Modern usage of the term trivia dates to the 1960s, when college students introduced question-and-answer contests to their universities.
Since the beginning of its modern usage, trivia contests have been established at various academic levels as well as casual venues such as bars and restaurants.
In medieval Latin, the trivia (singular trivium) came to refer to the lower division of the Artes Liberales: grammar, rhetoric, and logic.
Book II of the 1902 publication is headed with a quote from "Gay's Trivia, or New Art of Walking Streets of London.
My eyes have grown dim over books; believing in geological periods, cave dwellers, Chinese Dynasties, and the fixed stars has prematurely aged me.In the 1960s, nostalgic college students and others began to informally trade questions and answers about the popular culture of their youth.
The first known documented labeling of this casual parlor game as "Trivia" was in a Columbia Daily Spectator column published on February 5, 1965.