1956
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50 free 1956 trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The year 1956 was when rock and roll went from a regional craze to a national argument, with one young singer from Memphis filling television screens and worrying parents. It was also a year of Cold War shocks, a fairytale royal wedding and some of the biggest films Hollywood had ever attempted. This quiz covers the whole year: politics and international crises, the civil rights struggle in the American South, science and invention, the films, shows, songs and books people were talking about, the big moments in sport, and well-known names who were born in those months. It is written for anyone born in 1956, 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 tiny European state gained a Hollywood princess when Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier III in April 1956?
Monaco
Monaco's new princess gave up Hollywood for the role: Grace Kelly retired from acting at age 26 to marry Rainier III.
Q 02Which Elvis Presley single, inspired by a news story of a lonely man's death, was his first million-seller in 1956?
Heartbreak Hotel
Heartbreak Hotel topped the Billboard Top 100 for seven weeks. It was Presley's first single for his new label, RCA Victor.
Q 03Which waterway did Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalise in 1956, prompting an invasion by Britain, France and Israel?
Suez Canal
The Suez Canal stayed closed from October 1956 to March 1957, and the crisis brought international humiliation for Britain and France.
Q 04Which Australian city hosted the 1956 Summer Olympics, the first Games ever staged in the Southern Hemisphere?
Melbourne
Melbourne staged the only Summer Games ever held in November and December, timed to catch the warm weather of the southern spring.
Q 05Which Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright left his first wife to marry film star Marilyn Monroe in June 1956?
Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee that same month and refused to name names, earning a contempt conviction that was later overturned.
Q 06Which actor played Moses in Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 epic The Ten Commandments, then the costliest film ever made?
Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston won the part partly for his resemblance to Michelangelo's sculpture of Moses. His three-month-old son Fraser played the baby in the basket.
Q 07Which president, a veteran of a 1919 Army road convoy, signed the 1956 act that created the Interstate Highway System?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower approved 41,000 miles of interstates, at the time the largest public works project in American history.
Q 08Which modeling compound, first made as a wallpaper cleaner, reached department stores as a children's toy in 1956?
Play-Doh
Play-Doh was devised to lift coal soot off wallpaper. When demand for the cleaner shrank after the war, it was reworked for Cincinnati schools.
Q 09Whose Sunday-night variety show drew about 60 million viewers when Elvis Presley first appeared on it in September 1956?
Ed Sullivan
Ed Sullivan was not there to see it. He was recovering from a car accident, so actor Charles Laughton hosted the night.
Q 10Which phrase, first stamped on a two-cent coin in 1864, became the official national motto of the United States in 1956?
In God We Trust
In God We Trust displaced E pluribus unum, which had served as the unofficial motto ever since the Great Seal was first designed.
Q 11Which team's Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in World Series history, against the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1956?
New York Yankees
New York Yankees pitcher Larsen needed just 97 pitches to retire all 27 batters, and only one Dodger even reached a three-ball count.
Q 12Which heavyweight boxing champion retired in April 1956 aged 32, with a perfect record of 49 wins and no defeats?
Rocky Marciano
Rocky Marciano walked away as an undefeated champion, and 43 of his 49 wins ended in knockouts.
Q 13Which switch-hitting slugger won baseball's Triple Crown in 1956, leading the majors in average, home runs and RBIs?
Mickey Mantle
Q 21Which musical based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion opened on Broadway in 1956 with Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews?
My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady won six Tony Awards and set a record for the longest run of any Broadway musical up to that time.
Q 22Which country hosted the first Eurovision Song Contest in 1956 and also won it, with singer Lys Assia?
Switzerland
Switzerland was one of only seven countries taking part, and each sent two songs, something no later contest has repeated.
Q 23Which actress and author was born in October 1956 to Hollywood star Debbie Reynolds and a chart-topping singer?
Carrie Fisher
Carrie Fisher grew up to star as Princess Leia in Star Wars, and later appeared with her mother in the documentary Bright Lights.
Mickey Mantle hit .353 with 52 home runs and 130 RBIs, and he later called that season his favorite summer.
Q 14Which Spanish club beat Stade de Reims 4-3 in Paris in June 1956 to win the first European Cup final?
Real Madrid
Real Madrid trailed 2-0 inside ten minutes before fighting back, and the club went on to win the first five European Cups in a row.
Q 15Which European capital staged the 1956 Olympic equestrian events because Australia would not relax its horse quarantine?
Stockholm
Stockholm held the riding events in June, five months before the rest of the Games began on the far side of the globe.
Q 16Which Soviet leader denounced Joseph Stalin's purges in a closed-door speech to a party congress in February 1956?
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev's address became known as the Secret Speech because the session was shut to journalists and classified as not for publication.
Q 17Which Central European capital saw an uprising against communist rule crushed by Soviet tanks in November 1956?
Budapest
Budapest's street fighters met the tanks with small arms and Molotov cocktails. Nearly a quarter of a million people fled the country afterwards.
Q 18Which Alabama city's buses were desegregated in December 1956, ending a boycott sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks?
Montgomery
Montgomery's boycotters ran their own carpools. When local insurers were pressured to drop the cars, the leaders arranged cover at Lloyd's of London.
Q 19Which Italian ocean liner sank off Nantucket in July 1956 after colliding with a Swedish ship in thick fog?
Andrea Doria
Andrea Doria stayed afloat for over 11 hours after the collision, long enough for 1,660 of the 1,706 people on board to be rescued.
Q 20Which Democrat, a former governor of Illinois, lost the 1956 presidential election in a landslide rematch of 1952?
Adlai Stevenson
Adlai Stevenson won a tight primary battle against Tennessee senator Estes Kefauver, who then joined the ticket as his running mate.
Q 24Which actor, born in Concord, California, in July 1956, later won back-to-back Best Actor Oscars in the 1990s?
Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks won for Philadelphia and then for Forrest Gump a year later, playing a lawyer with AIDS and then the film's title character.
Q 25Which Boston Celtics great, born in Indiana in December 1956, was nicknamed the Hick from French Lick?
Larry Bird
Larry Bird was born in West Baden Springs and raised in nearby French Lick, where his mother worked two jobs to support her six children.
Q 26Which Swedish tennis star, born in June 1956, won five straight Wimbledon titles and quit the sport in his mid-twenties?
Björn Borg
Björn Borg also won six French Opens, and his 1980 Wimbledon final against John McEnroe is considered one of the greatest matches ever played.
Q 27Which 1956 adventure film, produced by Broadway showman Mike Todd, won the Academy Award for Best Picture?
Around the World in 80 Days
Around the World in 80 Days was the first film its producer had ever made, and it won five Academy Awards.
Q 28Which actor won an Oscar for the 1956 film The King and I after playing the same role in the Broadway musical?
Yul Brynner
Yul Brynner played the king 4,625 times on stage, and kept the shaved head he adopted for the part as a personal trademark.
Q 29Which country singer wrote I Walk the Line backstage in Texas in 1956 and scored his first number-one hit with it?
Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash hummed between the verses to find his pitch, because the song made him change key several times.
Q 30Which singer's 1956 album Calypso, home of the Banana Boat Song, spent 31 weeks at number one in America?
Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte's Calypso is credited as the first long-playing album to sell one million copies.