1926
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50 free 1926 trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The year 1926 sits in the middle of the Roaring Twenties, and it was every bit as busy as the decade's reputation suggests. Inventors showed off machines that would shape the rest of the century, athletes did things the newspapers had called impossible, and a remarkable number of future icons were born within a few months of each other. This quiz turns the best fun facts about 1926 into questions. It covers the inventions and scientific breakthroughs, the books, films and music people were talking about, the sporting contests and champions, the brands and everyday things that first appeared, and the headlines from around the world. A run of questions is given over to the well-known people who were born or who died that year. It suits anyone born in 1926 or with a parent or grandparent who was, and anyone planning a milestone birthday, a reunion or a 1920s quiz night. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so the facts are as much fun read aloud to a room as they are played on a screen.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which children's character, named partly after a Canadian black bear at London Zoo, got his first book in October 1926?
Winnie-the-Pooh
Winnie-the-Pooh sold 150,000 copies before the end of 1926. The second half of the name came from a swan called Pooh that the Milnes met on holiday.
Q 02Which British royal, third in line to the throne at birth, was born in a Mayfair townhouse in April 1926?
Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II was not expected to reign, because her uncle, the heir, was still young enough to marry and have children. She was delivered by Caesarean section at her grandfather's house.
Q 03Which US highway, established in November 1926, ran from Chicago to Santa Monica and was nicknamed the Mother Road?
Route 66
Route 66 nearly had another number: promoter Cyrus Avery wanted US 60, but Kentucky officials won that number for a road through their own state.
Q 04Which escape artist died in a Detroit hospital on Halloween 1926, days after being punched in the stomach backstage?
Harry Houdini
Harry Houdini died of peritonitis at 52. That August he had stayed sealed in a submerged casket for an hour and a half in a New York hotel pool.
Q 05Which physicist launched the world's first liquid-fueled rocket in March 1926 from his aunt's farm in Massachusetts?
Robert Goddard
Robert Goddard's rocket, later nicknamed Nell, flew for only 2.5 seconds and came down in a cabbage field 184 feet away.
Q 06Which Scottish inventor first demonstrated true television images to the public in a Soho laboratory in January 1926?
John Logie Baird
John Logie Baird had sent his first recognisable picture a few months earlier: the head of a ventriloquist's dummy nicknamed Stooky Bill.
Q 07Which stretch of water did American swimmer Gertrude Ederle become the first woman to cross in August 1926?
English Channel
The English Channel had been swum by only five men before Ederle. New York welcomed her home with a ticker-tape parade watched by more than two million people.
Q 08Which Hollywood star, born in Los Angeles in June 1926, spent much of her childhood in foster homes and an orphanage?
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson at Los Angeles General Hospital, and married her first husband, James Dougherty, at sixteen.
Q 09Which crime novelist vanished for eleven days in December 1926 and was found at a hotel in Harrogate?
Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie had registered at the hotel under the surname of her husband's lover. More than 1,000 police officers and 15,000 volunteers had joined the search.
Q 10Which standardized exam was first given in June 1926 to about 8,000 students, many of them applying to Yale?
SAT
The SAT, then called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, was developed under Princeton psychologist Carl Brigham. Six in ten of its first test-takers were male.
Q 11Which naturalist and broadcaster, born in May 1926, began presenting with Zoo Quest and later narrated Planet Earth?
David Attenborough
David Attenborough also ran BBC Two from 1965, where he quickly abolished its kangaroo mascot.
Q 12Which future Cuban leader was born in August 1926 on the farm of his father, a wealthy Spanish migrant?
Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro went on to lead Cuba from 1959 to 2011. His father had come to the island from Galicia in north-west Spain.
Q 13Which novelist, born in Monroeville, Alabama, in April 1926, was a childhood friend and neighbor of Truman Capote?
Harper Lee
Q 21Which author's 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises follows American and British expatriates from Paris to Pamplona?
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway based the characters on his own circle and a 1925 trip to the Pamplona festival. British readers got the book a year later under the title Fiesta.
Q 22Which industrialist moved his car factory workers to a five-day, 40-hour week in May 1926 without cutting their pay?
Henry Ford
Henry Ford reasoned that workers with a free Saturday would spend more on leisure, travel and shopping. His office staff followed that August.
Q 23Which emperor came to the Japanese throne on Christmas Day 1926 and reigned until his death in 1989?
Hirohito
Harper Lee based the character Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird on Capote, and later helped him research In Cold Blood.
Q 14Which rock and roll pioneer, born in Missouri in October 1926, was known for a stage move called the duck walk?
Chuck Berry
Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goode is the only rock-and-roll song included on the Voyager Golden Record, which was sent into space in 1977.
Q 15Which jazz trumpeter, born in Alton, Illinois, in May 1926, led the sextet that recorded Kind of Blue?
Miles Davis
Miles Davis had saxophonist John Coltrane in that band, and Coltrane was a 1926 baby too, born that September in North Carolina.
Q 16Which crooner, born in Queens in August 1926, was given his stage name by comedian Bob Hope?
Tony Bennett
Tony Bennett had been singing as Joe Bari until Hope took him on the road and shortened his real surname, Benedetto.
Q 17Which comedy filmmaker, born in Brooklyn in June 1926, directed The Producers, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein?
Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky on a tenement kitchen table, and changed his surname as a teenager after being confused with trumpeter Max Kaminsky.
Q 18Which Impressionist painter died in December 1926, three years after cataract surgery, and is buried at Giverny?
Claude Monet
Claude Monet died of lung cancer at 86. At the funeral his friend Georges Clemenceau swapped the black cloth on the coffin for a flower-patterned one.
Q 19Which architect died in June 1926 after a Barcelona tram struck him and he was taken for a beggar?
Antoni Gaudí
Antoni Gaudí was not recognised until the next day, when the chaplain of the Sagrada Família found him in hospital, too late for treatment to help.
Q 20Which silent film idol died in August 1926 aged 31, drawing about 100,000 mourners onto the streets of Manhattan?
Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino, the Italian-born star of The Sheik, died of peritonitis after surgery for appendicitis and gastric ulcers.
Hirohito succeeded his father and opened the Shōwa era, which ran for more than six decades. No emperor in Japanese history has reigned longer.
Q 24Which car pioneer's company merged with Gottlieb Daimler's old firm in June 1926, creating a famous German luxury brand?
Karl Benz
Karl Benz's firm and Daimler's had both enjoyed success in early motor racing. The merged company sold its cars as Mercedes-Benz under Daimler's three-pointed star.
Q 25Which dictator was shot in the nose in April 1926 by Violet Gibson, an Irishwoman who fired from a crowd?
Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini had his nose bandaged and carried on with his parade. Gibson spent the rest of her life in a psychiatric hospital in Northampton.
Q 26Which Yankees slugger made the final out of the 1926 World Series by being caught stealing second base?
Babe Ruth
Babe Ruth's failed dash handed the St. Louis Cardinals their first championship. Earlier in the Series he had hit three home runs in one game, a World Series first.
Q 27Which heavyweight champion lost his title to former Marine Gene Tunney in Philadelphia in September 1926?
Jack Dempsey
Jack Dempsey was the most famous fighter of his era, yet he lost the rematch a year later too, in the bout remembered as the Long Count Fight.
Q 28Which silent comedian played a Confederate train engineer chasing his stolen locomotive in the 1926 film The General?
Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton did his own stunts on the moving train, and bought an extra locomotive just to send it crashing through a burning bridge.
Q 29Which Swedish actress, brought to Hollywood by Louis B. Mayer, made her first American film, Torrent, in 1926?
Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo could not speak the language when she arrived in 1925, and waited in New York for more than six months before MGM sent word.
Q 30Which sharpshooter, a star of Buffalo Bill's Wild West, died in Greenville, Ohio, in November 1926?
Annie Oakley
Annie Oakley was born Phoebe Ann Mosey and learned her trade as a girl, hunting game that she sold to Greenville shopkeepers.