60 Fun Facts About Guess the Year

In which year did the Berlin Wall fall?

1989: the Wall came down on 9 November during the Peaceful Revolution, after a botched press briefing sent crowds to the crossings and the guards gave way.

In which year did the Titanic sink?

1912: she struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York and sank in the early hours of 15 April.

In which year was the first iPhone released?

2007: Steve Jobs unveiled it on 9 January as three devices in one, an iPod, a phone and an internet communicator, and it went on sale in June.

In which year did Apollo 11 land the first humans on the Moon?

1969: with the computer steering Eagle toward a boulder field, Armstrong took over and flew past it, landing on 20 July with under a minute of fuel left.

In which year did reactor 4 explode at the Chernobyl nuclear plant?

1986: reactor 4 exploded on 26 April during a botched safety test, near the town of Pripyat in what is now Ukraine.

In which year did King John seal Magna Carta at Runnymede?

1215: the 'Great Charter' was sealed on 15 June at Runnymede, near Windsor, and King John soon persuaded the Pope to annul it.

In which year did Christopher Columbus make his first voyage across the Atlantic?

1492: when he landed in the Bahamas on 12 October, Columbus believed he had reached the East Indies near Asia.

In which year was the Bastille stormed in Paris?

1789: the 14 July attack on the fortress-prison became France's national day, Bastille Day, commemorated from 1880 onward.

In which year was the Battle of Hastings fought?

1066: William of Normandy beat Harold Godwinson on 14 October and the Norman Conquest of England began.

In which year was the United States Declaration of Independence adopted?

1776: Congress adopted the text on 4 July, ordered the engrossed copy on 19 July, and most delegates signed it on 2 August.

In which year did the Wright Flyer make the first sustained powered flight?

1903: Wilbur won a coin toss for the first try on 14 December but stalled, so Orville made the first successful flight three days later.

In which year was Facebook founded?

2004: Mark Zuckerberg launched it from Harvard on 4 February as TheFacebook, and at first only Harvard students could join.

In which year was Google founded?

1998: Larry Page and Sergey Brin first built the search engine in their Stanford dorm rooms as BackRub, then incorporated Google in a Menlo Park garage.

In which year did the First World War begin?

1914: Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on 28 July, a month after Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo.

In which year did Japan attack Pearl Harbor?

1941: the surprise raid on the US Pacific Fleet at Oahu came on 7 December, and the United States declared war on Japan the next day.

In which year did Nazi Germany's surrender bring the war in Europe to an end?

1945: General Alfred Jodl signed Germany's unconditional surrender at Reims on 7 May, and VE Day was celebrated the next day.

In which year was Nelson Mandela released from prison?

1990: President F. W. de Klerk freed him on 11 February after 27 years, having unbanned the ANC nine days earlier.

In which year did euro coins and banknotes enter circulation?

2002: the euro had existed as an accounting currency since 1999; the notes and coins arrived on 1 January and had replaced the old currencies by the end of February.

In which year was the Great Fire of London?

1666: it burned from Sunday 2 to Wednesday 5 September, starting in Thomas Farriner's bakery on Pudding Lane and gutting the medieval City.

In which year did William Shakespeare die?

1616: he died on 23 April, traditionally also his birthday, aged 52, and was buried in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon.

In which year was the Battle of Waterloo?

1815: fought on Sunday 18 June near a village then in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and now in Belgium, it was Napoleon's last battle.

In which year did the Wall Street Crash begin?

1929: prices on the New York Stock Exchange collapsed in late October, with Black Thursday on the 24th and Black Tuesday on the 29th, ushering in the Great Depression.

In which year was President John F. Kennedy assassinated?

1963: he was shot in Dallas on 22 November, and two days later his accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was himself shot dead by Jack Ruby.

In which year was the Eiffel Tower completed?

1889: Gustave Eiffel's company finished it in March after just over two years' work, in time for that year's Exposition Universelle.

In which year was the Statue of Liberty dedicated?

1886: President Grover Cleveland dedicated it on 28 October, and its hidden iron framework was designed by Gustave Eiffel.

In which year did the Suez Canal officially open?

1869: Britain had opposed the French-led canal, then bought Egypt's shares in it six years after it opened.

In which year did Krakatoa erupt catastrophically?

1883: the climactic eruption in the Sunda Strait came on 26-27 August, after months of activity from May, and its tsunamis killed tens of thousands.

In which year did Mount Vesuvius bury Pompeii?

AD 79: the eruption buried Pompeii and Herculaneum under ash and pyroclastic flows; Pliny the Younger's two letters to Tacitus describe it.

In which year was Julius Caesar assassinated?

44 BC: he was stabbed on the Ides of March, 15 March, by a group of senators at the Curia of Pompey in Rome.

In which year were the first modern Olympic Games held, in Athens?

1896: the Games of the I Olympiad ran from 6 to 15 April in Athens, revived by Pierre de Coubertin's International Olympic Committee.

In which year did New Zealand become the first self-governing country to give women the vote?

1893: the Electoral Act got royal assent on 19 September and women voted in the general election that November.

In which year did production of the Ford Model T begin?

1908: the first one left Detroit's Piquette Avenue Plant on 27 September, and Ford's moving assembly line later cut its build time from over 12 hours to about 90 minutes.

In which year did Prohibition begin in the United States?

1920: the country went dry on 17 January when the Volstead Act took effect, and stayed that way until repeal in 1933.

In which year did Alexander Fleming discover penicillin?

1928: back from holiday, Fleming found a stray Penicillium mould on a staphylococcus plate at St Mary's Hospital, London, and saw that the bacteria around it had died.

In which year was Hong Kong handed over from Britain to China?

1997: the handover came at midnight on 1 July, under terms set by the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration.

In which year was the first Star Wars film released?

1977: it opened in only a small number of US cinemas on 25 May and became a surprise blockbuster.

In which year did MTV launch?

1981: it went on air at 12:01 am on 1 August, opening with Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles.

In which year was Amazon founded?

1994: Jeff Bezos incorporated it on 5 July as an online bookshop in Bellevue, Washington, briefly calling it Cadabra.

In which year was the bitcoin network created?

2009: Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first block on 3 January and embedded a Times headline in it: 'Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks'.

In which year did the United Kingdom vote to leave the European Union?

2016: Leave won 51.9% on 23 June, and Prime Minister David Cameron, who had campaigned to Remain, announced the next day that he would step down.

In which year did the WHO first declare a coronavirus outbreak a pandemic?

2020: the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on 11 March, and Director-General Tedros said it was the first pandemic caused by a coronavirus.

In which year was Barack Obama first elected president?

2008: Obama beat John McCain on 4 November after defeating Hillary Clinton in a long primary race, then chose her as his secretary of state.

In which year did Paul McCartney publicly announce he had left the Beatles?

1970: McCartney announced his departure on 10 April, a month before Let It Be came out, after Brian Epstein's death and years of strain had split the band.

In which year did the United States buy the Louisiana Territory from France?

1803: the purchase treaty was signed in Paris on 30 April and the formal cession came on 20 December, three weeks after Spain handed the territory back to France.

In which year was the Battle of Trafalgar?

1805: Nelson's fleet met the combined French and Spanish navies on 21 October during the War of the Third Coalition, and Nelson died in the victory.

In which year was Abraham Lincoln shot at Ford's Theatre?

1865: John Wilkes Booth shot him on 14 April, six weeks into his second term and five days after Lee's surrender at Appomattox.

In which year did the Hindenburg airship burn at Lakehurst, New Jersey?

1937: radio reporter Herbert Morrison was recording a routine arrival report when the airship caught fire, and his cry 'Oh, the humanity!' became famous.

In which year did the so-called Spanish flu pandemic begin?

1918: the first well-documented cases came in March at Camp Funston, a US Army camp in Kansas; the name came from Spain's uncensored wartime press.

In which year did the Russian Revolution begin?

1917: it opened with the February Revolution, which toppled Nicholas II in March by the Western calendar, and ended with the Bolshevik seizure of power in November.

In which year did Canadian Confederation create the Dominion of Canada?

1867: on 1 July the British North America Act united the Province of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick into a dominion of four provinces.

In which year did the Australian colonies federate as the Commonwealth of Australia?

1901: the constitution came into force on 1 January, and Edmund Barton, the interim prime minister, won the first federal election that March.

In which year was the first Super Bowl played?

1967: the Packers beat the Chiefs 35-10 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on 15 January in what was billed as the AFL-NFL World Championship Game.

In which year did Microsoft release Windows XP to retail?

2001: it went on sale on 25 October and put home and business PCs on the same Windows NT foundation, ending the old MS-DOS-based consumer line.

In which year did Ernő Rubik invent the Rubik's Cube?

1974: Ernő Rubik, a Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture, built the first prototype and applied for a Hungarian patent the next year.

In which year was Pac-Man released in arcades?

1980: Namco released it in Japan on 22 May as Puck Man; Midway brought it to North America later that year under the Pac-Man name.

In which year was the Soviet Union formally dissolved?

1991: the Soviet Union ceased to exist as a sovereign state on 26 December, the day after Gorbachev resigned as its president.

In which year did the Peace of Westphalia end the Thirty Years' War?

1648: the treaties signed at Osnabrück and Münster on 24 October ended the Thirty Years' War, which had begun with the Defenestration of Prague in 1618.

In which year was Newton's Principia first published?

1687: it appeared on 5 July, with the imprimatur of Samuel Pepys as president of the Royal Society; two corrected editions followed in Newton's lifetime.

In which year was Darwin's On the Origin of Species published?

1859: John Murray printed 1,250 copies, and booksellers took up every available one at his trade sale on 22 November, two days before publication.

In which year did Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first reach the summit of Everest?

1953: Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit on 29 May, and the news reached London on the morning of Elizabeth II's coronation.