US History Trivia Questions

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Two female privates from West Virginia, Lynndie England and Jessica Lynch, one a guard and one a prisoner, represented moral bookends of US involvement in what part of the world?

       a. Somali
       b. Kosovo
       c. Iraq
       d. Haiti


What buck-stopping president once said, "I never give them hell. I just tell them the truth and they think it is hell"?

       a. Richard Nixon
       b. Lyndon Johnson
       c. Harry Truman
       d. Teddy Roosevelt


In the 1760s, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon surveyed 233 miles at 39"43'19.11 degrees N, which today forms the 233-mile border between which two states?

       a. Pennsylvania and Maryland
       b. Kentucky and Missouri
       c. Virginia and Maryland
       d. Kentucky and Ohio


The first future First Lady to appear in a movie was Pat Ryan. In 1936, she was an extra in The Great Ziegfeld. Whom did she marry?

       a. Gerald Ford
       b. Richard Nixon
       c. Dwight Eisenhower
       d. Ronald Reagan


Something that Dr. Samuel Prescott did on April 18, 1775 is now credited to somebody else. What is it?

       a. Paul Revere's ride
       b. Francis Scott Keys writing of the Star Spangled Banner
       c. John Hancock's signing of the Declaration of Independence
       d. Betsy Ross's sewing of the flag


What was the last state east of the Mississippi to join the Union?

       a. West Virginia
       b. Indiana
       c. Florida
       d. Maine


In 1986, John McCain replaced Barry Goldwater as the senator from what state?

       a. Arizona
       b. Utah
       c. Idaho
       d. Montana


In 1959, what world leader threw a bit of a tantrum when security concerns prevented him from visiting Disneyland, and instead settled for a tour of the set of "Can-Can", which he found morally scandalous?

       a. Charles de Gaulle
       b. Fidel Castro
       c. Nikita Khrushchev
       d. Winston Churchill


Had he won the 1912 election and survived his full term, who would have been the first person to serve more than eight years as president?

       a. Theodore Roosevelt
       b. William McKinley
       c. William Howard Taft
       d. Woodrow Wilson


What Catholic presidential candidate told the Greater Houston Ministerial Association that he believed in an America "where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote"?

       a. Alfred Smith
       b. John Kerry
       c. John Kennedy
       d. Richard Nixon


Republican operative Mary Matalin got married to which high-level Democratic operative?

       a. James Carville
       b. Donna Brazile
       c. Paul Begala
       d. Andrew Sullivan


Whittaker Chambers produced a pumpkin full of microfilm that incriminated what former Department of State official?

       a. Aldrich Ames
       b. Alger Hiss
       c. Rudolf Abel
       d. Julius Rosenberg


What "silent" president was also the first to deliver a political speech over the radio?

       a. William Howard Taft
       b. Calvin Coolidge
       c. Harry Truman
       d. Woodrow Wilson


Her real name was Matoaka (meaning "Playful One") and when she died, she was Rebecca Rolfe. But the name by which she's better known seems to mean "little slut". Who is she?

       a. Pocahontas
       b. Sacajawea
       c. Boadicca
       d. Cleopatra




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