100 Black History Month Trivia Questions That Will Rearrange What You Think You Know
Most people can name the same five figures without blinking. These 100 Black History Month trivia questions start where that confidence ends and keep going.
30 Thanksgiving Trivia Questions That Will Start Arguments Before Dessert
Before the Bird Gets Carved
The first Thanksgiving didn’t have turkey. Probably. The historical record is thin enough that we’ve been filling in the blanks with whatever makes a good painting for about 400 years. And that’s what makes Thanksgiving trivia so satisfying to play at an actual Thanksgiving table: everyone in the room has strong opinions built on surprisingly shaky ground.
I’ve run these thanksgiving trivia questions at events where the host’s mother got genuinely upset about the cranberry answer. I’ve seen a retired history teacher lose to a fourteen-year-old on the presidential pardon question. The holiday has this layer of mythology that people absorb without ever questioning, and the best questions peel that back just enough to make the table go quiet for a second.
Some of these are warm-ups. Some will make someone put down their fork. Let’s go.
The Stuff Everyone Thinks They Know
1. In what year did the Pilgrims celebrate what’s traditionally considered the first Thanksgiving?
People lock in 1620 almost instantly, because that’s the Mayflower year. But the Mayflower landed in late 1620. The harvest feast everyone pictures happened the following autumn.
2. What colony hosted that 1621 harvest celebration?
This one’s a confidence check. Most people know it but second-guess themselves when you ask it formally.
3. Which Native American people participated in the 1621 feast alongside the Pilgrims?
I’ve heard “Cherokee” more than once, which tells you how poorly American schools taught this for decades. The real answer matters, and it matters that people know it.
4. Which president made Thanksgiving an official national holiday?
Here’s where the arguments start. People split hard between two presidents, and technically both have a claim. But only one signed the proclamation making it a fixed annual holiday.
5. What influential writer spent 17 years campaigning for Thanksgiving to become a national holiday, eventually persuading Lincoln?
This woman basically willed the holiday into existence through sheer editorial persistence. She also wrote one of the most famous nursery rhymes in the English language.
6. Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday of November. But it wasn’t always the fourth Thursday. Who moved it, and why?
The reason is so bluntly commercial it always gets a laugh.
The Turkey Round
7. True or false: Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national bird of the United States.
This one is almost a trick question, because the story everyone knows isn’t quite the story that happened.
8. How many turkeys are consumed in the United States on Thanksgiving each year, roughly?
People always guess too low. The number is staggering.
9. Does turkey actually make you sleepy?
I love this one because everyone at the table has an opinion, and at least two people will start arguing before you can even reveal the answer.
10. What is the fleshy red piece of skin that hangs from a turkey’s neck called?
People guess “gobbler” or “waddle” or just stare at you. The real word sounds like it belongs to a different animal entirely.
11. Which U.S. president is credited with starting the tradition of the annual White House turkey pardon?
Everyone says JFK. And JFK did spare a turkey once. But the formal annual tradition started later than people think.
At the Table
12. What percentage of Americans eat turkey on Thanksgiving: 68%, 78%, or 88%?
The answer says something about how powerful cultural defaults are.
13. Which side dish is the most popular at Thanksgiving dinner across the United States, according to most national surveys?
This is a regional war disguised as a trivia question. I’ve seen Southerners nearly leave the room.
14. Cranberry sauce: what state produces the most cranberries in the U.S.?
Massachusetts gets all the cultural credit. It’s not Massachusetts.
15. Cranberries are one of only three fruits native to North America that are commercially grown. Name one of the other two.
This question is a beautiful slow burn. People cycle through strawberries, apples, peaches, all wrong. The real answers are hiding in plain sight.
16. What is the difference between stuffing and dressing?
Ask this at a table with people from different parts of the country and you won’t need any more questions for twenty minutes.
17. What dessert was almost certainly NOT at the first Thanksgiving, despite being the most iconic Thanksgiving dessert today?
The Pilgrims didn’t have ovens. That alone rules out a lot.
Parades, Football, and Other Rituals
18. What year did the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade first take place?
It’s older than people think. And it wasn’t originally called what you’d expect.
19. In the first Macy’s parade, what were used instead of the now-famous giant helium balloons?
The balloons didn’t show up until a few years later. The first parade had something much more chaotic.
20. Which NFL team has hosted a Thanksgiving Day game every year since 1934?
Football people know this instantly. Everyone else guesses the Cowboys, which is the second-longest streak.
21. What was the name of the first balloon character in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade?
It’s a character everyone knows, and the image of it as a giant parade balloon in 1927 is genuinely delightful.
22. In the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special, what does Snoopy serve for Thanksgiving dinner?
If you watched this as a kid, the answer comes back to you like a sense memory.
The Ones That Make You Think Twice
23. How long did the first Thanksgiving celebration actually last?
People picture a single meal. It was not a single meal.
24. The day after Thanksgiving is Black Friday. What is the Saturday after Thanksgiving called?
This one’s newer, and about half the room will know it. The other half will be surprised it has a name at all.
25. Which U.S. state was the first to adopt an official Thanksgiving holiday?
It’s not Massachusetts. The answer predates the Pilgrims’ feast.
26. What is the busiest travel day of the Thanksgiving holiday period in the United States?
Everyone says the Wednesday before. And that’s the most common wrong answer.
27. Canada celebrates Thanksgiving too. In which month?
Americans are always a little thrown by this. Canadians in the room look smug.
28. What was the name of the ship that brought the Pilgrims to America? Easy. Now: what was the name of the SECOND ship that was supposed to sail with it but turned back?
The first answer is a gimme. The second is where you separate the table.
29. What food was likely the main protein at the first Thanksgiving, based on the only firsthand account we have?
It wasn’t turkey. The one surviving written account from 1621 mentions something else entirely, and it’s the kind of detail that changes the picture in your head.
The Last One
30. In the only firsthand account of the 1621 Thanksgiving, written by colonist Edward Winslow, how many Pilgrims had survived from the original group that arrived on the Mayflower?
This is the question I save for last because it does something to the room. People are laughing and arguing and full of pie, and then you ask them to think about what that first autumn actually looked like. Out of roughly 102 passengers who crossed the Atlantic, disease and starvation had already taken more than half before harvest time came. The feast wasn’t a celebration of abundance. It was a celebration of not being dead. Roughly 53 Pilgrims sat down for that meal. Every one of them had buried someone. That’s the thing about Thanksgiving that trivia can actually touch, if you let it. The holiday isn’t really about the food. It never was.
General knowledge is the hardest round to write because it has to be genuinely broad. I've been at it for 10 years from Boston, MA and I still approach every question like I'm writing for a room full of different people, because I am. I've written for JetPunk trivia, and I take the same care with every set I write.
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