1938
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50 free 1938 trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
1938 was the year the world held its breath. Europe lurched from one crisis to the next, a radio drama frightened some of the people listening, and laboratories on both sides of the Atlantic stumbled onto discoveries that would shape the rest of the century. This quiz covers the whole year: the headlines and the leaders behind them, the inventions and household brands that first appeared, the films, songs and books people were talking about, record-breaking moments in sport, and the well-known figures born while it all unfolded. There are questions with a British flavour and a few from the month of August as well. It suits anyone born in 1938, families planning a milestone birthday or reunion, and quiz hosts who want a ready-made history round. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so the questions double as fun facts to read aloud, on screen or printed as cards.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed the 1938 Halloween radio play that convinced some listeners Martians had landed in New Jersey?
Orson Welles
Orson Welles staged H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds as news bulletins interrupting a programme of dance music. How far the panic really spread is still disputed.
Q 02Which superhero, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, first appeared in Action Comics No. 1 in 1938?
Superman
Superman earned his two creators just $130 for the 13-page story, at $10 a page. The comic itself sold for 10 cents.
Q 03Which racehorse beat Triple Crown winner War Admiral by four lengths in a 1938 two-horse special at Pimlico?
Seabiscuit
Seabiscuit drew an estimated 40,000 fans to the Baltimore track while 40 million more listened on the radio. He was voted American Horse of the Year for 1938.
Q 04Douglas Corrigan earned the nickname Wrong Way in 1938 by landing in which country instead of California?
Ireland
Ireland was the very place he had been refused permission to fly to, so few believed his tale of a misread compass. His New York ticker-tape parade outdrew Lindbergh's.
Q 05Which European leader did Time magazine name its Man of the Year for 1938, judging impact rather than merit?
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was picked after redrawing the map of central Europe within a single year. Time handed the same title to Joseph Stalin for 1939, and again for 1942.
Q 06Which disease did President Franklin Roosevelt found the March of Dimes to fight in January 1938?
Polio
Polio was the target, and comedian Eddie Cantor coined the name as a pun on the newsreel The March of Time. One January morning brought the White House 30,000 letters holding dimes.
Q 07Nescafé instant coffee went on sale in 1938 as a way to use up which country's huge surplus of beans?
Brazil
Brazil was left with mountains of unsold coffee after prices collapsed in the 1929 crash. Nestlé spent years on the problem before launching the powder in Switzerland.
Q 08Which boxer beat Germany's Max Schmeling in just over two minutes in their 1938 rematch at Yankee Stadium?
Joe Louis
Joe Louis was avenging a 1936 knockout by Schmeling in the same ballpark. Schmeling had arrived with a Nazi publicist who claimed a Black man could not beat him.
Q 09Which country did Nazi Germany annex in March 1938 in a takeover known as the Anschluss?
Austria
Austria was absorbed on 12 March 1938 without a fight. A plebiscite held under Nazi control a month later claimed 99.7% approval.
Q 10Which American tycoon flew around the world in a record 91 hours in July 1938, halving Wiley Post's time?
Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes flew a twin-engine Lockheed 14 Super Electra with a crew of four. New York gave him a ticker-tape parade, and the flight won his team the 1938 Collier Trophy.
Q 11In which German city did Neville Chamberlain sign the September 1938 pact giving away Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland?
Munich
Munich hosted the deal, but the Czechoslovaks were not invited to the conference that carved up their country. Many of them know it as the Munich Betrayal.
Q 12Britain's Kindertransport rescue of Jewish children began three weeks after which November 1938 pogrom in Germany?
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht is named for the broken glass that littered the streets after Jewish-owned shops and synagogues were smashed. The first 196 children landed at Harwich on 2 December.
Q 13In which country did Dammam No. 7, nicknamed Prosperity Well, strike commercial oil in March 1938?
Saudi Arabia
Q 21Which process did Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann first prove in Berlin in December 1938 by bombarding uranium?
Nuclear fission
Nuclear fission was explained in theory weeks later by Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch. Meitner had fled Germany only that July and learned of Hahn's result by letter in Sweden.
Q 22Which drug did Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann first synthesise in 1938, five years before stumbling on its effects?
LSD
LSD revealed its psychedelic power only in 1943, when Hofmann accidentally took some himself. The drug is derived from ergot, a fungus.
Q 23Which fish, thought extinct for 66 million years, was found in a fisherman's catch off South Africa in December 1938?
Coelacanth
Saudi Arabia had watched six earlier wells at the site fail before this one came in. The California company that held the drilling concession later grew into Saudi Aramco.
Q 14Which country's president Lázaro Cárdenas seized every foreign-owned oil company in March 1938?
Mexico
Mexico folded the seized firms into a state-owned company, Petróleos Mexicanos, better known as Pemex. Cárdenas announced the decree in a radio speech to the nation.
Q 15Which practice did Franklin Roosevelt's 1938 wages-and-hours law restrict, alongside creating a federal minimum wage?
Child labor
Child labor of the kind the law called oppressive was barred by the same act that set time-and-a-half for work beyond forty hours a week. Roosevelt signed it on June 25, 1938.
Q 16Which part of the United States was devastated by a deadly hurricane in September 1938?
New England
New England took the full force after the storm crossed Long Island as a Category 3 hurricane on September 21. It killed an estimated 682 people and damaged or destroyed over 57,000 homes.
Q 17Which DuPont material did chemist Roy Plunkett discover by accident in 1938 while trying to make a new refrigerant?
Teflon
Teflon turned up as a whitish powder inside a gas cylinder that should have been full. The trademark was registered in 1945, and the non-stick frying pan came later still.
Q 18Which writing instrument did journalist László Bíró patent in 1938 after noticing how quickly newspaper ink dried?
Ballpoint pen
The ballpoint pen rolls thick ink onto paper with a tiny ball turning in a socket, a tip Bíró developed with his chemist brother György. The brothers later settled in Argentina.
Q 19Which Korean conglomerate began in 1938 as a small trading company dealing in dried fish, groceries and noodles?
Samsung
Samsung means three stars in Korean. Founder Lee Byung-chul set the firm up under Japanese rule, and it did not enter the electronics industry until the late 1960s.
Q 20Which office machine grew out of Chester Carlson's 1938 experiment with sulfur, a zinc plate and a glass slide?
Photocopier
The photocopier began with a slide reading 10.-22.-38 ASTORIA, the date and place of the first xerographic copy. Carlson celebrated by buying his assistant a modest lunch.
The coelacanth was spotted by museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, and the living genus, Latimeria, is named after her. It became the textbook example of a living fossil.
Q 24Which small car designed by Ferdinand Porsche was first built in Germany in 1938 and stayed in production until 2003?
VW Beetle
The VW Beetle was conceived as a cheap, simple car for Germany's new autobahn network. With 21.5 million built, it outsold even the Ford Model T.
Q 25Which physicist collected the 1938 Nobel Prize in Stockholm, then sailed to New York to escape Mussolini's racial laws?
Enrico Fermi
Enrico Fermi left to protect his Jewish wife, Laura. Four years later his team in Chicago built the first reactor to sustain a chain reaction.
Q 26Which household item, sold from February 1938, was the first product to use DuPont's nylon in place of animal hair?
Toothbrush
The toothbrush had relied on boar bristles until nylon yarn replaced them. Nylon stockings, the product that made the fibre famous, did not reach shops nationwide until 1940.
Q 27Which British locomotive designed by Nigel Gresley set a world speed record for steam of 126 mph in July 1938?
Mallard
Mallard was one of a batch of A4 engines named after birds, a nod to Gresley's fondness for breeding wild birds. No steam locomotive has gone faster since.
Q 28Which British comic from DC Thomson of Dundee published its first issue in July 1938 with Big Eggo on the cover?
The Beano
The Beano went on to become the world's longest-running weekly comic. Its first cover star, an ostrich, was originally named Oswald.
Q 29Which Yorkshire batsman scored a record 364 against Australia in the final Test at The Oval in August 1938?
Len Hutton
Len Hutton was playing only his sixth Test when he passed Don Bradman's Ashes record of 334. His 364 stood as the highest Test innings for nearly 20 years.
Q 30Which Disney film went on general US release in February 1938 and became the year's highest-grossing picture?
Snow White
Snow White earned Walt Disney a one-off honorary Oscar the following year: one full-size statuette and seven miniature ones.