1952 Trivia
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46 free 1952 trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
1952 was the year Britain changed monarchs and the world changed scale. A 25-year-old princess flew home from a treehouse to be proclaimed queen, a frigate was vaporised off Western Australia to announce a third nuclear power, a Pacific island vanished under the first hydrogen bomb, and an election-night computer embarrassed the television network that refused to believe it. These 46 questions cover the news, sport, music, film and television of the year with a British lean: the first singles chart, a farewell procession into New Cross depot, a smog that killed thousands, a rail crash that changed signalling, a rooftop shooting in Croydon, a glove-puppet bear's television debut, a police horse at the Trooping, a jockey's telegram pun and a marathon debut that ended in gold. Nobody is named in the questions who is not worth knowing. Most are pitched for a pub table, with a handful for people who really remember the year. Play on your phone with instant answers and explanations, or print it for a pub quiz, office quiz or a 1952-themed birthday.
30 of 46 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which computer called the Republican landslide on CBS's election night so early that its forecast was held back?
UNIVAC
UNIVAC put Eisenhower's odds at 100 to 1 on early returns, but viewers were given a close race instead and were told only late that night that the machine had been right.
Q 02Whose 'Auf Wiederseh'n, Sweetheart' spent nine weeks at number one in America, a first for any British act?
Vera Lynn
Vera Lynn recorded the German tune with a chorus of serving soldiers and airmen, who shared the billing on the label.
Q 03Which motel chain, begun on Summer Avenue in Memphis, took its name from a Bing Crosby film as its architect's joke?
Holiday Inn
Holiday Inn founder Kemmons Wilson built it after a miserable family road trip to Washington, and the joke name that architect Eddie Bluestein gave the plans simply stuck.
Q 04Which toy, sold at first as a box of loose parts, was the first ever advertised on television?
Mr. Potato Head
Mr. Potato Head's parts were meant to be pushed into a real potato; Hasbro only added a plastic body in 1964, after complaints about rotting vegetables.
Q 05Which first lady, named 'Spiritual Leader of the Nation' on her 33rd birthday in May, died of cancer in July?
Eva Perón
Eva Perón's embalmed body was put on display, then spirited away after the 1955 coup and hidden for 16 years, buried in Milan under a false name.
Q 06Which magazine printed The Old Man and the Sea complete in one issue that sold 5.3 million copies in two days?
Life
Life's Labor Day issue of 1 September carried the whole novella; it won Hemingway his first Pulitzer the next spring and was the only work the Nobel committee named in 1954.
Q 07Which runner won the 5,000 m, 10,000 m and the marathon at Helsinki, never having run a marathon before?
Emil Zátopek
Emil Zátopek's wife Dana won the javelin within an hour of his 5,000 m victory, and he later claimed at her press conference that his win had 'inspired' her.
Q 08Which film star, sailing to London for the premiere of Limelight, was told his US re-entry permit had been revoked?
Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin chose not to contest the ban and settled above Lake Geneva; he set foot in America again only in 1972, to collect an honorary Oscar, and Limelight's score won its own a year later.
Q 09Which codebreaker, convicted of gross indecency in March, accepted oestrogen injections as the alternative to prison?
Alan Turing
Alan Turing had reported a burglary at his Wilmslow home and admitted the relationship to the police himself; the conviction cost him his security clearance and his consultancy for GCHQ.
Q 10Under which King's College scientist did Raymond Gosling take Photo 51, the X-ray image of DNA that Wilkins later showed Watson?
Rosalind Franklin
Rosalind Franklin had set the image aside to concentrate on DNA's 'A' form, and it reached Watson without her knowledge as she was preparing to leave King's.
Q 11Which occupied country regained its sovereignty on 28 April under a peace treaty the Soviet Union refused to sign?
Japan
Japan's treaty, signed at San Francisco the previous September, also ended its empire; Czechoslovakia and Poland joined the Soviet Union in refusing to sign it.
Q 12In which city did police fire on students marching for their language on 21 February, a date UNESCO marks worldwide?
Dhaka
Dhaka's students were defying a ban on gatherings to demand Bengali as a state language of Pakistan; UNESCO declared 21 February International Mother Language Day in 1999.
Q 13Which king abdicated on 26 July, three days after the Free Officers' coup, in favour of his six-month-old son?
Farouk of Egypt
Q 21Which wartime document did Britons no longer have to carry from 21 February?
Identity card
Identity cards went after a 1950 test case in which Harry Willcock refused to produce his for a policeman; the National Registration number lived on inside the NHS.
Q 22Which staple came off the ration on 5 October, while sugar and sweets stayed rationed into 1953?
Tea
Tea was freed while sweets stayed controlled: they had come off the ration in 1949, but the rush on sweetshops was so great that rationing returned within months and lasted until 1953.
Q 23Which London transport ran for the last time in the early hours of 6 July, cheered into New Cross depot by crowds?
Electric trams
Farouk of Egypt sailed into exile on the royal yacht Mahrousa, the same vessel that had carried his deposed grandfather Ismail to Italy in 1879; the baby was proclaimed Fuad II.
Q 14Which Illinois governor, pictured with a hole in his shoe sole while campaigning, won just nine states in November?
Adlai Stevenson
Adlai Stevenson answered Republican jibes with 'Better a hole in the shoe than a hole in the head'; Flint Journal photographer William Gallagher won the 1953 Pulitzer for the picture.
Q 15Which first Black Oscar winner, who died in October, was refused burial in the Hollywood Cemetery she had chosen?
Hattie McDaniel
Hattie McDaniel, the Mammy of Gone with the Wind, was buried at Rosedale instead; the Hollywood cemetery offered a reburial in 1999 and, when her family declined, built her a cenotaph by its lake.
Q 16Which widescreen process, using three projectors and a curved screen, opened on Broadway with a roller-coaster ride?
Cinerama
Cinerama, Fred Waller's invention, had languished in the laboratory for years before broadcaster Lowell Thomas backed This Is Cinerama, which opened at the Broadway Theatre on 30 September.
Q 17Which challenger, floored in round one by Jersey Joe Walcott, took the heavyweight title with a 13th-round knockout?
Rocky Marciano
Rocky Marciano had never been knocked down before, and after twelve rounds he trailed on the scorecards and needed a knockout to keep his unbeaten record.
Q 18Whose 'Here in My Heart' topped the first UK singles chart, a Top 12 the NME compiled by telephoning about 20 shops?
Al Martino
Al Martino stayed at number one for nine weeks, but mobsters soon took over his management contract and he left America for Britain, where he spent several years.
Q 19Which glove puppet, bought by Harry Corbett in Blackpool in 1948, made his BBC television debut on Talent Night?
Sooty
Sooty's handler resigned as an engineer when his employer refused him Saturdays off for television work, and the bear got his own series in 1955.
Q 20Which two terracotta puppets, who spoke 'Oddle-Poddle' and lived either side of Little Weed, first aired in December?
Bill and Ben
Bill and Ben were the Flower Pot Men of Watch with Mother; Peter Hawkins voiced both and invented their gibberish, translating scripts that were written in plain English.
London's electric trams gave way to diesel buses whose exhaust helped thicken that December's Great Smog; not one tram ran in the capital again until Croydon Tramlink opened in 2000.
Q 24At which station did a Perth express run into a standing local train, and a third train into the wreckage, killing 112?
Harrow and Wealdstone
Harrow and Wealdstone remains Britain's worst peacetime rail crash; the driver had passed a caution and two danger signals in fog, and the disaster forced through the Automatic Warning System.
Q 25Which 1956 Act answered the December fog that seeped into London's cinemas and killed at least 4,000 people?
Clean Air Act
The Clean Air Act created 'smoke control areas' where only smokeless fuel could be burned; later research put the true death toll at around 12,000, three times the official count.
Q 26Which club retained the FA Cup by beating an injury-hit Arsenal 1–0, the goal coming from Chilean-born George Robledo?
Newcastle United
Newcastle United's winning goal was drawn by a schoolboy John Lennon, who put the picture on the sleeve of his 1974 album Walls and Bridges; Arsenal finished with only seven fit players.
Q 27Which writer, born in Cambridge on 11 March, joked he had been 'DNA' there nine months before the double helix paper?
Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide began as a 1978 radio comedy before selling 14 million books by the time of his death in 2001; he also wrote for Doctor Who and was its script editor for a season.
Q 28Whose diary was published in America with an introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt and became a bestseller?
Anne Frank
Anne Frank's diary reached Doubleday only because junior editor Judith Jones pulled it out of the rejection pile; the book had already appeared in German and French in 1950.
Q 29Which John Cage piece, premiered by pianist David Tudor at Woodstock, New York, instructs the performer not to play?
4′33″
4′33″ runs three movements of silence in which the ambient noise is the music; Cage had visited an anechoic chamber expecting to hear nothing and instead heard two sounds, one high and one low.
Q 30Which opener became England's first professional Test captain of the century, starting against India at Headingley?
Len Hutton
Len Hutton doubted that cricket's establishment would accept a professional, yet declined to turn amateur as Wally Hammond had done in 1938; he regained the Ashes the following summer.