1930s Trivia
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99 free 1930s trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
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.
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Q 01What nickname did the Dust Bowl earn the decade in the United States?
The Dirty Thirties
The Dirty Thirties: drought from 1930 and years of ploughing the southern Plains without cover crops let wind strip topsoil from an estimated 100 million acres, with Black Sunday, 14 April 1935, the worst storm.
Q 02Which US president, taking office in 1933, launched the New Deal?
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt, inaugurated on 4 March 1933, pushed 15 major bills through Congress in his first hundred days, a sharp break from Hoover's limited-intervention approach.
Q 03Which constitutional amendment, ratified on December 5, 1933, ended Prohibition in the United States?
The Twenty-first
The Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth, the first time an amendment had been undone; it was ratified by state conventions rather than legislatures, Utah casting the decisive vote on 5 December 1933.
Q 04Which film was Walt Disney's first full-length animated feature?
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered on 21 December 1937 after being derided in production as 'Disney's Folly'; it earned about $8 million on first release, a record for a sound film at the time.
Q 05Which two comic-book superheroes made their debuts at the end of the decade, in 1938 and 1939?
Superman and Batman
Superman and Batman: Superman debuted in Action Comics #1, cover-dated June 1938, and Batman in Detective Comics #27, cover-dated May 1939, both from the company that became DC Comics.
Q 06Which airship exploded over Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6, 1937?
Hindenburg
The Hindenburg, a German hydrogen-filled zeppelin, burst into flames while mooring at Lakehurst Naval Air Station; 36 people died, and the disaster ended commercial passenger airship travel.
Q 07Which aviator disappeared over the Pacific in 1937 during an attempted round-the-world flight?
Amelia Earhart
Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan vanished on 2 July 1937 near Howland Island on the leg from Lae, New Guinea; a two-week US Navy search found no trace of them or their Lockheed Electra.
Q 08Which planet was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930?
Pluto
Pluto was spotted by Clyde Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory on 18 February 1930 by comparing photographic plates; it counted as the ninth planet until its 2006 reclassification as a dwarf planet.
Q 09Which New York skyscraper opened on May 1, 1931, as the world's tallest building?
The Empire State Building
The Empire State Building rose in just 410 days and at 1,250 feet to the roof took the height record from the Chrysler Building; it held it until the World Trade Center's north tower topped out in 1970.
Q 10Which radio drama, broadcast on October 30, 1938, caused panic in parts of the United States?
The War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds, Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre adaptation of H. G. Wells, was staged as a series of news bulletins about Martians landing at Grovers Mill, New Jersey, and some listeners took it for real.
Q 11Which athlete won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics?
Jesse Owens
Jesse Owens won the 100 metres, 200 metres, long jump and 4x100 relay in Berlin; a year earlier at Ann Arbor he had set three world records and tied a fourth in about 45 minutes.
Q 12Which country hosted and won the 1934 FIFA World Cup, then won again in 1938?
Italy
Italy beat Czechoslovakia 2-1 after extra time in the final in Rome, then beat Hungary 4-2 in Paris four years later under coach Vittorio Pozzo; no World Cup was held again until 1950.
Q 13Which novel about Dust Bowl migrants was the best-selling book in the US in 1939?
The Grapes of Wrath
Q 21Whose frozen foods first went on sale in March 1930 in Springfield, Massachusetts?
Clarence Birdseye
Clarence Birdseye, who had watched Inuit freeze fish instantly in Labrador, developed quick-freezing between chilled metal plates; General Foods launched his 'Birds Eye Frosted Foods' in Springfield grocery stores in March 1930.
Q 22Who developed the chocolate chip cookie in 1938?
Ruth Graves Wakefield
Ruth Graves Wakefield ran the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts, where she added chopped Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate to a butter cookie; Nestlé later printed her recipe on its packaging.
Q 23Which Eastman Kodak colour film, introduced in 1935, was invented by two musicians?
Kodachrome
The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck's story of the Joad family's trek from Oklahoma to California, was published in April 1939, topped the year's list and won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize for the Novel.
Q 14Which Margaret Mitchell novel was America's best-selling book two years running, in 1936 and 1937?
Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind sold about a million copies in its first six months after publication in June 1936 and won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize; Mitchell never published another novel.
Q 15What is Pearl S. Buck's novel about a Chinese farming family, the top US bestseller of 1931 and 1932?
The Good Earth
The Good Earth, published in March 1931, follows the farmer Wang Lung and his wife O-Lan; it won the 1932 Pulitzer Prize, and Buck became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938.
Q 16Which Charlie Chaplin film of 1936 was the last to feature his Tramp character?
Modern Times
Modern Times, released in February 1936, was the Tramp's farewell: he sings a gibberish song, the only time his voice is heard, before walking off down the road with Paulette Goddard.
Q 17Which style of jazz began its rise to become America's most popular music from 1933?
Swing
Swing, built on big-band arrangements and a driving four-beat pulse, displaced the 'sweet' dance bands; Benny Goodman's August 1935 Palomar Ballroom dates in Los Angeles are often taken as its breakthrough.
Q 18Which Cole Porter musical introduced 'You're the Top' and 'I Get a Kick Out of You'?
Anything Goes
Anything Goes opened on Broadway with Ethel Merman as Reno Sweeney and ran for 420 performances, introducing 'You're the Top', 'I Get a Kick Out of You' and the title song.
Q 19Which singer, with Rudy Vallée, exemplified the intimate 'crooning' style enabled by microphones?
Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby's relaxed baritone, sung close to the microphone, brought him a CBS radio show in 1931 and a string of hits including 'Where the Blue of the Night' and 1936's 'Pennies from Heaven'.
Q 20Which Delta bluesman recorded 'Cross Road Blues' and 'Hellhound on My Trail' in 1936-37?
Robert Johnson
Robert Johnson cut 29 songs at sessions in San Antonio in November 1936 and Dallas in June 1937, including 'Cross Road Blues' and 'Hellhound on My Trail', before dying in 1938 aged 27.
Kodachrome, devised by the musicians Leopold Mannes and Leopold Godowsky Jr. in Kodak's Rochester laboratories, went on sale as 16 mm movie film in 1935 and as 35 mm slide film in 1936.
Q 24Nylon, introduced in 1939, transformed which part of the clothing industry first?
Hosiery
Hosiery: DuPont unveiled nylon at the 1939 New York World's Fair, sold the first nylon stockings in Wilmington that October and put them on sale nationwide on 15 May 1940, a date remembered as Nylon Day.
Q 25Which French couturière championed the bias cut that defined the decade's slinky satin gowns?
Madeleine Vionnet
Madeleine Vionnet cut fabric on the diagonal so it clung and draped without corsetry; her Paris house, opened in 1912, closed in 1939 on the eve of war.
Q 26Which British prime minister promised 'peace for our time' after the 1938 Munich Agreement?
Neville Chamberlain
Neville Chamberlain waved the Anglo-German declaration at Heston aerodrome on 30 September 1938; he resigned in May 1940 after the Norway debate and was succeeded by Churchill.
Q 27What was the Anschluss of 1938?
Germany's annexation of Austria
Germany's annexation of Austria: German troops crossed the border on 12 March 1938, Hitler entered Vienna two days later, and a plebiscite in April recorded over 99 per cent approval.
Q 28Kristallnacht, in November 1938, was triggered by the assassination of which German diplomat in Paris?
Ernst vom Rath
Ernst vom Rath, a junior diplomat at the German embassy, was shot on 7 November 1938 by the 17-year-old Herschel Grynszpan and died two days later; the pogrom that followed destroyed some 267 synagogues.
Q 29The Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 ended in victory for the Nationalists led by whom?
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco led the Nationalist rising from July 1936 and ruled Spain until his death in 1975; Hitler and Mussolini armed his side, while the Soviet Union backed the Republic.
Q 30Picasso's Guernica, shown at the 1937 Paris World's Fair, depicted a bombing by which air force?
The German Luftwaffe
The German Luftwaffe's Condor Legion bombed the Basque town of Guernica on 26 April 1937 in support of the Nationalists; Picasso painted the mural for the Spanish Republic's pavilion at the fair.