaha inventions like the Reuben, the TV dinner and Top 40 radio, and local oddities such as what Ak-Sar-Ben really means. Questions run from easy to expert, so it works for a bar quiz, a classroom, or a family that just moved to town. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each explanation adds one more Omaha fact.
30 of 95 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Omaha sits on the bank of which river?
Missouri
Omaha grew up on the Missouri's west bank around a ferry landing: the ferry's owners laid out the town in 1854, as soon as Congress created Nebraska Territory.
Q 02Omaha is the county seat of which Nebraska county?
Douglas
Omaha is the county seat of Douglas County, Nebraska, named for Senator Stephen A. Douglas, the sponsor of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act that created the territory.
Q 03In the Omaha language, the city's name means what?
Upstream People
'Upstream People' is the usual reading of the tribe's own name, Umonhon: in tribal tradition their ancestors parted at a great river, the Omaha going upriver and their Quapaw kin, the 'downstream people', going south.
Q 04Omaha's pioneer period began in 1854 when speculators crossed the river from which neighbouring town?
Council Bluffs, Iowa
Council Bluffs, Iowa businessmen formed a ferry company in 1853 and had a town called Omaha City surveyed and laid out on the far bank the following year.
Q 05Omaha was informally founded in 1854 at a picnic on Capitol Hill, now the site of what?
Central High School
Central High School stands on Capitol Hill, where the city's founders picnicked on 4 July 1854; the territorial capitol went up on the same hill and was handed to the city for a school once the government left.
Q 06Omaha was Nebraska's territorial capital, but the state capital moved in 1867 to which city?
Lincoln
Lincoln became the state capital in 1867 after settlers south of the Platte River, for whom reaching Omaha meant a hard crossing, won the vote to move it; the village of Lancaster was renamed for the assassinated president.
Q 07In 1804 which expedition passed the riverbanks where Omaha would later be built?
Lewis and Clark
Lewis and Clark camped upriver soon after passing the site and, on 3 August 1804, traded speeches and gifts with Otoe chiefs in the expedition's first formal meeting with a tribe.
Q 08Which railroad built the first transcontinental line westward from Omaha in the 1860s?
Union Pacific
Union Pacific laid its first rails at Omaha in 1865 and pushed west until it met the Central Pacific at Promontory, Utah, on 10 May 1869, where a ceremonial golden spike completed the line.
Q 09Omaha hosted a world's fair in 1898 under what name?
Trans-Mississippi Exposition
The Trans-Mississippi Exposition opened in June 1898 around a Grand Court of majestic buildings that were never meant to last: none survives, and no structure of the fair remains on its north Omaha site.
Q 10Omaha's 1898 world's fair declared a special day in honour of which showman?
Buffalo Bill Cody
Buffalo Bill Cody got his 'Cody Day' on 31 August 1898, when he brought his Wild West back to Omaha, the city where the show had given its first performance in May 1883.
Q 11By the 1950s, what share of Omaha's workforce was in meatpacking and processing?
Half
Half of Omaha's workforce was in meatpacking and processing by the 1950s; the Union Stockyards closed in 1999, and only the Livestock Exchange Building survives on the site.
Q 12Which food giant moved its headquarters out of Omaha in 2016 after nearly a century in the city?
ConAgra Brands
ConAgra Brands moved out in 2016, a generation after Omaha let it level the historic Jobbers Canyon warehouse district for a riverfront campus when it threatened to leave.
Q 13Since 1950 Omaha has hosted which annual NCAA championship?
College World Series
Q 21Which two-time Oscar-winning actor was born in Omaha on 3 April 1924?
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, born in Omaha on 3 April 1924, won Best Actor for On the Waterfront and The Godfather but refused the second, sending Sacheen Littlefeather to decline it in protest at Hollywood's portrayal of Native Americans.
Q 22Omaha native Alexander Payne set which of his films in the city?
Election
Election (1999), which Payne adapted from Tom Perrotta's novel, is set at a fictional Omaha high school and was shot on location around the city, with a real suburban school standing in for it.
Q 23Which tennis player, a 2003 US Open champion, was born in Omaha in 1982?
Andy Roddick
The College World Series has stayed in Omaha since 1950; the city replaced its ageing ballpark with a new downtown stadium in 2011, the year a long-term contract to keep the event began.
Q 14Before Omaha, the college baseball championship was held in Kalamazoo and then in which city in 1949?
Wichita, Kansas
The 1949 championship was played in Wichita, Kansas after the 1947 and 1948 editions at Hyames Field in Kalamazoo; the event settled in Omaha from 1950.
Q 15Which Omaha ballpark, renamed in 1964 for a former mayor, was demolished in 2012 and absorbed by the neighbouring zoo?
Rosenblatt
Rosenblatt Stadium opened in 1948 as Omaha Municipal Stadium and took the name of former mayor Johnny Rosenblatt in 1964; after it came down, the zoo next door rebuilt its infield in miniature as a memorial.
Q 16Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo grew out of a public zoo opened in 1894 under what name?
Riverview Park Zoo
Riverview Park Zoo opened in 1894 in south Omaha and was renamed Henry Doorly Zoo in 1963 after a $750,000 gift from Margaret Hitchcock Doorly in memory of her publisher husband.
Q 17Which Omaha attraction keeps one of the world's largest indoor deserts under a giant glazed dome?
Henry Doorly Zoo
Henry Doorly Zoo's Desert Dome sits above Kingdoms of the Night, a nocturnal exhibit where the day-night cycle is reversed so that visitors walk through while the animals are awake.
Q 18Which civil rights leader was born in Omaha on 19 May 1925?
Malcolm X
Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in Omaha; by his own account Ku Klux Klan threats drove the family out in 1926, and their Pinkney Street house was torn down in 1965 before its owners learned who had lived there.
Q 19Which US president was born in Omaha in 1913 under the name Leslie Lynch King Jr.?
Gerald Ford
Gerald Ford was born Leslie Lynch King Jr. in Omaha on 14 July 1913; his mother soon moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and he took the name of his stepfather, Gerald Rudolff Ford.
Q 20Which legendary dancer was born in Omaha in 1899 with the surname Austerlitz?
Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire was born Frederick Austerlitz in Omaha on 10 May 1899 and went on the vaudeville circuit as a child in an act with his older sister Adele, reaching Broadway with her in 1917.
Andy Roddick was born in Omaha on 30 August 1982 and won the 2003 US Open, his only Grand Slam singles title; he later lost four major finals to Roger Federer.
Q 24Which three-weight undisputed boxing champion was born and raised in Omaha?
Terence Crawford
Terence Crawford, known as 'Bud', completed the set in September 2025 by outpointing Canelo Alvarez for the undisputed super-middleweight title, then retired unbeaten.
Q 25Which bestselling romance novelist was born in Omaha in 1965?
Nicholas Sparks
Nicholas Sparks, born in Omaha on 31 December 1965, was working as a pharmaceutical salesman when he wrote The Notebook, his first published novel, which went straight onto the bestseller list in 1996.
Q 26Which star of 'Bring It On' was born in Omaha in 1972?
Gabrielle Union
Gabrielle Union was born in Omaha on 29 October 1972 and moved to California as a child; in Bring It On she plays Isis, the rival captain who confronts the heroine's squad for stealing her team's routines.
Q 27Which indie rock band was founded in Omaha by singer-songwriter Conor Oberst?
Bright Eyes
Bright Eyes began in Omaha in 1995 as the project of the teenage Conor Oberst, and much of its first album was recorded on reel-to-reel tape in the Oberst family basement.
Q 28Which sandwich was reputedly invented at a poker game in Omaha's Blackstone Hotel?
Reuben
Reuben Kulakofsky, a grocer at the hotel's weekly game, is said to have asked for corned beef and sauerkraut, and the owner's son Bernard Schimmel built the sandwich; a New York deli owner, Arnold Reuben, is also credited.
Q 29Which radio format did Todd Storz pioneer at Omaha station KOWH in the early 1950s?
Top 40
Top 40 grew out of KOWH's countdown of best-sellers; in the popular telling, Storz had noticed jukebox customers paying to hear the same few hits again and again, though one of his colleagues disputed that story.
Q 30Which frozen convenience food did Swanson launch in 1953?
The TV dinner
The TV dinner went on sale from Omaha's C.A. Swanson & Sons in 1953; salesman Gerry Thomas was long credited with the idea, but the Swanson family and others have disputed his account.