U.S. Presidents Trivia Quiz

This year, President’s Day is Monday, February 18. To help you prepare for the day, I thought a trivia quiz was in order. How well do you know your past presidents?

1.     Which former US president is pictured on the US $500 bill? This bill is no longer being printed, but some still exist and they are still legal tender.

·         Grover Cleveland

·         Benjamin Harrison

·         Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

·         William McKinley

2.     Who is the future US president said to be holding the flag in the famous painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware”?

·         John Adams

·         James Monroe

·         Thomas Jefferson

·         James Madison

3.     Who was the first US president to live in the Executive Mansion in Washington, DC (now called the White House)?

·         James Madison

·         George Washington

·         Thomas Jefferson

·         John Adams

4.     Which of these former US presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize?

·         Jimmy Carter, Jr.

·         Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

·         Woodrow Wilson

·         All of the above

5.     Who was the first US president to be pictured on a US postage stamp?

·         John Adams

·         James Madison

·         Thomas Jefferson

·         George Washington

6.     How many signers of the Declaration of Independence later became US presidents?

·         1

·         2

·         3

·         4

7.     How many signers of the US Constitution later became US presidents?

·         1

·         2

·         3

·         4

8.     How many US presidents signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution?

·         0

·         1

·         2

·         3

9.     Which of these presidents died on Independence Day (July 4th)?

·         John Adams

·         James Monroe

·         Thomas Jefferson

·         All of Them

10.  Who was the first bachelor US president (before election, during his administration and when leaving office)?

·         Millard Fillmore

·         William Howard Taft

·         Martin Van Buren

·         James Buchanan

11.  Who was the first president elected by the Republican Party?

·         George Washington

·         Andrew Johnson

·         Abraham Lincoln

·         John Adams

12.  Which of these former US presidents was the first elected to non-consecutive terms? He was elected, then lost his reelection bid, then ran again four years later and won.

·         John Quincy Adams

·         Grover Cleveland

·         Benjamin Harrison

·         George W. Bush

13.  Who was the US president when women got the right to vote nationwide? This right was ratified in the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.

·         Calvin Coolidge

·         Woodrow Wilson

·         William Howard Taft

·         Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

14.  Which US president’s face is NOT carved on Mt. Rushmore, South Dakota?

·         Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

·         Abraham Lincoln

·         Thomas Jefferson

·         Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

 

 

Answers:

1.       William McKinley (25th US President)

2.       James Monroe. The famous painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware” by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze was painted in 1851, which is 75 years after the event. One of the many reasons this painting is historically inaccurate is that the flag Monroe is holding is the original flag of the United States (the “Stars and Stripes”), but that flag did not exist until September 1777-well after Washington’s crossing in December 1776.

3.       John Adams in 1800.

4.       All of those listed. Teddy Roosevelt (26th US president) won it in 1906 for helping to end the Russian-Japanese War (not in 1905, as many sources erroneously state). Woodrow Wilson (28th US president) won it in 1919 for his efforts in establishing the League of Nations. Jimmy Carter (39th US president) won it in 2002 (not while he was in office) for his decades of untiring humanitarian efforts. In addition, Barack Obama (44th US president) won it in 2009 for “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

5.       George Washington. One of the first two stamps issued by the new United States in 1847. Franklin was on the 5-cent issue and Washington was on the 10-cent issue.

6.       2. John Adams (2nd US president) and Thomas Jefferson (3rd US president) were the only signers of the Declaration who later became US presidents.

7.       2. George Washington (1st US president) and James Madison (4th US president) were the only signers of the U.S. Constitution who later became US presidents.

8.       0. Only six Founding Fathers signed both documents, and none of them became US presidents.

9.       All of them. Adams’ final words just before dying on 4 July 1826 at his home in Quincy, Massachusetts were, “Thomas Jefferson survives,” not knowing that Jefferson had actually died hours earlier that same day at Monticello, Virginia. James Monroe also died on July 4th in 1831.

10.    James Buchanan

11.    Abraham Lincoln. In the approximately 30 years prior to the mid-1860s, the two major parties in the US were the Whigs and the Democrats. The Republican Party was what we would call a “third party” (created in 1854 in Ripon, Wisconsin). The first presidential candidate they ran (in the 1856 election) was the explorer and pathfinder John C. Fremont, but he lost. The second (in the 1860 election) was Abraham Lincoln, who was elected the country’s 16th president

12.    Grover Cleveland. Grover Cleveland was elected the 22nd and 24th US president, but lost his reelection bid in the 1888 election to Benjamin Harrison (23th US president). Nasty campaigning is nothing new in today’s political elections. Cleveland was accused of fathering an illegitimate child, and his detractors would chant, “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa?” After he was elected in the 1884 election, his supporters would chant back, “Gone to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha.”

13.    Woodrow Wilson

14.    Franklin D. Roosevelt

How many did you get right?

Nancy Roe
Author