Will This Halloween History Quiz Be a Trick or a Treat?

The custom of bobbing for apples can be traced to an ancient Roman courting festival honoring Pomona, the goddess of agriculture and abundance. Different versions of the game existed, but in the end, certain combinations of apples and bite marks were said to foretell childrens' future relationships and who they would marry. Through Roman conquest, the game spread and made its way to modern-day Halloween.

In the 600s CE, Pope Boniface IV officially established All Saints' Day on May 13. It stayed that way for about 100 years before being shifted to November 1 in a likely effort to replace the pagan holidays already celebrated at that time. The evening before All Saints' Day became a holy, or hallowed, evening, and Halloween was born.

Samhain, an early precursor to Halloween, was first celebrated by ancient Celts in Ireland and Scotland around 2000 years ago. The festival was celebrated to welcome in the harvest and usher in "the dark half of the year," starting on October 31. It is said that the barriers between the physical and spiritual world break down during Samhain, allowing interaction between the living and dead.

On October 30, 1958, First Lady Mamie Eisenhower decorated the White House for Halloween for the first time. She hung skeletons from wall lights, put jack-o'-lanterns in the halls, and placed shocks of dried corn in corners. In the State Dining Room, she put pumpkins and miniature witches on tables, and in the foyer, she hung goblins and black cats from the chandeliers.

According to legend, the creators of the Ouija board didn't yet have a name for it, so they asked the board what it should be called. It spelled out the word "Ouija,'' and after the makers asked the board what that meant, it eerily replied, "Good luck." Since its creation in 1890, millions of Ouija boards have been sold, and tens of millions of questions have been answered by the mysterious creation.

The city of Anoka, Minnesota had been besieged by Halloween pranks for years. By 1920, residents had had enough, so civic leaders collaborated to create a big Halloween celebration with a costume parade and block party, birthing the country's first Halloween celebration.

After World War II, Pennsylvania minister Clyde Allison began a movement to collect donations for vulnerable children worldwide in lieu of candy when trick-or-treating. Children would carry around small canisters to request loose change from their neighbors, which they would then donate to UNICEF. Since then, the fundraiser has grown into an annual event and routinely raises tens of millions of dollars.

The practice of carving jack-o'-lanterns originated in Ireland and comes from an old myth about a notoriously duplicitous man named "Stingy Jack." As the legend goes, God didn't want the trickster in Heaven and the devil didn't want him in Hell, so Jack was sent into the dark night with just burning coal to light the way. Jack put the coal into a carved-out turnip, and a Jack of the Lantern, or jack-o'-lantern, was born.

Trick-or-treating began in the United States in the 1920s. However, with the onset of World War II in 1939, communities started rationing sugar, and suspended the Halloween activity. With no treats to hand out, costumed kids had to wait until after the war ended in 1945 to continue collecting candy.

In "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving, Ichabod Crane is a young superstitious schoolmaster who looks to investigate the local legend of the Headless Horseman, a Hessian soldier who was killed in the Revolutionary War. The tale was first published in 1819 and is set in the small Dutch village of Sleepy Hollow, New York, located in Westchester County, just outside of New York City.