1971 Trivia
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6correct to beat the crowd
50 free 1971 trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
1971 was a year of firsts that still shape daily life. Somebody sent the first email between two computers and picked a symbol to do it, the first space station went into orbit, a probe settled in around another planet for the first time, and a screen-based stock market opened with no trading floor. Britain and Ireland counted in new pence for the first time, a university began teaching by television, and a coffee company opened a single bean shop in a Seattle market. These 50 questions range across the news, sport, music, film, television and books of the year. Expect a president under 20, a chancellor with a Nobel medal, a shipyard that refused to close, a Double at Wembley, a touring side that did what no side has done since, a jazz legend's last engagement and a milkman who topped the Christmas chart, along with the births of a few people who became household names. Most questions are pitched for a pub table, with a handful for people who really remember the year. Play on your phone with instant answers and explanations, or print it for a pub quiz, office quiz or a 1971-themed birthday.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which food company financed the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory to promote a new candy bar?
Quaker Oats
Quaker Oats had never made a film before, but paid for the picture to launch a Wonka Bar from its Chicago confectionery subsidiary. The movie earned only about $4 million on first release.
Q 02Which country's 19-year-old 'Baby Doc' became the world's youngest president in April 1971, succeeding his father?
Haiti
Haiti passed from François 'Papa Doc' Duvalier to his son Jean-Claude, who took over his father's title of president for life and ruled until an uprising drove him into exile in France in 1986.
Q 03Which Soviet mission's three cosmonauts died in June 1971 when a valve vented their cabin during re-entry?
Soyuz 11
The Soyuz 11 crew remain the only humans to have died in space, above the Kármán line, after a breathing valve jolted open at 168 km and emptied the cabin in under a minute. They had just spent 23 days aboard the first space station.
Q 04Which coffee chain opened its first shop at Seattle's Pike Place Market in 1971, selling beans rather than drinks?
Starbucks
Starbucks sold only beans, tea and spices until Howard Schultz, who joined in 1982, pushed its founders to try espresso drinks and later turned it into a café chain.
Q 05Which Sunday-night CBS variety series was cancelled in March 1971 in a purge of programmes advertisers found too old?
The Ed Sullivan Show
The Ed Sullivan Show bowed out on 28 March 1971 after 23 years and was replaced in September by the CBS Sunday Night Movie. Its final guests included folk singer Melanie.
Q 06Which university's 1971 mock-prison experiment, led by Philip Zimbardo, ended after six days rather than two weeks?
Stanford
Stanford stopped the study after psychologist Christina Maslach visited the basement 'prison' and confronted Zimbardo about how the student guards were treating the student prisoners.
Q 07Which stock market began trading on 8 February 1971 as the world's first fully electronic exchange?
Nasdaq
Nasdaq started life as a screen-based quotation system rather than a trading floor, and was not registered as a stock exchange in its own right until 2006.
Q 08Which rapper, born in East Harlem in June 1971, was renamed after an Inca-descended rebel executed in Peru in 1781?
Tupac Shakur
Tupac Shakur was born a month after his mother Afeni, a Black Panther, was acquitted in the Panther 21 trial; she later renamed him in honour of Túpac Amaru II.
Q 09Which two countries both scrapped pounds, shillings and pence on the same 'Decimal Day', Monday 15 February 1971?
The UK and Ireland
The UK and Ireland decimalised together because both still operated inside the sterling area as a single monetary zone. Each introduced a tiny new halfpenny coin that day.
Q 10Which environmental group grew from a Vancouver committee that sailed a fishing boat toward a nuclear test in 1971?
Greenpeace
Greenpeace grew out of the Don't Make a Wave Committee, whose boat the Phyllis Cormack set off to protest a US test on Amchitka island in Alaska; the 5-megaton blast went ahead regardless.
Q 11Which NASA probe became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet in 1971, arriving as a dust storm hid the surface?
Mariner 9
Mariner 9 beat two Soviet probes into orbit by a matter of weeks, then waited months for the dust to settle before mapping volcanoes, valleys and dried riverbeds.
Q 12Which craft, launched in April 1971 and burned up after 175 days, was the world's first space station?
Salyut 1
Salyut 1, a Soviet station, hosted a single crew for 23 days of experiments before re-entering over the Pacific; an earlier crew had docked but failed to get inside at all.
Q 13Who sent the first email between two ARPANET computers in 1971, picking the @ sign to separate user from machine?
Ray Tomlinson
Q 21Which federation was formed on 2 December 1971 by six Gulf sheikhdoms, with a seventh joining the following year?
The United Arab Emirates
The United Arab Emirates began with Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Sharjah and Umm Al Quwain; Ras Al Khaimah held out until early 1972.
Q 22Which charity was formed in Paris in December 1971 by French doctors and journalists in the wake of the Biafran famine?
Médecins Sans Frontières
Médecins Sans Frontières came from the merger of two groups on 22 December 1971, founded on the idea that care should cross borders regardless of race, religion or politics.
Q 23Which West German chancellor took the 1971 Nobel Peace Prize for his Ostpolitik of reconciliation with the East?
Ray Tomlinson's first message was only a test sent between two machines sitting side by side, yet his user@machine scheme has been used in email addresses ever since.
Q 14Which document did Michael Hart type into an Illinois mainframe in 1971 as the first Project Gutenberg e-book?
The Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence became the first Gutenberg e-text because Hart happened to have a copy in his backpack and decided to type it in and share it over the network.
Q 15Which record label employed Godfrey Hounsfield, whose scanner made the first CT brain scan of a patient in 1971?
EMI
EMI had hired Hounsfield as an electronics engineer; he tested his prototype on a preserved human brain, a cow brain from a butcher and himself before the Wimbledon scan.
Q 16Which lander made the first soft landing on the Red Planet in 1971, then fell silent after about 20 seconds?
Mars 3
Mars 3, a Soviet probe, sent only a grey, featureless image before transmission stopped for reasons never established; its twin lander, Mars 2, had crashed days earlier.
Q 17What did Richard Nixon suspend in a televised address on 15 August 1971, alongside a 90-day freeze on wages and prices?
Dollar-to-gold conversion
Dollar-to-gold conversion had underpinned the Bretton Woods system; ending it, together with a surcharge on imports, became known as the 'Nixon shock'.
Q 18What did Richard Nixon call 'public enemy number one in the United States' at a press conference in June 1971?
Drug abuse
Drug abuse got the label on 17 June 1971, and the press quickly turned Nixon's 'worldwide escalation' against narcotics into the phrase 'war on drugs'.
Q 19US television's last cigarette commercial aired at 11:59 pm on 1 January 1971 during which talk show?
The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson carried a Virginia Slims spot at the last legal minute; broadcasters had won a one-day reprieve so the ads could run during the New Year's Day bowl games.
Q 20Which monarch, touring Europe in autumn 1971, became the first reigning Japanese emperor ever to travel abroad?
Hirohito
Hirohito had visited Europe as crown prince in 1921, but no sitting emperor had left Japan before; Richard Nixon met his plane at a refuelling stop in Anchorage, the first meeting between an emperor and a US president.
Willy Brandt
Willy Brandt won a year after he unexpectedly knelt in silence before the memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising during a state visit to Poland.
Q 24Which ancient capital hosted the Shah's tent-city celebration of 2,500 years of monarchy in October 1971?
Persepolis
Persepolis hosted luxury 'tents' arranged in a star around a fountain, with Maxim's of Paris closing its restaurant for almost two weeks to cater the banquets.
Q 25Which British firm went bankrupt in February 1971 as its RB211 jet engine overran its budget, and was nationalised?
Rolls-Royce
Rolls-Royce was rescued as a state-owned company called Rolls-Royce (1971) Limited, which kept the year in its name until 1977 and hived off the car division.
Q 26Which British institution took its first students in January 1971, teaching by post and late-night BBC broadcasts?
The Open University
The Open University was created by Harold Wilson's Labour government to give adults who had missed out on university a second chance; its BBC television courses ran from January 1971 until 2006.
Q 27Which Education Secretary was branded a 'milk snatcher' in 1971 for ending free school milk for children over seven?
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher kept a daily third of a pint for younger children and argued she was only continuing what Labour began when it ended free milk in secondary schools.
Q 28Which British employees, led by union chief Tom Jackson, staged their first national strike in 1971, lasting 47 days?
Postal workers
Postal workers walked out on 20 January after the Post Office offered less than the 15 to 20 per cent they sought; private services such as the Vectis postal service sprang up to carry letters.
Q 29Which Glasgow shipyard group collapsed in 1971, prompting a 'work-in' where Jimmy Reid banned 'bevvying'?
Upper Clyde Shipbuilders
Upper Clyde Shipbuilders went into receivership under Edward Heath's 'lame duck' policy, so the workers occupied the yards and finished the ships; John Lennon sent £5,000.
Q 30Which BBC show, launched with Bruce Forsyth in 1971, ended with a contestant memorising prizes on a conveyor belt?
The Generation Game
The Generation Game was adapted from a Dutch show called Één van de acht ('One of the Eight'), and winners kept whatever they could recall in 45 seconds.