1974
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7correct to beat the crowd
50 free 1974 trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
1974 was a year of exits and arrivals. An American president left office under a cloud, a heavyweight champion took back his crown in the middle of the night, and a home run record that had stood for decades finally fell. Meanwhile a puzzle, a barcode and a role-playing game quietly made their first appearances. This quiz covers the whole year: the films and TV shows that premiered, the songs on the radio, the champions in baseball, football, hockey and boxing, the headlines from Washington and abroad, a few scientific finds and some of the oddest stories of the day. There are also questions on well-known people born in 1974. Most are pitched for anyone who remembers the decade, with a few tougher ones for film, music and sports buffs. It is written for 1970s nights, class reunions and birthday parties for anyone born that year. 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 puzzle toy did a Hungarian architecture professor first build by hand from blocks of wood in 1974?
Rubik's Cube
Rubik's Cube took its own inventor about a month to solve after he first scrambled it, and it was sold as the Magic Cube until it was renamed after him in 1980.
Q 02Which archaeological treasure did farmers digging a well near Xi'an, China, uncover by accident in March 1974?
The Terracotta Army
The Terracotta Army dates from the late 200s BCE and lay about 1.5 km east of the tomb mound of the Qin emperor it was made to guard.
Q 03What name did scientists give the 3.2-million-year-old skeleton found in Ethiopia in 1974, after a Beatles song?
Lucy
Lucy got her name because Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds played over and over on a tape recorder in camp while the team celebrated the find that evening.
Q 04Which product became the first item ever scanned with a UPC barcode, at an Ohio supermarket in June 1974?
Wrigley's chewing gum
Wrigley's chewing gum made retail history at 8:01 a.m. on June 26, when a 10-pack of Juicy Fruit crossed the scanner at a Marsh supermarket in the town of Troy.
Q 05Who became US president in August 1974 without ever being elected either president or vice president?
Gerald Ford
Gerald Ford had been appointed vice president only eight months earlier, when Spiro Agnew resigned, and he remains the only president never elected to either office.
Q 06Which Atlanta Braves slugger hit his 715th career home run in April 1974 to pass Babe Ruth's record?
Hank Aaron
Hank Aaron hit number 715 off Al Downing of the Dodgers, a pitcher who happened to wear the same number 44 on his back.
Q 07In which African country did Muhammad Ali win back the heavyweight title from George Foreman in October 1974?
Zaire
Zaire staged the Rumble in the Jungle at 4 a.m. local time so that viewers in the eastern United States could watch it live on closed-circuit television at 10 p.m.
Q 08Which pop group won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest in Brighton with a song named after a Napoleonic battle?
ABBA
ABBA won for Sweden with Waterloo, the group's first global hit and the launch pad for one of the best-selling careers in pop music.
Q 09Which 19-year-old newspaper heiress was kidnapped from her Berkeley apartment in February 1974 by the radical SLA?
Patty Hearst
Patty Hearst was filmed ten weeks later holding a carbine as she helped her captors rob a branch of the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco.
Q 10Which New York landmark did French high-wire artist Philippe Petit cross on a cable without permission in August 1974?
World Trade Center
The World Trade Center walk lasted 45 minutes, with Petit making eight passes between the Twin Towers about 400 metres up and even lying down on the wire.
Q 11Which 1974 Mel Brooks Western spoof stars Cleavon Little as the newly appointed sheriff of Rock Ridge?
Blazing Saddles
Blazing Saddles counted Richard Pryor among its writers, and its final brawl breaks the fourth wall by bursting onto a neighbouring set where a musical is being filmed.
Q 12Which actor co-wrote 1974's Young Frankenstein with Mel Brooks and starred as the mad scientist's grandson?
Gene Wilder
Gene Wilder came up with the idea and began the script himself, and much of the film's laboratory equipment had been built for the 1931 Frankenstein.
Q 13Which actor won an Oscar for playing the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II, released in December 1974?
Robert De Niro
Q 21Which actor, formerly Little Joe on Bonanza, starred as Charles Ingalls when Little House on the Prairie began in 1974?
Michael Landon
Michael Landon was also the show's executive producer, writer and director, moving to the new NBC series the year after Bonanza was cancelled.
Q 22Which actor played Jim Rockford, a private eye living in a Malibu trailer, in the NBC series launched in September 1974?
James Garner
James Garner had starred in the Western Maverick for the same creator, Roy Huggins, who imagined the new hero as Bret Maverick turned modern-day detective.
Q 23Which CBS sitcom about the Evans family in a Chicago housing project spun off from Maude in February 1974?
Good Times
Robert De Niro delivered nearly all his lines in Sicilian dialect, and the film became the first sequel ever to win Best Picture.
Q 14Which 1974 Roman Polanski film stars Jack Nicholson as private eye Jake Gittes amid a Los Angeles water scandal?
Chinatown
Chinatown drew on the real California water wars, in which Los Angeles secured water rights in the distant Owens Valley at the start of the 20th century.
Q 15Which disaster film starring Paul Newman and Steve McQueen was the highest-grossing film released worldwide in 1974?
The Towering Inferno
The Towering Inferno merged two similar skyscraper-fire novels, The Tower and The Glass Inferno, with Fox and Warner Bros. sharing a single film.
Q 16Which masked killer made his screen debut in 1974 in Tobe Hooper's low-budget film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre?
Leatherface
Leatherface was loosely inspired by the real murderer Ed Gein, and the film was made for less than $140,000 with a little-known cast drawn mainly from central Texas.
Q 17Which actor played the assassin Scaramanga opposite Roger Moore's James Bond in 1974's The Man with the Golden Gun?
Christopher Lee
Christopher Lee was the step-cousin of Bond creator Ian Fleming, who had once offered him the villain's role in the very first film, Dr. No.
Q 18Which British actor was co-hosting the April 1974 Oscars when a naked streaker ran across the stage behind him?
David Niven
David Niven regained his composure after Robert Opel dashed past flashing a peace sign, then answered with a joke at the intruder's expense.
Q 19Which 10-year-old became the youngest winner of a competitive Oscar in April 1974 for the film Paper Moon?
Tatum O'Neal
Tatum O'Neal won as the con artist Addie Loggins, acting opposite her real father Ryan, and beat her own co-star Madeline Kahn to the award.
Q 20Which ABC sitcom set in 1950s Milwaukee premiered in January 1974 with Ron Howard as teenager Richie Cunningham?
Happy Days
Happy Days grew out of an unsold pilot that had aired in 1972 as a segment of the anthology Love, American Style, and it went on to run for 11 seasons.
Good Times was television's first sitcom about a two-parent African-American family, and Florida Evans had first appeared as Maude's housekeeper.
Q 24Which Mary Tyler Moore Show spin-off drew more than 52 million viewers for its heroine's wedding in October 1974?
Rhoda
Rhoda married Joe Gerard in an hour-long special seen by over half the US viewing audience, and fans mailed real wedding gifts to the CBS studios.
Q 25Which actor played bionic astronaut Steve Austin when The Six Million Dollar Man went weekly on ABC in 1974?
Lee Majors
Lee Majors first played the role in three 1973 television films, and the character came from Martin Caidin's 1972 novel Cyborg.
Q 26Which actress starred as undercover Sergeant Pepper Anderson when the NBC drama Police Woman began in September 1974?
Angie Dickinson
Angie Dickinson won a Golden Globe for the part, and the series, one of the first hour-long dramas led by a woman, influenced Charlie's Angels.
Q 27Which Jamaican-born singer had a worldwide 1974 disco hit with Kung Fu Fighting, first planned as a B-side?
Carl Douglas
Carl Douglas recorded it in the last ten minutes of a studio session, and the throwaway track went on to sell eleven million copies.
Q 28Which guitarist topped the US chart in 1974 with a cover of Bob Marley's I Shot the Sheriff?
Eric Clapton
Eric Clapton put the cover on his album 461 Ocean Boulevard, and it remains his only single to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100.
Q 29Which former Beatle walked on stage at a Madison Square Garden concert in November 1974 after losing a bet?
John Lennon
John Lennon had promised Elton John he would appear if Whatever Gets You thru the Night hit number one, and it became his only solo US chart-topper in his lifetime.
Q 30Which country star topped the US country chart in 1974 with both Jolene and I Will Always Love You?
Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton wrote I Will Always Love You as a farewell to her mentor Porter Wagoner, with whom she was ending a seven-year professional partnership.