1959
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50 free 1959 trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The year 1959 closed out a decade and set up the next one. The Cold War ran through the headlines, the space race was picking up speed, and rock and roll, television and the family car were reshaping everyday life. This quiz covers the whole year, from January to December: world events and leaders, science and inventions, the films, shows and records people loved, the big moments in sport, the products that first reached the shops, and the well-known names who were born in those twelve months. It is written for anyone who was born in 1959, remembers it, or is planning a milestone birthday party, a class reunion or a family game night. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play it straight through or print it for a group.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which doll, based on a German toy called Bild Lilli, debuted at a New York toy fair in March 1959?
Barbie
Barbie was named after creator Ruth Handler's daughter Barbara and first sold for $3. A mint boxed 1959 original fetched over $3,500 on eBay in 2004.
Q 02Which territory, a kingdom until an 1893 coup, became the 50th US state in August 1959?
Hawaii
Hawaii voted 94.3 percent for statehood in a June 1959 referendum. It was admitted on August 21, less than eight months after Alaska.
Q 03Which 'Peggy Sue' singer died with Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper in an Iowa plane crash in February 1959?
Buddy Holly
Buddy Holly chartered the plane out of frustration with the tour's freezing buses. Bandmate Waylon Jennings gave his seat to the flu-stricken Big Bopper and survived.
Q 04Which leader of Cuba's 26th of July Movement reached Havana a week after Batista fled on New Year's Day 1959?
Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro took a long victory march across the island and arrived on 8 January. Batista had flown to the Dominican Republic hours into the new year.
Q 05Which CBS anthology series, introduced each week by its creator Rod Serling, premiered in October 1959?
The Twilight Zone
The Twilight Zone ran for 156 episodes, and Serling wrote or co-wrote 92 of them himself while also serving as executive producer.
Q 06Which 1959 Charlton Heston epic won a record eleven Academy Awards and features a nine-minute chariot race?
Ben-Hur
Ben-Hur had the largest budget of any film made up to that time. Its eleven Oscars went unmatched until Titanic nearly four decades later.
Q 07Which California attraction was Nikita Khrushchev barred from visiting on security grounds in September 1959?
Disneyland
Disneyland was cut from his Los Angeles schedule on 19 September, which added to his anger. On the same stop he met Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor on a 20th Century Fox film set.
Q 08Which carmaker introduced the modern three-point seat belt, designed by its engineer Nils Bohlin, in 1959?
Volvo
Volvo delivered the first car with the belt, a PV 544, to a dealer in Kristianstad in August 1959. Bohlin had earlier helped develop aircraft ejection seats.
Q 09Which British car, designed by Alec Issigonis after the Suez fuel shortage, was unveiled in August 1959?
Mini
The Mini was announced to the public on 26 August 1959. In 1999 it was voted the second-most influential car of the 20th century, behind only the Ford Model T.
Q 10Which country gave the Dalai Lama asylum after he fled Lhasa in March 1959 during an uprising against Chinese rule?
India
India took him in at the end of March 1959. He had slipped out of Lhasa by night after two artillery shells landed near his palace.
Q 11Which Lakers legend, born in Lansing, Michigan, in August 1959, won the NBA Finals MVP award as a rookie?
Magic Johnson
Magic Johnson got the nickname at 15 from a Lansing sportswriter after a game of 36 points, 18 rebounds and 16 assists. His devout mother thought it sacrilegious.
Q 12Which tennis player, born in Wiesbaden in February 1959, turned 'You cannot be serious' into a catchphrase?
John McEnroe
John McEnroe shouted the line at umpires and later made it the title of his 2002 autobiography. He was born in West Germany to American parents.
Q 13Which English actress, born in April 1959, became the first person to win Oscars for both acting and screenwriting?
Emma Thompson
Q 21Which 1959 Billy Wilder comedy, with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in drag, ends on the line 'Well, nobody's perfect'?
Some Like It Hot
Some Like It Hot was shot in black and white because Lemmon and Curtis looked 'ghoulish' in drag in colour tests, even though Marilyn Monroe's contract called for colour.
Q 22Which monument does Cary Grant's ad man climb across at the climax of the 1959 thriller North by Northwest?
Mount Rushmore
Mount Rushmore was the idea the film grew from: Alfred Hitchcock told his writer he had always wanted to do a chase across the monument, and the plot was built to end there.
Q 23Which 1959 Disney film, scored with music from a Tchaikovsky ballet, introduced the villain Maleficent?
Emma Thompson won Best Actress for Howards End, then the screenplay award for Sense and Sensibility, a script she spent five years developing.
Q 14Which actor, born in Oxford in June 1959 to an Olympic rowing champion, played the American doctor Gregory House?
Hugh Laurie
Hugh Laurie rowed as well: he won a British junior title in 1977 and earned a Blue in the 1980 Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race before turning to comedy.
Q 15Which TV talent-show judge, born in London in October 1959, started out in the mail room at EMI Music Publishing?
Simon Cowell
Simon Cowell got the mail room job through his father, an EMI executive. His brother says he had earlier been a runner on Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.
Q 16Which instrument did 'Weird Al' Yankovic, born in October 1959, take up after a door-to-door salesman offered lessons?
Accordion
Accordion won out over guitar lessons, and he had his first one the day before his seventh birthday. It became the trademark of his polka medleys of pop hits.
Q 17Which Canadian singer, born in November 1959, later spent 16 consecutive weeks at number one on the UK singles chart?
Bryan Adams
Bryan Adams set the record with '(Everything I Do) I Do It for You'. A diplomat's son born in Kingston, Ontario, he spent part of his childhood in Lisbon.
Q 18Which actor, born in Los Angeles on New Year's Eve 1959, played Iceman in Top Gun and Jim Morrison in The Doors?
Val Kilmer
Val Kilmer was the youngest person accepted into Juilliard's drama division at the time. He later played Doc Holliday in Tombstone and Batman in Batman Forever.
Q 19Which singer, born in Utah in October 1959 as the only daughter among nine children, topped the country chart at 14?
Marie Osmond
Marie Osmond did it with her debut single 'Paper Roses' in 1973. She was born in Ogden on her father's 42nd birthday.
Q 20Which British comedian, born in December 1959, hosted the Fox sketch show where The Simpsons began as animated shorts?
Tracey Ullman
Tracey Ullman fronted the first Fox primetime series to win an Emmy. Earlier, as a pop singer, she reached number two in Britain with 'They Don't Know'.
Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty took nearly a decade and $6 million to make, the studio's most expensive animated feature up to then, and opened to mixed reviews.
Q 24Which NBC western about the Cartwright family of the Ponderosa ranch premiered in September 1959?
Bonanza
Bonanza ran for 14 seasons and 431 episodes. Its title is a miners' term for a rich vein of ore, a nod to the Comstock Lode near the show's Nevada setting.
Q 25Which future film star played ramrod Rowdy Yates when the western Rawhide began on CBS in January 1959?
Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood was billed second to Eric Fleming's trail boss for seven seasons. The theme song, sung by Frankie Laine, later turned up in The Blues Brothers.
Q 26Which cartoon duo began outwitting the spies Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale on ABC in November 1959?
Rocky and Bullwinkle
Rocky and Bullwinkle, a flying squirrel and a moose, first aired as Rocky and His Friends. The show's puns and topical satire appealed to adults as well as children.
Q 27Which 1959 John Wayne western did Howard Hawks make as a response to High Noon?
Rio Bravo
Rio Bravo has Wayne's sheriff hold a jail with help from Dean Martin and teen idol Ricky Nelson. Wayne later called High Noon 'un-American'.
Q 28Which French director won the Best Director award at Cannes in 1959 for his debut feature, The 400 Blows?
François Truffaut
François Truffaut followed the film's young hero through four more films, all with the same actor. The 400 Blows became a defining work of the French New Wave.
Q 29Which NASCAR race, first run in February 1959, took three days of studying photographs to decide its winner?
Daytona 500
Daytona 500 officials first sent Johnny Beauchamp to victory lane. Photographs and newsreel footage then showed Lee Petty had edged him, and Petty was declared the winner.
Q 30Which NFL team, 1–10–1 a year earlier, hired Vince Lombardi as head coach in February 1959?
Green Bay Packers
Green Bay Packers fortunes turned at once: the 7–5 record of 1959 was the team's first winning season in a dozen years. Lombardi never had a losing NFL season.