We eat cookies to offer a better experience. Privacy Policy
30+ Interesting Facts About the USA (Perfect Quiz Material)
The USA only got an official national bird in 2024, one of its states is both the easternmost and the westernmost, and Boston once flooded with molasses. Here are 30+ verified facts about the USA that make perfect quiz questions.
By Salim Dın
July 18, 2026
10 min read
80 views
factslistusa
I write quiz questions for a living, so I spend a lot of time chasing facts that make people go "wait, really?" And no country delivers that reaction quite like the USA. It is a place where you can buy a state for two cents an acre, mail a toddler to her grandmother, and legally dig for diamonds in a public park.
For this list, I skipped the boring stuff. You will not find "the US has 50 states" here, unless there is a twist that makes it quiz-worthy. Every fact below is verified against official sources (the National Archives, the National Park Service, the Library of Congress, and friends), and I have linked my main sources at the bottom.
One more thing before we start: every single fact in this article can be turned into a quiz question. If you host trivia nights, treat this as free raw material. And if you want ready-made questions instead, we have thousands of them at quizquestions.org.
History facts that surprise almost everyone
American history is full of things everybody "knows" that turn out to be wrong. These are my favorites, and they work beautifully as true-or-false questions in a history quiz.
The Declaration of Independence was not signed on July 4, 1776: Congress adopted the text on July 4, but according to the National Archives, most of the 56 delegates signed the parchment copy on August 2, 1776. A few signed even later.
The bald eagle only became the official national bird in 2024: It sat on the Great Seal since 1782, but nobody ever passed a law about it. Congress finally fixed that, and the designation was signed into law on December 23, 2024.
The US had no official language for nearly 250 years: English was only designated the official language by executive order in March 2025. Before that, the country famously ran without one at the federal level.
Salim has experience in content marketing, growth marketing, and building viral quizzes. Salim founded Quiz Questions Org (QQO, in short) in 2025. Ever curious, he loves researching different topics and areas to turn them into quizzes. Salim has a lifelong passion for cycling and traveling.
Washington, DC was not the first capital: New York City was. George Washington took the first presidential oath of office on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street on April 30, 1789.
Alaska cost about 2 cents per acre: The US bought it from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million. Critics called it "Seward's Folly" after Secretary of State William Seward. Then came the gold, and the oil.
Wyoming let women vote in 1869: That is more than 50 years before the 19th Amendment. The territory granted women the vote and the right to hold office, a world first for a government at that level.
A teenager designed the 50-star flag for homework: As the story goes, 17-year-old Robert Heft sewed the design as a class project in 1958 and got a B-minus. After Eisenhower selected the design in 1960, the teacher raised the grade to an A.
The US Constitution is the oldest written national constitution still in use: Drafted in 1787, in effect since 1789. Fun follow-up for quiz nerds: the Massachusetts state constitution of 1780 is even older and also still active.
People used to mail their children: When Parcel Post launched in 1913, a few rural families realized stamps were cheaper than train tickets. The Smithsonian documents about seven cases of "mailed" children, including a four-year-old sent 73 miles to her grandmother, before the Post Office banned it in 1915.
Geography and nature: a country of extremes
This is my favorite section, because American geography keeps producing facts that sound made up. If your players love this stuff, our geography questions are full of it.
Alaska is the westernmost AND easternmost state: The Aleutian Islands stretch so far that they cross the 180th meridian into the Eastern Hemisphere. By longitude, Amatignak Island is the westernmost point of the US and Semisopochnoi Island is the easternmost. Same state, both records.
Russia is only 2.4 miles from the USA: Little Diomede Island (US) and Big Diomede Island (Russia) sit that close in the Bering Strait. Because the International Date Line runs between them, they are also about 21 hours apart. Locals call them Yesterday Isle and Tomorrow Island.
The hottest air temperature ever recorded on Earth was in California: 134 degrees Fahrenheit (56.7 C) at Furnace Creek in Death Valley on July 10, 1913, still listed as the world record by the World Meteorological Organization. The same valley contains Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level.
The tallest mountain on Earth is in Hawaii, sort of: Measured from its base on the seafloor to its summit, Mauna Kea stands over 33,500 feet, which beats Mount Everest by about a mile. Everest keeps the crown for height above sea level, so both answers can win you an argument.
The world's longest known cave system is in Kentucky: Mammoth Cave has more than 426 miles of surveyed passageways, and explorers keep adding miles. The second-longest cave system on Earth is not even close.
Alaska has more coastline than all other states combined: Its 6,640-mile general coastline beats the other 49 states put together, and if you count every island and inlet, the shoreline runs past 33,000 miles.
Yellowstone was the first national park in the world: President Grant signed the act on March 1, 1872, decades before most countries had the concept of a national park at all.
The largest living tree on Earth grows in California: The General Sherman, a giant sequoia in Sequoia National Park, holds more wood by volume than any other tree: 275 feet tall and an estimated 2,300 to 2,700 years old.
One of the world's shortest rivers is 201 feet long: Montana's Roe River flows from Giant Springs into the Missouri River and once held the Guinness record for the world's shortest river, thanks to a campaign by a class of fifth graders.
The closest US state to Africa is Maine: Not Florida. Thanks to the shape of the Atlantic, Quoddy Head in Maine sits roughly 3,150 miles from Morocco, closer than any other point in the country.
Badwater Basin in Death Valley, the lowest point in North America. Photo: Christian David, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
States and cities with stories to tell
Every state has its oddities, but some of them go way beyond "quirky town name." Although, to be fair, we have one of those too.
The oldest European-founded city in the US is not Jamestown: St. Augustine, Florida was founded by the Spanish in 1565, which makes it 42 years older than Jamestown and 55 years older than the Pilgrims' arrival at Plymouth.
Chicago reversed its river: In 1900, engineers completed a 28-mile canal that made the Chicago River flow away from Lake Michigan instead of into it, to keep sewage out of the city's drinking water. It is still considered one of the great engineering feats in American history.
Boring, Oregon has a sister community called Dull: The pairing with Dull, Scotland became official in 2012, and Bland, Australia joined the club in 2013. Together they market themselves as the "Trinity of Tedium." Tourism went up.
You can dig for real diamonds in Arkansas and keep them: Crater of Diamonds State Park is the only diamond-producing site in the world open to the public. Visitors find over 600 diamonds a year, and the finders-keepers rule is official policy. The largest diamond ever found in the US, the 40.23-carat Uncle Sam, came out of this crater in 1924.
Boston was once flooded by molasses: In January 1919, a storage tank burst and released 2.3 million gallons of molasses into the North End. The wave moved at an estimated 35 miles per hour and killed 21 people. It sounds like a joke; it was a genuine disaster that changed US engineering regulations.
Food and culture: icons with plot twists
American food facts are dangerous quiz territory, because the obvious answer is usually wrong. That is exactly what makes them fun.
Fortune cookies are American, not Chinese: They most likely came from Japanese immigrant bakers in California in the early 1900s. San Francisco's Japanese Tea Garden served an early version, and the cookies later spread through Chinese-American restaurants.
The hamburger sandwich has an official birthplace: The Library of Congress recognizes Louis' Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut, where Louis Lassen reportedly served ground steak between bread to a customer in a hurry in 1900. The restaurant still cooks burgers on cast iron broilers from 1898.
Apple pie is not American: The earliest known apple pie recipe appeared in England around 1390, in a cookbook called The Forme of Cury. The phrase "as American as apple pie" only took off around World War II.
The national mammal is the bison, and only since 2016: The National Bison Legacy Act made it official on May 9, 2016, after the species recovered from near extinction. So the US picked its national mammal 240 years after independence.
The Statue of Liberty used to be shiny copper: When it was unveiled in 1886, it gleamed like a new penny. Oxidation slowly turned it green, and in 1906 Congress even set aside $62,000 to paint it back. Public outcry killed the plan, luckily.
The Statue of Liberty, copper-colored in 1886 and fully green within a few decades. Photo: Elcobbola, Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Records and institutions
A few facts about the giant institutions that quietly break world records. These make great "guess the number" questions, because everyone guesses too low.
The largest library in the world is the Library of Congress: Around 173 million items sit on roughly 838 miles of shelves, and the collection grows by about 12,000 items every working day.
The largest museum complex in the world is the Smithsonian: 21 museums plus the National Zoo, holding more than 157 million objects. Only about 1 percent of the collection is on display at any given time.
The tallest mountain and the hottest place share one country, and almost one state: If you like connections, remember that California alone holds the hottest place on Earth (Death Valley), the largest tree on Earth (General Sherman), and the lowest point in North America (Badwater Basin). One state, three world-class records.
Observatories near the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, the tallest mountain on Earth measured from base to peak. Photo: Generic1139, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
Turn these facts into quiz questions
Here is how I would use this list. Take a fact, hide the surprising part, and offer three plausible decoys. "Which state is closest to Africa?" with Florida, Maine, North Carolina, and Virginia as options is a guaranteed table argument. "What flooded Boston in 1919?" works even better after a couple of drinks.
Tip
The best quiz questions come from facts where the obvious answer is wrong. Florida vs. Maine, July 4 vs. August 2, China vs. California. If a fact made you double-check it, it will make a great question.
If you write a good one, I would genuinely love to see it. You can submit your question here, and after moderation it becomes part of the community pool that everyone can play. That is the whole idea behind this site: facts in, questions out, fun for everybody.
And that is my list. More than thirty facts, zero inventions, and at least one state that manages to be east and west at the same time. If even three of these end up in your next quiz round, my work here is done.
