1964 Trivia
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50 free 1964 trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This 1964 trivia quiz covers the year Beatlemania crossed the Atlantic and a 22-year-old named Cassius Clay shook up the world. Expect questions on the Civil Rights Act, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the Great Alaskan earthquake, Mandela's life sentence, Khrushchev's fall, the first bullet train, the first Olympics in Asia and the first close-up pictures of the Moon. Culture rounds cover Mary Poppins, BBC Two, the Moog synthesizer, the Great Train Robbery sentences, the year's Nobel Prizes, the deaths of MacArthur, Nehru, Hoover and Cole Porter, and the babies of 1964, from Michelle Obama to Keanu Reeves. Early rounds suit anyone who lived through it or studied it; later rounds reward real year-by-year buffs. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which band made its first live US television appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964?
The Beatles
The Beatles drew an estimated 73 million viewers; Sullivan is said to have booked them after seeing crowds of fans greet their return to Heathrow from Sweden.
Q 02Whom did Cassius Clay beat in Miami Beach on February 25, 1964, to become heavyweight champion?
Sonny Liston
Sonny Liston, the heavy favourite, stayed on his stool when the bell rang for the seventh round, complaining of an injured shoulder.
Q 03Which US state was struck on Good Friday 1964 by the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in North America?
Alaska
Alaska took the magnitude 9.2 shock, and the tsunamis it set off killed people as far away as the coast of California.
Q 04Which Austrian city hosted the 1964 Winter Olympics?
Innsbruck
Innsbruck was so short of snow that the Austrian army hauled in thousands of cubic metres of it and packed it onto the ski courses.
Q 05Which city hosted the 1964 Summer Olympics, the first Games held in Asia?
Tokyo
Tokyo had its cauldron lit by Yoshinori Sakai, born in Hiroshima on the day the atomic bomb fell, a choice meant to show the country's recovery from the war.
Q 06Which US law did President Lyndon Johnson sign on July 2, 1964?
Civil Rights Act
The Civil Rights Act got through only after the Senate voted to cut off a filibuster, something it had never managed before on a civil rights bill.
Q 07The US Surgeon General's landmark report of January 11, 1964, warned Americans about the health dangers of what?
Smoking
Smoking was the target, and Luther Terry chose a Saturday to release the report so it would fill the Sunday papers but spare the stock market.
Q 08What did the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the US Constitution outlaw in 1964?
Poll taxes
Poll taxes were banned only in federal elections; it took a Supreme Court ruling two years later to end them in state and local votes.
Q 09For which film did Sidney Poitier become the first African-American to win Best Actor in 1964?
Lilies of the Field
Lilies of the Field stood alone for 38 years: no other Black actor won Best Actor until Denzel Washington in 2002, the night Poitier collected an honorary Oscar.
Q 10The British gang jailed for a combined 307 years in April 1964 had stolen £2.6 million from what?
A mail train
A mail train from Glasgow to London was the target; Ronnie Biggs, one of the men jailed, climbed out of prison the next year and stayed on the run until 2001.
Q 11Jerrie Mock became the first woman to fly solo where in April 1964?
Around the world
Around the world in 29 days: Mock flew a single-engine Cessna and finished ahead of a rival, Joan Merriam Smith, who had set off two days before her.
Q 12To which prison was Nelson Mandela sent after being sentenced to life in June 1964?
Robben Island
Robben Island took all but one of the eight men jailed for life: Denis Goldberg, the only white man convicted, was held apart in Pretoria.
Q 13Which British television channel began broadcasting on April 20, 1964?
BBC Two
BBC Two's opening night was blacked out by a power cut across west London, so its first scheduled programme was the children's show Play School the next morning.
Q 21Which US destroyer was attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 2, 1964?
USS Maddox
USS Maddox and a second destroyer reported another attack two nights later that probably never happened, yet within days Congress handed Johnson broad war powers in Vietnam.
Q 22What took place in Liverpool and Manchester on August 13, 1964, for the last time in the United Kingdom?
Judicial hangings
Judicial hangings ended with Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans, executed in two different prisons for the same murder; Parliament suspended the death penalty for murder the next year.
Q 23Which nation did the IOC bar from the 1964 Summer Olympics for refusing to renounce racial discrimination in sport?
South Africa
Q 14Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged on April 26, 1964, to form which country?
Tanzania
Tanzania takes its name from both partners, and the union came only months after a revolution on Zanzibar had overthrown the island's sultan.
Q 15Which programming language ran its first program at 4:00 a.m. on May 1, 1964?
BASIC
BASIC was written at Dartmouth by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz so that students outside the sciences could use a computer.
Q 16A disallowed equaliser for Peru against Argentina set off one of football's deadliest disasters in which city in May 1964?
Lima
Lima's National Stadium had its exits shut, so when police fired tear gas into the stands the fleeing crowd was crushed in the stairwells; the official toll was 328.
Q 17Which car made its first appearance at the 24 Hours of Le Mans on June 20, 1964?
Ford GT40
The Ford GT40 was Henry Ford II's answer after Enzo Ferrari backed out of selling him his company; none finished in 1964, but the car won Le Mans in 1966.
Q 18Which country beat the Soviet Union 2-1 to win the 1964 European Nations' Cup?
Spain
Spain won the final in Madrid four years after pulling out of the first tournament rather than travel to Moscow to play the same opponents.
Q 19Which African country, known under British rule as Nyasaland, became independent on July 6, 1964?
Malawi
Malawi began under prime minister Hastings Banda, who turned it into a one-party republic two years later and was made president for life in 1971.
Q 20What did the Ranger 7 probe send back on July 31, 1964?
First close-up photos of the Moon
The first close-up photos of the Moon arrived in the final minutes before Ranger 7 crashed into it as planned, ending a long run of failed American lunar probes.
South Africa would not condemn apartheid in sport, and it did not return to the Olympics until Barcelona in 1992, once the apartheid laws had been repealed.
Q 24Which Disney film premiered in Los Angeles on August 27, 1964, and went on to win five Oscars?
Mary Poppins
Mary Poppins never went near London: the whole film was shot on soundstages at the Disney studio in Burbank, California, in front of painted backdrops.
Q 25Which British newspaper replaced the Daily Herald in September 1964?
The Sun
The Sun began as a broadsheet promising a radical, independent line; it turned tabloid only after Rupert Murdoch bought it five years later.
Q 26Which body submitted its report on the Kennedy assassination on September 24, 1964?
The Warren Commission
The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone; fifteen years later a House committee decided there had probably been a conspiracy.
Q 27What did Japan inaugurate on October 1, 1964, as a world first?
A high-speed rail system
A high-speed rail system, the Shinkansen 'bullet train', ran at up to 210 km/h, and the World Bank lent $80 million to help build it.
Q 28Which Soviet spacecraft carried the first multi-person crew, three cosmonauts, into orbit in October 1964?
Voskhod 1
Voskhod 1 was a one-man Vostok capsule refitted for three, so tight that the cosmonauts had to fly without spacesuits.
Q 29Who in 1964 became, at 35, the youngest person yet to win the Nobel Peace Prize?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. kept none of the prize money, about $54,000, sharing it out among the groups in the movement he led.
Q 30Which Soviet leader was deposed on October 14-15, 1964?
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev officially retired for 'advanced age' and ill health; in truth his colleagues had voted him out, and he lived on as a pensioner at his dacha.