1955
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50 free 1955 trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The middle of the 1950s was a hinge between two eras. In 1955 the Cold War settled into rival blocs, the American civil rights movement found new voices, and television, teenage culture and a louder kind of pop music began to reshape everyday life. This quiz covers the whole year: world events and leaders, science and invention, the brands and products that first appeared, the films, shows and songs people loved, the big moments in sport, and the well-known names who were born or died in those twelve months. It is written for anyone born in 1955, anyone who remembers it, and anyone planning a milestone birthday party, a class reunion or a family game night. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play straight through or print the questions for a group.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which theme park opened in Anaheim in July 1955 with a live TV special co-hosted by Ronald Reagan?
Disneyland
Disneyland was built on 160 acres of orange groves and walnut trees. Art Linkletter and Bob Cummings shared the hosting on ABC, a day before the public was let in.
Q 02Which seamstress was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, in December 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat?
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks was fined $10 plus $4 in court fees. She was not the first: 15-year-old Claudette Colvin had been arrested for the same act on a Montgomery bus nine months earlier.
Q 03Which burger chain dates its founding to a restaurant Ray Kroc opened in Des Plaines, Illinois, in 1955?
McDonald's
McDonald's was already trading in San Bernardino under the McDonald brothers, who ran eight of the milkshake machines Kroc sold for a living. He became the owner in 1961.
Q 04Which disease did Jonas Salk's vaccine, announced as safe on April 12, 1955, protect millions of children against?
Polio
Polio made Salk a household name, yet he chose not to patent the vaccine or seek any profit from it, so that it could be distributed as widely as possible.
Q 05Which 1985 film drops a teenager into November 5, 1955, the day a scientist conceived his time machine?
Back to the Future
Back to the Future strands Marty McFly in 1955 with no plutonium for the trip home. The only thing that can supply the 1.21 gigawatts he needs is a bolt of lightning.
Q 06Which Muppet did Jim Henson create in 1955 from his mother's discarded coat and two ping-pong ball halves?
Kermit the Frog
Kermit the Frog started out as a vague lizard-like creature on Henson's local TV series Sam and Friends. The coat was a turquoise spring coat his mother had thrown out.
Q 07Which reference work, first bound in August 1955, grew out of an argument over Europe's fastest game bird?
Guinness Book of Records
The Guinness Book of Records was the idea of brewery boss Sir Hugh Beaver, who had missed a shot at a golden plover. Twins Norris and Ross McWhirter compiled it, and it was a bestseller by Christmas.
Q 08Which fastener, patented in 1955, was inspired by burrs that stuck to George de Mestral's dog in the Alps?
Velcro
Velcro came from the burdock burs de Mestral examined after a hunting trip. When his patent expired in 1978, low-cost imitations from Asia flooded the market.
Q 09Which physicist died in Princeton in April 1955, after which a pathologist removed his brain without permission?
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was 76 and had kept working almost to the end. Pathologist Thomas Harvey preserved the brain, hoping later science could discover what made him so intelligent.
Q 10Which Bill Haley & His Comets single from the film Blackboard Jungle spent two months at number one in 1955?
Rock Around the Clock
Rock Around the Clock was the first rock and roll record to top the pop charts in both the US and UK. It plays under the opening credits of Blackboard Jungle and four more times in the film.
Q 11Which 1955 animated feature, the first shot in CinemaScope, is famous for two dogs sharing a plate of spaghetti?
Lady and the Tramp
Lady and the Tramp almost went out without that scene. Animator Frank Thomas found it on a discarded story reel and animated the whole sequence himself.
Q 12Which 1955 Billy Wilder comedy has Marilyn Monroe's white dress blown upward as she stands on a subway grate?
The Seven Year Itch
The Seven Year Itch was shot in late 1954 and is the only film Wilder made for 20th Century-Fox. He and co-writer George Axelrod complained of working under straitjacketed conditions.
Q 13Which frontiersman, played on TV by Fess Parker, set off a 1955 craze for coonskin caps and bubble gum cards?
Q 21Which heavyweight champion beat Archie Moore in September 1955 in the last fight of an unbeaten career?
Rocky Marciano
Rocky Marciano finished 49–0 with 43 knockouts and retired as champion without ever losing. Moore, who floored him in the second round, was one of just two men ever to knock him down.
Q 22Which young pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church was chosen in December 1955 to lead the Montgomery bus boycott?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. had been called to the church only the year before. The boycott lasted 385 days, his house was bombed, and it made him the best-known spokesman of the civil rights movement.
Q 23Which novel narrated by Humbert Humbert was first published in Paris in 1955 after American publishers turned it down?
Davy Crockett
Davy Crockett merchandise worth over $300 million had been sold by the end of 1955. Parker later said a voided contract for a share of those sales cost him millions.
Q 14Which Apple co-founder was born in San Francisco in February 1955 and adopted shortly afterward?
Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs went to Paul and Clara Jobs only after a lawyer and his wife pulled out on learning the baby was a boy. His birth mother had asked for college graduates.
Q 15Which software billionaire was born in Seattle in October 1955 to a prominent lawyer and a bank board member?
Bill Gates
Bill Gates met Paul Allen at Seattle's private Lakeside School. He dropped out of Harvard in 1975 to start Microsoft with him and ran it as CEO for the next 25 years.
Q 16Which British prime minister resigned in April 1955 at the age of 80 and handed over to Anthony Eden?
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill had returned to office at nearly 77 and was in declining health. He stayed on in the House of Commons as an MP until 1964.
Q 17Which TV western, adapted from a radio drama in 1955, ran for 20 seasons with James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillon?
Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke aired 635 episodes, the most of any scripted American primetime series until The Simpsons passed it. On radio, the marshal had been voiced by William Conrad.
Q 18Which organization's Santa-tracking tradition traces back to a 1955 Sears ad that invited children to phone Santa?
NORAD
NORAD tells it this way: the ad's number was one digit away from the Continental Air Defense Command's line, and Colonel Harry Shoup found himself answering a child who wanted Santa.
Q 19Which film director began hosting a CBS anthology series in October 1955, walking into a caricature of his own profile?
Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock drew the line caricature himself. The theme music, Gounod's Funeral March of a Marionette, was suggested by his regular composer Bernard Herrmann.
Q 20Which baseball team beat the New York Yankees in 1955 for its only World Series title before moving west?
Brooklyn Dodgers
The Brooklyn Dodgers had lost all five of their earlier World Series meetings with the Yankees. Johnny Podres shut New York out in Game 7, and the team left for Los Angeles after 1957.
Lolita
Lolita first appeared from Olympia Press as a pair of green paperbacks full of typographical errors. Graham Greene then named it one of the three best books of 1955.
Q 24Which final volume of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings reached British bookshops in October 1955?
The Return of the King
The Return of the King was a title Tolkien disliked, because he felt it revealed too much of the story. He would have preferred The War of the Ring.
Q 25Which British royal announced in October 1955 that she had decided not to marry Group Captain Peter Townsend?
Princess Margaret
Princess Margaret wrote the statement together with Townsend, who had been her father's equerry. It was the first official confirmation that the two had been in a relationship at all.
Q 26Which Soviet-led military alliance was created in May 1955, days after West Germany was admitted to NATO?
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact bound the Soviet Union to seven other Eastern European states. Czechoslovak president Václav Havel formally ended it in Prague in July 1991, after 36 years.
Q 27Which singer's Sun Records contract did RCA Victor buy in November 1955 for an unprecedented $40,000?
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley was 20 and legally still a minor, so his father signed the contract. Heartbreak Hotel, his first RCA single, came out two months later and went to number one.
Q 28Which US president suffered a serious heart attack while on vacation in Colorado in September 1955?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower recovered at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center. His personal physician had first misdiagnosed the symptoms as indigestion and failed to call in urgently needed help.
Q 29Which gemstone did General Electric announce in February 1955 that its scientists had made in a laboratory press?
Diamond
Diamond was first made in a commercially successful way by GE's Tracy Hall on December 16, 1954. Hall left the company in 1955 and later built a different press to get around a secrecy order on GE's patents.
Q 30Which actress won the Best Actress Oscar in March 1955 for The Country Girl, in an upset over favorite Judy Garland?
Grace Kelly
Grace Kelly only had the part because a pregnant Jennifer Jones bowed out. Garland had just given birth, and the cameramen waiting to film her acceptance speech left when the winner was read out.