50 free 1930s trivia questions with answers. The Dirty Thirties, the Depression decade, the years between the Crash and the war. This quiz covers the whole of the 1930s: Roosevelt's New Deal and the end of Prohibition, the Dust Bowl and the Grapes of Wrath, Hitler's rise and the Munich Agreement, the Hindenburg and Amelia Earhart, Jesse Owens in Berlin, the Lindbergh kidnapping, Bonnie and Clyde, plus the films, songs, books, inventions and buildings that defined the decade. Fifty questions run from the discovery of Pluto to the invention of the chocolate chip cookie. The easy questions ask which president launched the New Deal and which Disney film became the decade's biggest hit; the hard ones want the year Monopoly went on sale, the seismologist who found the Earth's inner core, the couturière behind the bias cut and the state that ended Prohibition. It suits history buffs, pub quiz teams and anyone whose grandparents grew up on radio serials and swing. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's article on the decade and its linked entries, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What nickname did the Dust Bowl earn the decade in the United States?
The Dirty Thirties
Drought plus decades of farming without crop rotation stripped an estimated 100 million acres.
Q 02Which US president, taking office in 1933, launched the New Deal?
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The programme was a radical break from the laissez-faire economics that preceded it.
Q 03Which constitutional amendment, ratified on December 5, 1933, ended Prohibition in the United States?
The Twenty-first
It is the only amendment ever passed to repeal another one.
Q 04Which 1937 animated film became the highest-grossing movie of the decade in gross rentals?
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Gone with the Wind, released two years later, beat it on distributor rentals and still leads when adjusted for inflation.
Q 05Which two comic-book superheroes made their debuts at the end of the decade, in 1938 and 1939?
Superman and Batman
Both arrived as pulp magazines were at the height of their popularity.
Q 06Which airship exploded over Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6, 1937?
Hindenburg
Thirty-six people died and the public never trusted hydrogen airships again.
Q 07Which aviator disappeared over the Pacific in 1937 during an attempted round-the-world flight?
Amelia Earhart
The search that followed found nothing.
Q 08Which planet was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930?
Pluto
It held the title of ninth planet until 2006.
Q 09Which New York skyscraper opened on May 1, 1931, and stayed the world's tallest for 35 years?
The Empire State Building
The Golden Gate Bridge followed in San Francisco in May 1937.
Q 10Which radio drama, broadcast on October 30, 1938, caused panic in parts of the United States?
The War of the Worlds
Orson Welles' adaptation of H. G. Wells was staged as a series of news bulletins.
Q 11Which athlete won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics?
Jesse Owens
A year earlier he set five world records and tied a sixth in under an hour at the Big Ten Championships.
Q 12Which country hosted and won the 1934 FIFA World Cup, then won again in 1938?
Italy
The 1938 tournament in France was the last World Cup until 1950.
Q 13Which novel about Dust Bowl migrants was the best-selling book in the US in 1939?
The Grapes of Wrath
Steinbeck's book won the Pulitzer Prize; The Yearling had topped the list the year before.
Q 21Whose frozen foods first went on sale on March 8, 1930, in Springfield, Massachusetts?
Clarence Birdseye
That same year Frank Whittle patented the turbojet engine.
Q 22Who developed the chocolate chip cookie in 1938?
Ruth Graves Wakefield
Scotch Tape had reached the market five years earlier.
Q 23Which colour film, the first from Eastman Kodak, was invented in 1935?
Kodachrome
The BBC began the world's first regular high-definition TV service the following year.
Nylon, introduced in 1939, transformed which part of the clothing industry first?
Q 14Which Margaret Mitchell novel was America's best-selling book two years running, in 1936 and 1937?
Gone with the Wind
The 1939 film version remains the highest-grossing movie ever when adjusted for inflation.
Q 15What is Pearl S. Buck's novel about a Chinese farming family, the top US bestseller of 1931 and 1932?
The Good Earth
Hervey Allen's Anthony Adverse then held the top spot for the next two years.
Q 16Which Charlie Chaplin film of 1936 was the last to feature his Tramp character?
Modern Times
City Lights, released in 1931, was still essentially silent four years into the talkie era.
Q 17Which style of jazz began its rise to become America's most popular music from 1933?
Swing
It gradually pushed out the 'sweet' jazz that had dominated the early part of the decade.
Q 18Cole Porter's 'Night and Day' was the biggest song of 1932. Which of his songs was the biggest hit of 1935?
Begin the Beguine
Blue Moon by Rodgers and Hart topped 1934, and A Foggy Day was the song of 1937.
Q 19Which singer, with Rudy Vallée, exemplified the intimate 'crooning' style enabled by microphones?
Bing Crosby
His 'I'm an Old Cowhand' was the most popular song of 1936.
Q 20Which two Delta blues musicians did the most to expand the genre in the 1930s?
Robert Johnson and Skip James
Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli were meanwhile inventing Gypsy jazz in Paris.
Hosiery
Rayon was already spreading through everyday dressmaking.
Q 25Which French couturière championed the bias cut that defined the decade's slinky satin gowns?
Madeleine Vionnet
Schiaparelli meanwhile teamed up with Salvador Dalí for a lobster dress and a shoe-shaped hat.
Q 26Which British monarch abdicated in 1936, handing the crown to George VI?
Edward VIII
He had reigned just 325 days after his father's death.
Q 27Which British prime minister promised 'peace for our time' after the 1938 Munich Agreement?
Neville Chamberlain
He was ousted in favour of Churchill in May 1940 after the German invasion of Norway.
Q 28What was the Anschluss of 1938?
Germany's annexation of Austria
The Sudetenland followed after Munich, and what was left of Czechoslovakia was occupied in 1939.
Q 29Kristallnacht, in November 1938, was triggered by the assassination of which German diplomat in Paris?
Ernst vom Rath
Some 267 synagogues were destroyed and up to 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps.
Q 30The Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 ended in victory for the Nationalists led by whom?
Francisco Franco
Germany and Italy backed his side; the Soviet Union backed the Republicans.