Boston Trivia Quiz Questions
What is Boston?
A: Boston is the capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts.
What is the estimated population as of 2018?
A: 694,583.
Boston is one of the oldest municipalities in the
United States, founded on the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by whom?
A: Puritan settlers from the English town of the same name.
Upon gaining U.S. independence from Great Britain
Boston continued to be an important port and manufacturing hub as well as a
center for what?
A: Education and culture.
The city has expanded beyond the original peninsula
through what?
A: Land reclamation and municipal annexation.
Its rich history attracts many tourists, with Faneuil
Hall alone drawing how many visitors per year?
A: More than 20 million.
Boston's many firsts include the United States' first
public what?
A: Park (Boston Common, 1634).
In 1629, the Massachusetts Bay Colony's first Governor
John Winthrop led the signing of what?
A: The Cambridge Agreement, a key founding document of the city.
America's first public school, Boston Latin School, was
founded in Boston in what year?
A: 1635.
Boston was the largest town in British America until
what city grew larger in the mid-18th century?
A: Philadelphia.
Boston's oceanfront location made it a lively port, and
the city primarily engaged in what during its colonial days?
A: Shipping and fishing.
However, Boston stagnated in the decades prior to the
what?
A: The Revolution.
By the mid-18th century, New York City and Philadelphia
surpassed Boston in what?
A: Wealth.
Boston encountered financial difficulties even as other
cities in New England did what?
A: Grew rapidly.
In 1773, what did a group of Boston rebels do as a
response to the Tea Act, in an event known as the Boston Tea Party?
A: Threw a shipment of tea by the British East
India Company into Boston
Harbor.
Many of the crucial events of the what occurred in or
near Boston?
A: American Revolution.
Boston's penchant for mob action along with the
colonists' growing distrust in Britain fostered what in the city?
A: A revolutionary spirit.
When the British government passed the Stamp Act in
1765, what did a Boston mob do?
A: It ravaged the homes of Andrew Oliver, the official tasked with enforcing
the Act, and Thomas Hutchinson, then the Lieutenant Governor of
Massachusetts.
The British sent two regiments to Boston in 1768 in an
attempt to do what?
A: Quell the angry colonists. This did not sit well with the colonists.
Boston itself was besieged for how long during the
Siege of Boston, which began on April 19, 1775?
A: almost a year.
What impeded the movement of the British Army?
A: The New England militia.
On June 17, the British captured the Charlestown
peninsula in Boston, during what battle?
A: The Battle of Bunker Hill.
The British army outnumbered the militia stationed
there, but why was it a Pyrrhic victory for the British?
A: Because their army suffered devastating casualties.
Several weeks later, who took over the militia after
the Continental Congress established the Continental Army to unify the
revolutionary effort?
A: George Washington.
After the Revolution, Boston's long seafaring tradition
helped make it what?
A: One of the world's wealthiest international ports, with the slave trade,
rum, fish, salt, and tobacco being particularly important.
Boston's harbor activity was significantly curtailed by
what?
A: The Embargo Act of 1807 (adopted during the Napoleonic Wars) and the War
of 1812.
Manufacturing became an important component of the
city's economy, and the city's industrial manufacturing overtook what?
A: International trade in economic importance by the mid-19th century.
Boston remained one of the nation's largest
manufacturing centers until the early 20th century and was known for its
what?
A: Garment production and leather-goods industries.
A network of small rivers bordering the city and
connecting it to the surrounding region facilitated shipment of goods and
led to a proliferation of what?
A: Mills and factories.
Later, a dense network of “what” furthered the region's
industry and commerce?
A: Railroads.
Boston was an early port of the Atlantic triangular
slave trade in the New England colonies, but was soon overtaken by who?
A: Salem, Massachusetts and Newport,
Rhode Island.
Boston eventually became a center of what?
A: The abolitionist movement.
The city reacted strongly to the Fugitive Slave Act of
1850, contributing to President Franklin Pierce's attempt to do what?
A: Make an example of Boston after the Anthony Burns Fugitive Slave Case.
In 1822, the citizens of Boston voted to change the
official name from the "Town of Boston" to what?
A: The "City of Boston", and on March 19, 1822, the people of Boston
accepted the charter incorporating the City.
In the 1820s, Boston's population grew rapidly, and the
city's ethnic composition changed dramatically with the first wave of what?
A: European immigrants.
Irish immigrants dominated the first wave of newcomers
during this period, especially following what?
A: The Irish Potato Famine.
By 1850, how many Irish lived in Boston?
A: About 35,000.
After the Great Boston fire of 1872, workers used
building rubble as what?
A: Landfill along the downtown waterfront.
Boston went into decline by the early to mid-20th
century, as factories became old and obsolete and businesses moved out of
the region for what?
A: Cheaper labor elsewhere.
In 1965, the Columbia Point Health Center opened in the
Dorchester neighborhood, becoming the first what?
A: Community Health Center in the United States.
By the 1970s, the city's economy had recovered after 30
years of what?
A: Economic downturn.
On April 15, 2013, what did two Chechen
Islamist
brothers do in Boston?
A: They detonated a pair of bombs near the finish line of the Boston
Marathon, killing three people and injuring roughly 264.
In 2016, Boston briefly shouldered a bid as the US
applicant for what?
A: The 2024 Summer Olympics.
The bid was supported by the mayor and a coalition of
business leaders and local philanthropists, but was eventually dropped due
to what?
A: Public opposition.
What is the highest point in Boston?
A: It is Bellevue Hill at 330 feet (100 m) above sea level.
Boston is the only state capital in the contiguous
United States with a what?
A: An oceanic shoreline.