1949
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50 free 1949 trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The last year of the 1940s was a hinge between the world war just ended and the Cold War taking shape. Alliances were signed, governments rose and fell, borders and flags changed, and a weapon once held by a single power was suddenly held by two. This quiz covers the whole of 1949: politics and world events, science and flight, the books, plays, films, songs and broadcasts people talked about, the big moments in sport, the brands and games that first appeared, and the well-known names born in those twelve months. It is written for anyone born in 1949, anyone who remembers it, and anyone planning a milestone birthday party, a reunion or a family quiz night. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play straight through or print it for a group.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which military alliance was born when twelve nations signed a treaty in Washington, D.C., in April 1949?
NATO
NATO rests on Article 5, which treats an armed attack on one member as an attack on them all. The clause was never invoked during the Cold War it was written for.
Q 02Which Communist leader proclaimed the People's Republic of China from Beijing's Tiananmen Gate in October 1949?
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong made the announcement at exactly three in the afternoon on 1 October, a date China has marked as its National Day ever since.
Q 03Which dystopian novel, published in June 1949, gave the world Big Brother and the Thought Police?
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four was the ninth and final book its author completed. Its vocabulary outlived him: doublethink, Newspeak and thoughtcrime all come from its pages.
Q 04Which speedy Looney Tunes bird made its debut opposite Wile E. Coyote in the 1949 short Fast and Furry-ous?
Road Runner
Road Runner and his hungry pursuer were dreamed up by director Chuck Jones and writer Michael Maltese as a parody of chase cartoons such as Tom and Jerry.
Q 05Which singing cowboy took 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' to number one in the US at Christmas 1949?
Gene Autry
Gene Autry first rejected the song, but his wife convinced him to record it. Suggested only as a B-side, it went on to become the first chart-topper of the 1950s.
Q 06Which country secretly exploded its first atomic bomb in August 1949, four years after the United States?
USSR
The USSR based the device on America's Fat Man bomb, and the United States code-named the test Joe-1 after Joseph Stalin.
Q 07Which name for the birth of the universe did astronomer Fred Hoyle coin on BBC radio in March 1949?
Big Bang
Big Bang was Hoyle's label for a theory he rejected. He spent his career defending a rival steady-state model, until mounting evidence won most cosmologists over to the idea he had named.
Q 08Which word was cut from the end of the Hollywood Sign in 1949, having advertised a housing development since 1923?
Land
Land completed the original 'HOLLYWOODLAND', put up as a temporary advert for a local real-estate development and left standing as its fame grew.
Q 09Which kind of animal was Albert II, the first mammal in space, launched on a V-2 rocket in June 1949?
Monkey
A monkey beat every dog and human there: Albert II, a rhesus macaque, flew from White Sands, New Mexico, but died when his capsule's parachute failed on the way down.
Q 10Which item of clothing was first presented to a Masters golf champion in 1949, when Sam Snead won at Augusta?
Green jacket
The green jacket was then handed out retroactively to every earlier champion. Snead also won that year's PGA Championship, the first golfer to take both titles in one calendar year.
Q 11Which New Jersey rocker, nicknamed the Boss, was born in the shore town of Long Branch in September 1949?
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen grew up in nearby Freehold, where his mother rented him a guitar for six dollars a week. The E Street Band has backed him since 1972.
Q 12Which actress, born in Summit, New Jersey, in June 1949, has earned more Oscar acting nominations than anyone else?
Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep earned the first of those nominations for The Deer Hunter, only a year after making her film debut in Julia.
Q 13Which singer-songwriter, nicknamed the Piano Man after his 1973 signature song, was born in the Bronx in May 1949?
Billy Joel
Q 21Which Gone with the Wind author died in August 1949 after a speeding car hit her on Atlanta's Peachtree Street?
Margaret Mitchell
Margaret Mitchell was walking to the cinema with her husband when an off-duty taxi driver struck her. The Civil War epic was the only novel she published in her lifetime.
Q 22Which playwright's Death of a Salesman opened on Broadway in February 1949 and won that year's Pulitzer Prize for Drama?
Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller's tragedy of the worn-out traveller Willy Loman ran for 742 performances and also took the Tony Award for Best Play.
Q 23Which Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, based on James Michener's wartime stories, premiered on Broadway in 1949?
South Pacific
Billy Joel moved to Hicksville on Long Island at the age of one, and began taking piano lessons there at his mother's insistence.
Q 14Which Commodores singer, writer of the hits 'Easy' and 'Sail On', was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, in June 1949?
Lionel Richie
Lionel Richie grew up on the campus of Tuskegee Institute and later attended it on a tennis scholarship, graduating in economics before music took over.
Q 15Which Alien star, born in October 1949, took her first name from a minor character in The Great Gatsby?
Sigourney Weaver
Sigourney Weaver was born Susan and adopted the new name at 14. Her breakthrough as Ellen Ripley came two years after a minor role in Annie Hall.
Q 16Which heavyweight boxer, born in Marshall, Texas, in January 1949, later put his name to a best-selling kitchen grill?
George Foreman
George Foreman regained the heavyweight title at 45, the oldest man ever to win it, and later sold the commercial rights to his grill for $138 million.
Q 17Which original Saturday Night Live cast member, a star of Animal House, was born in Chicago in January 1949?
John Belushi
John Belushi was the son of an Albanian immigrant who ran a restaurant on Chicago's North Avenue, and he learned his trade at the city's Second City comedy club.
Q 18Which Kiss bassist, known on stage as the Demon, was born Chaim Witz in Haifa, Israel, in August 1949?
Gene Simmons
Gene Simmons was the son of Jewish refugees from Hungary, and moved to Queens, New York, with his mother at the age of eight.
Q 19Which London model, born Lesley Hornby in September 1949, was named the Face of 1966 by the Daily Express?
Twiggy
Twiggy grew up in Neasden, the daughter of a carpenter, and within a year of that headline her fame had spread to France, Japan and the United States.
Q 20Which Austrian racing driver, born in February 1949, returned to Formula One six weeks after a fiery 1976 crash?
Niki Lauda
Niki Lauda was badly burned when his car caught fire at the Nürburgring, yet he raced again at the Italian Grand Prix and lost that year's title by a single point.
South Pacific was written to carry a strong progressive message on racism as well as to make money. It ran for 1,925 performances and won a Pulitzer of its own.
Q 24In which occupied European capital is the 1949 thriller The Third Man set, with Orson Welles as racketeer Harry Lime?
Vienna
Vienna was filmed as it stood, with six weeks of location shooting among its ruins and sewers. Anton Karas, an unknown local musician, wrote a theme that topped charts worldwide.
Q 25Which sportswear company did Bavarian shoemaker Adolf Dassler register in August 1949 after a rift with his brother?
Adidas
Adidas joins its founder's nickname, Adi, to the start of his surname. His brother Rudolf answered with a rival firm in the same town, first called Ruda and later Puma.
Q 26Which sports league was created in August 1949 by a merger of the rival BAA and NBL?
NBA
The NBA exists because several teams were in financial trouble, which pushed the Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League to join forces.
Q 27Which heavyweight boxer, nicknamed the Brown Bomber, gave up his world title in 1949 after a reign begun in 1937?
Joe Louis
Joe Louis held the championship longer than any other heavyweight. His retirement proved temporary: a comeback failed, and Rocky Marciano knocked him out in 1951.
Q 28Which Brooklyn Dodgers second baseman was voted the National League's Most Valuable Player for 1949?
Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson was the first Black player to win the award, in a season when he lifted his batting average from .296 to .342.
Q 29Which country formally became a republic on Easter Monday in April 1949, ending the British monarch's last role there?
Ireland
Ireland chose the day with care: it was the 33rd anniversary of the start of the Easter Rising against British rule.
Q 30Which former British dominion became Canada's tenth province at midnight on 31 March 1949?
Newfoundland
Newfoundland remains the most recent province to join Canada. Its mainland region had to wait until 2001 to be added to the official name, Newfoundland and Labrador.