1963 Trivia
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40 free 1963 trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
1963 was the year the old order cracked. Britain shivered through its coldest winter in two centuries, a war minister lied to Parliament and a prime minister quit, a mail train was stopped in a Buckinghamshire cutting, and a defector slipped out of Beirut. Across the Atlantic a quarter of a million people heard a preacher describe his dream, and in November a motorcade in Dallas stopped the world. These 40 questions go past the headlines to the second tier of the year: the earl who gave up his title for Downing Street, the report that closed a third of the railways, the diet cola named by a computer, the $45 smiley face, a cat on a rocket, a left-hander's first golf major and the Disney film that turned a boy into a fish. The films, records, sport, science, births and deaths of 1963 all get a turn, with a British lean. Most are pitched at pub-quiz level, with a handful for people who really remember the year. Play on your phone with instant answers and sources, or print it for a pub quiz, a classroom or a 1963-themed birthday.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which sports car, unveiled at Frankfurt in 1963, had to be renamed after Peugeot claimed rights to its original model number?
Porsche 911
Porsche 911 badges replaced the 901 name after just 82 cars, because Peugeot claimed the rights to three-digit names with a middle zero; internally the part numbers stayed 901 for years.
Q 02Which earl renounced his peerage to become prime minister on 19 October, after Macmillan resigned citing ill health?
Alec Douglas-Home
Alec Douglas-Home was the last prime minister to take office while sitting in the House of Lords; two of Macmillan's cabinet ministers refused to serve under him.
Q 03Who became the first honorary citizen of the United States on 9 April, under an Act of Congress signed by Kennedy?
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill was unable to attend the White House ceremony; he and Mother Teresa are the only people given the honour in their lifetimes, and Lafayette did not receive it until 2002.
Q 04Which Worcester graphic artist drew the yellow smiley face for an insurance company in 1963 and was paid $45?
Harvey Ball
Harvey Ball drew it in ten minutes for State Mutual Life Assurance of Worcester, Massachusetts, and never trademarked it; when he tried in 1971 he was told the design was already in the public domain.
Q 05Which diet drink, Coca-Cola's first, took its name from a list of short words generated by an IBM computer?
Tab
Tab began as 'Tabb', the pick from a shortlist drawn from the four-letter words an IBM 1401 printed out, and lost a letter in development; Coca-Cola was chasing Royal Crown's Diet Rite.
Q 06Which club beat Leicester 3–1 in the FA Cup final of 25 May, pushed back three weeks by the Big Freeze?
Manchester United
Manchester United had finished 19th in the league, narrowly avoiding relegation, yet goals from Denis Law and David Herd, who struck twice, brought the club's first trophy since the Munich air disaster.
Q 07What machine actually carried the Washington–Kremlin hotline that went live in August 1963 after the Cuban crisis?
A teleprinter
A teleprinter sent typed text over a cable, and no red phone was ever used, despite the legend; leaders wrote in their own language and the message was translated at the other end.
Q 08Which British heavyweight floored Cassius Clay at Wembley on 18 June, before losing in the next round to a cut eye?
Henry Cooper
Henry Cooper's left hook, 'Enry's 'Ammer, put Clay down in round four; Clay's trainer Angelo Dundee then drew the referee's attention to a split in one of his fighter's gloves before the stoppage in the fifth.
Q 09Which country put the first cat into space on 18 October 1963, recovering her alive 13 minutes after launch?
France
France's Félicette had electrodes implanted in her skull and was known only as C 341 until the press nicknamed her Félix after the flight; two months later she was put down so her brain could be studied.
Q 10Which island rose from the sea off Iceland in November, first spotted as a column of smoke by a trawler's cook?
Surtsey
Surtsey, named after the Norse fire giant Surtr, kept growing until June 1967; it was made a nature reserve while still erupting, and only a few scientists may land, so life can colonise it undisturbed.
Q 11What do the letters of the five-digit ZIP code, introduced across the United States on 1 July 1963, stand for?
Zone Improvement Plan
The Zone Improvement Plan was sold to the public by Mr. ZIP, a cartoon mailman the Post Office launched to persuade Americans to add the five digits to their addresses.
Q 12Where did Britain, America and the USSR sign the treaty of 5 August banning nuclear tests in the air, space and sea?
Moscow
Moscow hosted the signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty, which still allowed underground blasts; its arrival coincided with a sharp fall in radioactive particles in the atmosphere.
Q 13Which British Railways chairman's report of 27 March proposed closing 2,363 stations and 5,000 miles of line?
Q 21Who became England's youngest football captain, at 22, against Czechoslovakia in May, in only his 12th international?
Bobby Moore
Bobby Moore got the armband because regular captain Jimmy Armfield was injured; England won 4–2, yet Armfield took the job back for the next match and Moore did not lead the side again until 1964.
Q 22Which osteopath, tried for living on immoral earnings in the Profumo affair, took a fatal overdose before the verdict?
Stephen Ward
Stephen Ward had introduced Christine Keeler to war minister John Profumo at a Cliveden pool party; he died three days after taking sleeping pills, and a 2017 review found the judge's summing-up could not be traced.
Q 23Which ex-MI6 officer vanished from Beirut on 23 January and was named in July as the spy ring's 'Third Man'?
Richard Beeching
Richard Beeching, a physicist recruited from ICI, called his report The Reshaping of British Railways; it argued that a third of route miles carried just 1 per cent of passengers.
Q 14Which Great Train Robber, traced by a fingerprint on a tomato sauce bottle, escaped Wandsworth in 1965 by rope ladder?
Ronnie Biggs
Ronnie Biggs took part on his 34th birthday and served only 15 months of a 30-year sentence; he then spent 36 years as a fugitive, mostly in Brazil, before returning to Britain in 2001.
Q 15Which East African colony, where the Mau Mau had risen a decade earlier, became independent of Britain on 12 December?
Kenya
Kenya's first prime minister was Jomo Kenyatta, whom the British had convicted in 1953 of masterminding Mau Mau and held until 1961; he became president when the country turned republic a year after independence.
Q 16Which Belfast-born author died in Oxford on 22 November, his death buried beneath the news from Dallas?
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis died of kidney failure a week short of his 65th birthday, on the same day as Aldous Huxley and President Kennedy, so two major authors passed with barely a headline.
Q 17Which 1963 Maurice Sendak picture book sends Max, in his wolf suit, to rule an island of monsters?
Where the Wild Things Are
Where the Wild Things Are won the 1964 Caldecott Medal as the year's most distinguished American picture book, and Max ends by sending the monsters to bed without supper in turn.
Q 18Which Betty Friedan book, grown from a survey of her Smith classmates, named 'the problem that has no name' in 1963?
The Feminine Mystique
The Feminine Mystique sold over a million copies and is credited with sparking second-wave feminism; Friedan's 15th-reunion survey had found her classmates unhappy as housewives.
Q 19Which basketball star, born in Brooklyn in February 1963, was turned down by his high-school varsity team as too short?
Michael Jordan
Michael Jordan stood 5 feet 11 inches when Laney High in Wilmington turned him down; he starred on the junior varsity instead, posting some 40-point games before making the senior team.
Q 20Which 23-year-old's three-foot par putt on the last hole beat Tony Lema for the first of his six Masters titles?
Jack Nicklaus
Jack Nicklaus built his one-stroke win on a second-round 66 at Augusta; three months later he bogeyed the last two holes of the Open at Royal Lytham and missed the playoff by a stroke.
Kim Philby
Kim Philby had been cleared in Parliament in 1955 and sent to Beirut as correspondent for The Observer and The Economist; on 30 July Soviet officials announced that he had been granted asylum and citizenship.
Q 24In which English city did a four-month boycott in 1963 end the bus company's refusal to employ Black or Asian crews?
Bristol
Bristol's bus company gave in on 28 August, the very day Martin Luther King gave his 'I Have a Dream' speech; the boycott, led by youth worker Paul Stephenson, helped bring about the Race Relations Act of 1965.
Q 25Which Labour MP, unseated by inheriting a viscountcy in 1960, won the 1963 Peerage Act letting heirs disclaim titles?
Tony Benn
Tony Benn, briefly the 2nd Viscount Stansgate, was the first peer to use the Act after it gained royal assent on 31 July; within months it also allowed a Conservative earl to leave the Lords and become prime minister.
Q 26When the Big Freeze of 1963 halted football, a panel of experts began deciding results for which betting game?
The pools
The pools needed scores to pay out on, so from January 1963 the Pools Panel, with ex-players such as Tom Finney and Tommy Lawton, ruled on postponed games; only 1683–84 and 1739–40 were colder in central England.
Q 27Which South Vietnamese president was killed on 2 November, a day after his own generals launched a CIA-backed coup?
Ngô Đình Diệm
Ngô Đình Diệm and his brother Nhu escaped the palace but were recaptured and killed, by most accounts on the orders of General Dương Văn Minh, who took over; Diệm's treatment of Buddhist protesters had cost him American support.
Q 28Which Birmingham, Alabama place of worship was bombed by Klansmen on 15 September, killing four girls aged 11 to 14?
16th Street Baptist Church
16th Street Baptist Church was hit by dynamite on a timer under its east steps, yet the first conviction, of Robert Chambliss, came only in 1977 and two more not until 2001 and 2002.
Q 29Which golfer became the first left-hander to win a major, at the 1963 Open at Royal Lytham?
Bob Charles
Bob Charles, who is naturally right-handed, beat Phil Rodgers by eight strokes over 36 extra holes, the last playoff of that length at the Open.
Q 30Which Scottish farmer won a then-record seven Grands Prix in 1963 to take his first Formula One title in a Lotus 25?
Jim Clark
Jim Clark also finished second at Indianapolis that year behind Parnelli Jones, whose car was leaking oil; officials were ready to black-flag Jones until his car's owner talked them out of it.