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50 free Raleigh trivia questions with answers. Raleigh is one of the few American cities that was drawn on paper before anyone lived there: a grid of five squares, laid out in 1792 on land bought from a planter who won the vote by hosting the site committee for dinner. It is also a city that has never had a bad year for trivia, from the tailor's apprentice who became president to the hockey team that was called a bunch of jerks and printed it on T-shirts. This quiz walks the whole city. Easy questions cover the nickname, the namesake and the Research Triangle; medium ones dig into the Capitol, NC State's two basketball titles and the Hurricanes' Stanley Cups; the hard end gets into who accepted the surrender in 1865, which sculptor's Washington burned in 1831, and what world first a fairground arena can claim. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and official pages, and the sentence that proves it is shown under each question, so it works for a Wolfpack tailgate, a bar quiz on Glenwood South or settling an argument about the Beltline.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Sir Walter Raleigh, the city's namesake, sponsored which failed English settlement in North Carolina?
Roanoke
The 'lost colony' vanished from Roanoke Island after 1587; its sponsor never set foot in North America himself.
Q 02The purpose-built North Carolina capital was incorporated on December 31 of which year?
1792
The site had been chosen in 1788 because its inland location was safe from coastal attack; no town existed there before the surveyors arrived.
Q 03Thanks to its tree-lined streets, Raleigh is known by what nickname?
City of Oaks
The name is celebrated every New Year's Eve, when a giant copper acorn is dropped downtown at midnight.
Q 04Wake County, of which the city is the seat, was named in honor of whom?
The wife of Governor William Tryon
Margaret Wake Tryon lent her maiden name to the county in 1771, two decades before the capital city was laid out inside it.
Q 05Which planter, the 'Father of Raleigh', sold the land on which the capital was built?
Joel Lane
The site commission had leaned toward John Hinton's land across the river until an evening of food and spirits at Lane's house swung the vote his way.
Q 06The 1792 street grid, with a central square and one in each corner, was modeled on which older city's plan?
Philadelphia
Thomas Holme drew that plan for William Penn in 1682; in the copy, the State Capitol occupies the central square.
Q 07The State Capitol occupies the central plot of the original 1792 grid, which is known as what?
Union Square
Burke Square, one of the four corner squares, had been earmarked for a governor's residence and now holds the Executive Mansion.
Q 08Which future U.S. president was born at Casso's Inn in the city in 1808?
Andrew Johnson
The 17th president was born into poverty and never attended a day of school; his birthplace cabin now sits in Mordecai Historic Park.
Q 09The Raleigh-born 17th president was bound as an apprentice at age ten in what trade?
Tailor
He ran away from James Selby's shop after about five years, and Selby posted a ten-dollar reward for the return of the runaway apprentice.
Q 10The 1831 fire that destroyed the first State House also consumed a Washington statue by which sculptor?
Antonio Canova
A replica of the marble now stands in the Capitol rotunda; the original had shown Washington in Roman dress.
Q 11The current State Capitol by Town and Davis is built in which architectural style?
Greek Revival
The gneiss for its walls was hauled in on the state's first railroad, and the building remains almost unchanged since it opened.
Q 12Which governor slipped out of the city in April 1865 to avoid capture as Union troops approached?
Zebulon Vance
He left behind a letter authorizing Mayor William Harrison to surrender, hoping to spare the capital the fate of Columbia and Atlanta.
Q 13On April 13, 1865, the mayor surrendered the city to which Union cavalry general?
Hugh Judson Kilpatrick
Q 21The Carolina Hurricanes moved to North Carolina in 1997 from which city?
Hartford
The old goal horn from the Hartford Civic Center still sounds at their arena; the franchise began life in 1971 as the WHA's New England Whalers.
Q 22In which North Carolina city did the Hurricanes play their first two seasons?
Greensboro
The only rink in the Triangle with an ice plant was 5,100-seat Dorton Arena, so the team spent two years playing 90 minutes from home.
Q 23The Hurricanes won their first Stanley Cup in 2006 by beating which team in seven games?
Edmonton Oilers
It was North Carolina's first major professional sports championship; Game 7 drew 18,978 to the arena in Raleigh.
His troopers took down the Confederate flagpole on the Capitol and ran the Stars and Stripes up over the dome.
Q 14Which civil rights organization emerged from an April 1960 student meeting at Shaw University?
SNCC
The meeting was organized by Ella Baker; Shaw itself is the oldest HBCU to have begun classes in the South, dating to 1865.
Q 15In which year was North Carolina State University founded as a land-grant college?
1887
It opened as the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts and today is the largest university in the Carolinas.
Q 16Before an anonymous 1921 letter suggested 'Wolfpack', NC State's teams had gone by which of these names?
Red Terrors
They had also been the Aggies and the Techs; the wolves Mr. and Mrs. Wuf did not appear on the sidelines until the 1960s.
Q 17NC State's 115-foot Memorial Belltower was built as a monument to alumni killed in which conflict?
World War I
Completed in 1937, the granite tower is lit red after athletic victories and appears on the chancellor's seal.
Q 18Which player led NC State to its first NCAA title in 1974 and is the only Wolfpack player with a retired jersey?
David Thompson
His No. 44 hangs alone; that team lost only once in two seasons and beat Marquette 76–64 in the final.
Q 19Who dunked Whittenburg's last-second air ball to beat Houston in the 1983 NCAA final?
Lorenzo Charles
Houston's Phi Slama Jama, with Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon, had been expected to win easily over Jim Valvano's Cardiac Pack.
Q 20In the Krispy Kreme Challenge, how many doughnuts must runners eat between the two legs?
12
The whole thing must be finished within an hour; it started in 2004 as a dare among a dozen friends at the Belltower.
Q 24Which broadcaster's 2019 jab at the Hurricanes' "Storm Surge" gave the team its "Bunch of Jerks" slogan?
Don Cherry
The team printed the insult on T-shirts, and the season ended in their first conference final in a decade.
Q 25The Hurricanes' second Stanley Cup, in 2026, came in a six-game Final against which team?
Vegas Golden Knights
They had swept both of the first two playoff rounds, the first team to do so since best-of-seven series were introduced in 1987.
Q 26The 'Terror of the South' exhibit in North Carolina is built around the most complete skeleton of which dinosaur?
Acrocanthosaurus
The specimen, nicknamed 'Acro', shares a hall with a life-size model of the giant sauropod Astrodon.
Q 27The NC Museum of Art's 2010 West Building was designed by which architecture firm?
Thomas Phifer and Partners
The museum's collection began with a $1 million legislative appropriation in 1947, the first time any U.S. state had earmarked public money to buy art.
Q 28Along with Raleigh and Durham, which town completes the Research Triangle?
Chapel Hill
The three points are anchored by NC State, Duke and UNC; the 'Triangle' name dates only from the creation of the research park in the 1950s.
Q 29Research Triangle Park, the largest research park in the United States, covers roughly how many acres?
7,000
Established in 1959 in a pine forest between the three cities, it hosts more than 300 companies, including a 774,000-square-foot IBM complex.
Q 30Which Raleigh-based open-source company did IBM buy for $34 billion in a deal closed in 2019?
Red Hat
It had moved its headquarters from Durham to NC State's Centennial Campus in 2002 before taking over a downtown tower in 2013.