1957
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50 free 1957 trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The year 1957 opened the space age and made teenagers the loudest voice in pop music. A beeping satellite overhead rattled Washington, federal troops escorted schoolchildren past a hostile crowd, and families gathered around new sitcoms on black-and-white sets. This quiz covers the whole year: world events and leaders, science and invention, the brands, toys and cars that first appeared, the films, shows and songs people loved, the big moments in sport, and well-known names who were born in those months. It is written for anyone born in 1957, 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 Soviet satellite, a polished sphere launched in October 1957, became the first artificial object to orbit Earth?
Sputnik 1
Sputnik 1 was only 58 cm across, yet its radio pulses were easily picked up by amateur operators, and its orbit carried it over virtually the entire inhabited Earth.
Q 02Which stray dog from the streets of Moscow became the first animal to orbit Earth in November 1957?
Laika
Laika died from overheating hours into the flight, on the craft's fourth orbit. Soviet scientists chose Moscow strays because they assumed such dogs had already learned to endure cold and hunger.
Q 03To which Southern state capital did President Eisenhower send the 101st Airborne in 1957 to escort nine Black students?
Little Rock
Little Rock became a test of federal power after Governor Orval Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard to keep the students out of Central High. Eisenhower then took the Guard out of his control.
Q 04Which 1957 Dr. Seuss book was written with just 236 different words to replace dull school reading primers?
The Cat in the Hat
The Cat in the Hat grew out of a request from an education publisher for a more entertaining primer. Its author later said it was the book he was proudest of.
Q 05Which musical opened on Broadway in 1957, moving Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to rival New York street gangs?
West Side Story
West Side Story marked the Broadway debut of lyricist Stephen Sondheim. A backers' audition that spring failed to raise any money, and a producer pulled out two months before rehearsals.
Q 06Which toy got its name in 1957 after Wham-O learned students were tossing a Connecticut bakery's empty pie tins?
Frisbee
Frisbee was Wham-O's new name for the Pluto Platter, a plastic disc it had bought the rights to that January. The bakery was the Frisbie Pie Company, which supplied pies to Yale.
Q 07Which mansion did Elvis Presley buy in March 1957 for $102,500, after giving his parents a house-hunting budget?
Graceland
Graceland was named after Grace Toof, daughter of the Memphis printer who once owned the land. Presley had asked his parents to find a farmhouse-like property with space around it.
Q 08Which food did a 1957 BBC April Fools' report show a Swiss family harvesting from trees after a mild winter?
Spaghetti
Spaghetti was still an exotic delicacy in 1950s Britain, known mainly from tins. Hundreds of viewers phoned the BBC the next day, some asking how to grow a tree of their own.
Q 09Which national motto first appeared on United States paper money in 1957, on the one-dollar silver certificate?
In God We Trust
In God We Trust had been on American coins since 1864, starting with the two-cent piece, so only the banknotes needed changing. Congress had declared it the national motto a year earlier.
Q 10Which fast-food burger did James McLamore create in 1957, after seeing a Florida rival succeed with a larger sandwich?
Whopper
The Whopper first sold for 37 cents at Burger King, the chain McLamore co-founded. He got the idea from a restaurant in Gainesville that was thriving on bigger burgers.
Q 11Which sitcom about Ward and June Cleaver's two sons premiered on CBS in October 1957, then moved to ABC?
Leave It to Beaver
Leave It to Beaver was dropped by CBS after one season. Censors held back its intended pilot because the episode had to show a toilet, where the boys hide a pet alligator.
Q 12Which CBS sitcom ended in May 1957 as the first program to finish its run atop the Nielsen ratings?
I Love Lucy
I Love Lucy was the most-watched show in America in four of its six seasons. In the final season the Ricardos left their Manhattan apartment for Westport, Connecticut.
Q 13Which courtroom drama starring Raymond Burr as a Los Angeles defense lawyer began its CBS run in September 1957?
Perry Mason
Q 21Which country, formerly the Gold Coast, became the first sub-Saharan colony to win independence in March 1957?
Ghana
Ghana took its new name at midnight on 6 March, when the Gold Coast, Ashanti, the Northern Territories and British Togoland were unified as a single independent dominion.
Q 22Which agreement, signed by six countries in March 1957, created the European Economic Community, forerunner of the EU?
Treaty of Rome
The Treaty of Rome was signed on Capitoline Hill by Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany. It survives under a new name as one of the EU's two core treaties.
Q 23Which Conservative became British prime minister in January 1957 when Anthony Eden resigned after the Suez Crisis?
Harold Macmillan
Perry Mason first appeared in the detective fiction of Erle Stanley Gardner, and many of the television episodes were based on stories he had written.
Q 14Which host fronted American Bandstand when ABC took the Philadelphia teen dance show national in August 1957?
Dick Clark
Dick Clark went on to present the show for over three decades. It had begun in 1952 as a local programme called Bandstand, and it left Philadelphia for Los Angeles in 1964.
Q 15Which actor won an Oscar as Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai, the highest-grossing film of 1957?
Alec Guinness
Alec Guinness thought about flying straight home when director David Lean greeted him in Ceylon with a reminder that he was not the first choice. The two later rowed over how to play the part.
Q 16Which 1957 film, produced by its star Henry Fonda, follows a jury deliberating over a teenager charged with murder?
12 Angry Men
12 Angry Men was shot in 21 days and came in under its modest budget, helped by two weeks of rehearsal before the cameras rolled.
Q 17Which Elvis Presley film premiered in Memphis in October 1957, months after co-star Judy Tyler died in a road accident?
Jailhouse Rock
Jailhouse Rock left its star so devastated by Tyler's death that he refused to watch it. He had devised his own moves for the title dance sequence after disliking the choreographer's steps.
Q 18Where do Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr agree to reunite in the 1957 romance An Affair to Remember?
Empire State Building
The Empire State Building meeting never happens on the day: Terry is struck by a car as she hurries there. Director Leo McCarey was remaking his own 1939 film Love Affair.
Q 19Which Disney film released on Christmas Day 1957 follows a boy and a stray dog in post-Civil War Texas?
Old Yeller
Old Yeller became the fifth highest-grossing film of 1957. It was based on a 1956 novel by Fred Gipson, who co-wrote the screenplay, and it led to the 1963 sequel Savage Sam.
Q 20Which game does a crusader play against Death to delay his fate in Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film The Seventh Seal?
Chess
Chess buys the knight time as plague sweeps Sweden: he believes he can survive as long as the game continues. The film won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes that year.
Harold Macmillan had been Eden's Chancellor of the Exchequer. A cartoonist nicknamed him Supermac the following year, meaning to suggest he was setting himself up as a Superman figure.
Q 24Which South Carolina senator spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes in August 1957 to stall a civil rights bill?
Strom Thurmond
Strom Thurmond took steam baths beforehand to dehydrate himself, so that his body could absorb fluids for longer during the speech. He opened by reading the election laws of each of the 48 states.
Q 25Which labor leader became president of the Teamsters union in 1957 and vanished under mysterious circumstances in 1975?
Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa led the Teamsters until 1971 and was declared dead in 1982, seven years after he disappeared. He had been the union's national vice-president since 1952.
Q 26Which Wisconsin senator, censured in 1954 after his anti-communist crusade, died in office in May 1957 at age 48?
Joseph McCarthy
Joseph McCarthy kept railing against communism until his death at Bethesda Naval Hospital. His doctors had not reported him to be seriously ill, and the death certificate listed acute hepatitis.
Q 27Which Caribbean country elected François Duvalier, known to his patients as Papa Doc, as president in 1957?
Haiti
Haiti chose Duvalier on a populist platform, and his rule soon turned brutal. His undercover death squad, the Tonton Macoute, left people fearful of voicing dissent even in private.
Q 28Which Ford brand, named after Henry Ford's son, was launched with fanfare in September 1957 and scrapped in 1959?
Edsel
The Edsel became a byword for a costly flop: buyers found it overhyped, and its vertical grille was said to resemble a horse collar. Ford lost more than $250 million on the line.
Q 29Which US state's two peninsulas were first linked by road in November 1957, when the five-mile Mackinac Bridge opened?
Michigan
Michigan had relied on ferries across the Straits of Mackinac until then. At its opening the crossing was the world's longest suspension bridge between anchorages.
Q 30Which pandemic, caused by an H2N2 influenza virus that emerged in southern China, spread around the world during 1957?
Asian flu
The Asian flu caused an estimated one to four million excess deaths worldwide. Its virus kept circulating until 1968, when it shifted into the H3N2 strain behind the next pandemic.