States of the Union Trivia Quiz

Answer: Utah

The 'Golden Spike' was the last spike driven, to complete the first transcontinental railroad in the United States. The final spike was driven on May 10, 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah, with the Union Pacific's locomotive No. 119 facing the Central Pacific's No. 60 (aka 'Jupiter'). Shortly thereafter, in January 1870, the train crews were relocated to Ogden, Utah. By June 1870, the population at Promontory Summit was reduced to about 40 people, i.e., employees of the Central Pacific, a hotel owner and his family and a miner (no, he was not younger than 21).

Answer: South Carolina

The first shots of the American Civil War were fired on April 12, 1861 at Fort Sumter, near Charleston, South Carolina. After the November 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as President, South Carolina was the first of the southern states to secede from the Union.

The Battle of Fort Sumter was fought from April 12 to April 14, 1861. In case you were wondering, Beauregard and his Confederate forces fired on the Union garrison, to win the first battle of the Civil (?) War.

Answer: Virginia

The first successful, permanent English settlement on the mainland of North America was in Jamestown, Virginia, established on May 14, 1607. The first attempt at English settlement was the storied lost colony of Roanoke, Virginia in 1587, and we all know what happened to them - oh, no...we don't!
On a side note: the first settlers were greeted by friendly Indians (now Native Americans) who provided them with lavish feasts but, as the settlers became less inclined to grow their own produce and 'strong-arm' the natives for more food, relations between the two groups deteriorated rapidly.

Answer: California

In the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, a series of riots broke out beginning on August 11, 1965 and lasted six days resulting in a loss of more than forty million dollars in property damage. The riots claimed the lives of thirty-four people, more than one thousand injuries and almost four thousand arrests by the time the National Guard had restored order on
August 17th.

Answer: Wyoming

The oldest National Park in the United States is Yellowstone National Park. It is situated mainly in northwestern Wyoming, with some areas in southern Montana and eastern Idaho, and was created in 1872. The second and third National Parks (in case you were wondering) were Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park and Yosemite, both created in 1890. Yellowstone features rivers, canyons, forests, hot springs and, of course, that most famous geyser, 'Old Faithful'.

Answer: Tennessee

On April 4, 1968, shots rang out at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, killing the American clergyman and great civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was only 39 years old. Dr. King was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers' strike when he was shot by James Earl Ray. Ray had escaped from a Missouri prison in 1967 and, after the assassination, fled to Europe under an assumed name.

He was caught on June 8th at Heathrow Airport in London, England, and sentenced in March 1969 to 99 years in prison.

He died on April 23, 1998.

Answer: Hawaii

Early on the morning of December 7, 1941 ("a day which will live in infamy"), hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, on Oahu Island, Hawaii. There were 2,390 casualties from 44 states, Washington, DC, Guam, Hawaii, the Philippines and Canada. The US Fleet had 21 ships sunk or heavily damaged, 164 aircraft lost and 159 damaged.

Answer: Pennsylvania

In order to discuss improvements to the Articles of Confederation which had been adopted in 1777, the Constitutional Convention convened on May 25, 1787 at the State House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The delegates continued to meet from May to September, at which point it was time to vote. There was a ceremonial signing on September 17, 1787 for the 12 attending state delegations.
Good trivia question: Rhode Island opposed the convention and sent no delegates.

Answer: Florida

It was January 28, 1986 at 11:39 AM EST when the space shuttle Challenger was launched from Cape Canaveral. The mission's launch had already been delayed for six days due to weather and technical problems. The weather that day was unusually cold and engineers warned that rubber O-rings were vulnerable to failure at low temperatures, but the Challenger lifted off anyway.

The flight was telecast and, as we watched, 73 seconds later, the space shuttle broke apart, resulting in the deaths of all seven crew members.

Answer: District of Columbia

While the term "Watergate" is a general term often used to describe political scandals which took place between 1972 and 1974, the word refers specifically to the Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC. This is where Watergate burglars broke into the Democratic Party's National Committee offices on June 17, 1972; the burglars were arrested that same year. On November 7, 1972 President Nixon won re-election against the Democratic candidate, George McGovern, by one of the biggest landslides in US history.

But in 1973, shortly after he took office for a second term, a committee was assigned by the Senate to investigate and...by August 9, 1974, Nixon resigned as President.