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This Teddy Roosevelt trivia quiz has 60 free questions with answers and follows the 26th president from a sickly, asthmatic boyhood in Manhattan to the Dakota Badlands, the charge up Kettle Hill, the White House at 42, the Nobel Peace Prize, the Bull Moose campaign and the River of Doubt. Along the way it covers the Square Deal, the trust busting, the Panama Canal, the Great White Fleet, the 230 million acres he protected, the day both his wife and mother died, and how a bear hunt in Mississippi gave the world's most famous toy its name. The easy questions are ones most people know (which mountain his face is carved on, what "speak softly" continues). The medium ones ask about his family, his books, his ranch and his sports. The hard ones dig into the 1912 shooting, the Antiquities Act, his Medal of Honor and his last words. It works as a history class warm-up, a Presidents' Day round, or a challenge for anyone who has read Edmund Morris. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
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Q 01Theodore Roosevelt was which number president of the United States?
26th
Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th president, serving from September 1901 to March 1909: first completing his assassinated predecessor's term, then winning the 1904 election in his own right.
Q 02How old was Roosevelt when he became president, making him the youngest person ever to hold the office?
42
Roosevelt was 42 when sworn in on 14 September 1901, having been born on 27 October 1858; John F. Kennedy, by comparison, was 43 at his 1961 inauguration.
Q 03Roosevelt became president after the assassination of which predecessor?
William McKinley
William McKinley was shot at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo on 6 September 1901 and died eight days later; Roosevelt, vice president for six months, took the oath at the Ansley Wilcox House.
Q 04Which chronic illness plagued Roosevelt as a child and terrified his parents?
Asthma
Asthma attacks left the young Roosevelt gasping for breath at night; on the family's 1869 European tour he kept pace with adults hiking in the Alps, convincing him that hard exercise helped.
Q 05Roosevelt was born in 1858 in which US state?
New York
He was born on 27 October 1858 at 28 East 20th Street in Manhattan, New York; a reconstruction of the brownstone is preserved as his birthplace national historic site.
Q 06Which university did Roosevelt enter in 1876, graduating Phi Beta Kappa four years later?
Harvard
At Harvard he boxed, rowed and joined the Porcellian Club, co-published a pamphlet on the summer birds of the Adirondacks in 1877, and graduated magna cum laude in 1880.
Q 07Roosevelt's 1882 book, which made his name as a historian, was about which conflict?
The War of 1812
Published in 1882, The Naval War of 1812 studied The War of 1812 at sea in ship-by-ship detail; begun in his final undergraduate year, it long remained a standard naval reference.
Q 08Of what did Roosevelt's first wife Alice die on 14 February 1884?
Kidney failure
Kidney failure from undiagnosed Bright's disease killed Alice two days after she gave birth to their daughter; his mother Mittie died of typhoid in the same house that day.
Q 09After his wife and mother died in 1884, Roosevelt ranched cattle in which territory?
Dakota
Dakota Territory, where he bought into the Maltese Cross Ranch in 1883 and built Elkhorn Ranch 35 miles north of Medora; as a deputy sheriff he once tracked down three boat thieves.
Q 10In 1886 Roosevelt married his childhood friend Edith Kermit Carow in which city?
London
They wed in London at St George's, Hanover Square, on 2 December 1886, with his friend Cecil Spring Rice as best man; the couple went on to have five children together.
Q 11In 1895 Roosevelt took a job in New York City heading which body?
The Board of Police Commissioners
The Board of Police Commissioners, a four-man body, was where Mayor William Strong placed him in May 1895; as its president he walked night beats with journalist Jacob Riis to catch sleeping patrolmen.
Q 12Which post did Roosevelt resign in 1898 to go and fight in the Spanish-American War?
Assistant Secretary of the Navy
As Assistant Secretary of the Navy from 1897 he had readied the fleet for war with Spain, cabling Commodore Dewey to prepare for action; in May 1898 he resigned to join the fighting in Cuba.
Q 13The Rough Riders were the nickname of which unit?
Q 21Which 1906 Upton Sinclair novel galvanised support for the Meat Inspection Act?
The Jungle
The Jungle, Sinclair's exposé of Chicago's packing houses, so disgusted readers that Congress passed both the Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act in June 1906.
Q 22Roosevelt won the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for mediating the end of which war?
The Russo-Japanese War
He was the first non-European to win any Nobel Prize; the treaty was signed at Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Q 23Why did Roosevelt choose Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to host the 1905 peace talks?
Its cooler summer climate
The 1st US Volunteer Cavalry
The 1st US Volunteer Cavalry was one of three volunteer cavalry regiments raised in 1898 and the only one to reach Cuba; most of its horses were left behind in Tampa, so the men fought on foot.
Q 14Who was the first commander of the Rough Riders, with Roosevelt as his second in command?
Leonard Wood
Leonard Wood, an army surgeon decorated in the Apache campaigns, was the regiment's colonel; Roosevelt served as his lieutenant colonel and took over when Wood was promoted to brigade command before the fighting.
Q 15During the famous charge in Cuba on 1 July 1898, Roosevelt was the only soldier on horseback up which slope?
Kettle Hill
Kettle Hill, beside San Juan Hill, is where he rode up on his horse Little Texas until a wire fence forced him to finish on foot; he called it 'the great day of my life'.
Q 16Roosevelt is the only president to have received which military decoration, awarded posthumously in 2001?
The Medal of Honor
The Medal of Honor was recommended by his commanders in 1898 but denied, partly because of his own lobbying for it; Bill Clinton presented it to his family on 16 January 2001.
Q 17Returning from Cuba a war hero, Roosevelt was elected to which office in 1898?
Governor of New York
Elected Governor of New York in November 1898 by a narrow margin, he pushed reforms that so irritated boss Thomas Platt that Platt engineered his nomination for vice president in 1900 to be rid of him.
Q 18Which words complete Roosevelt's 1901 aphorism "Speak softly and..."?
...carry a big stick
Roosevelt's line continues "...carry a big stick; you will go far", a West African proverb he first used publicly at the Minnesota State Fair on 2 September 1901; it became shorthand for his foreign policy.
Q 19What did Roosevelt call his domestic programme of fairness, trust-busting and pure food and drugs?
The Square Deal
The Square Deal was his name for a programme balancing the interests of business, labour and consumers; it produced the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and earned him the nickname 'the Trust Buster'.
Q 20Roosevelt's first big antitrust case broke up Northern Securities, a monopoly in which industry?
Railroads
Railroads: Northern Securities was the Morgan-Hill holding company for the Great Northern and Northern Pacific lines, and the Supreme Court ordered it dissolved in 1904; Roosevelt brought 44 antitrust suits in all.
Its cooler summer climate was the draw: the talks opened in August 1905 and Roosevelt wanted to spare the Russian and Japanese delegates Washington's sweltering heat; the naval shipyard also offered a secure venue.
Q 24The Panama Canal route Roosevelt backed ran through territory that in 1903 belonged to which country?
Colombia
Colombia, whose senate rejected the Hay-Herrán Treaty in August 1903; Panama then declared independence on 3 November with US warships offshore, and the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty granted the canal zone within weeks.
Q 25Where did Roosevelt go in November 1906 on the first official presidential trip abroad?
Panama and Puerto Rico
Panama and Puerto Rico: sailing on the battleship USS Louisiana, he spent three days inspecting the canal works in the rainy season, famously posing at the controls of a steam shovel, then called at Puerto Rico.
Q 26How many battleships made up the Great White Fleet Roosevelt sent around the world in 1907-09?
16
16 battleships, painted peacetime white, left Hampton Roads on 16 December 1907 and returned on 22 February 1909 after a 43,000-mile circumnavigation sailed in two squadrons.
Q 27Roughly how much land did Roosevelt place under federal protection as president?
230 million acres
230 million acres of public land went under federal protection: five national parks, 18 national monuments, 150 national forests, four game preserves and 51 federal bird reservations.
Q 28Which Wyoming landmark did Roosevelt make the first US national monument in September 1906?
Devils Tower
Devils Tower, a volcanic butte rising 867 feet from its base, was proclaimed on 24 September 1906 under the Antiquities Act signed that June, which lets presidents create monuments without Congress.
Q 29In 1903 Roosevelt created the first national wildlife refuge, Pelican Island, in which state?
Florida
Florida, in the Indian River Lagoon: Pelican Island, a brown pelican rookery, became the first federal bird reservation by executive order on 14 March 1903 after ornithologists Frank Chapman and William Dutcher lobbied him.
Q 30The teddy bear was named after Roosevelt following a hunting trip in 1902 in which state?
Mississippi
Mississippi, near Onward in November 1902: he refused to shoot a bear his guides had captured and tied up, and Clifford Berryman's Washington Post cartoon 'Drawing the Line in Mississippi' inspired the toy.