1979
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50 free 1979 trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
1979 was a hinge year. A revolution toppled a monarchy in the Middle East, a superpower marched into a neighbour, and Britain and the United States both felt the squeeze of fuel queues and rising prices. At the same time people were lining up for space monsters at the cinema, dancing to disco and hearing rap on the radio for the first time. This quiz covers the whole year: the world headlines, the science and gadgets, the films, television premieres and chart hits, and the champions in baseball, basketball, football and golf. Questions come from both sides of the Atlantic, so there is plenty for British players as well as American ones, and a good share is pitched at anyone who was a teenager at the time. It is written for class-of-1979 reunions, 1970s nights and birthday parties for anyone born that year. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play it straight through on your phone or print it for a group.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Sony portable cassette player, launched in Japan in July 1979, let people carry music anywhere on headphones?
Walkman
The Walkman began with Sony co-founder Masaru Ibuka, who wanted music on business trips. Engineers built it by modifying the Pressman, a small recorder made for journalists.
Q 02What kind of animal swam at President Jimmy Carter's fishing boat in Georgia in April 1979, making front-page news?
A rabbit
A rabbit, hissing as it paddled toward his johnboat, was shooed off when Carter splashed at it with a paddle. Newspapers dubbed the episode the killer rabbit attack.
Q 03Which politician became Britain's first woman prime minister after winning the general election of May 1979?
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher had worked as a research chemist before turning to law and politics. She went on to become the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century.
Q 04Which McDonald's product went on sale across the United States in June 1979 after a 1977 trial in Kansas City?
Happy Meal
The Happy Meal grew out of a children's menu devised by Yolanda Fernández de Cofiño, who ran McDonald's restaurants in Guatemala. An advertising man then turned it into a boxed meal.
Q 05At which nuclear power plant did a stuck valve lead to a partial meltdown in March 1979, prompting thousands to flee?
Three Mile Island
Three Mile Island's accident came less than two weeks after the premiere of The China Syndrome, a thriller about a reactor emergency. Within days, 140,000 people had left the area.
Q 06Which 1979 Ridley Scott film traps the crew of the space tug Nostromo with a deadly creature on board?
Alien
Alien won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects, with a monster drawn from the nightmarish designs of Swiss artist H. R. Giger. The film also launched Sigourney Weaver's career.
Q 07Which abandoned space station fell to Earth in July 1979, scattering debris across Western Australia?
Skylab
Skylab earned NASA a tongue-in-cheek A$400 littering fine from the Shire of Esperance, where pieces landed. A radio host's listeners finally paid it on the agency's behalf in 2009.
Q 08Which board game did newspapermen Chris Haney and Scott Abbott dream up in Montreal in December 1979?
Trivial Pursuit
Trivial Pursuit has several origin stories, most of them starting with a game of Scrabble. It went on sale in 1981, two years after the idea.
Q 09Which 1979 Nobel Peace Prize winner refused the ceremonial banquet and asked that its cost go to the poor?
Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa had the banquet's $192,000 cost sent to the poor of India instead. She had founded the Missionaries of Charity in the slums of Calcutta in 1950.
Q 10Which cable network did Bill Rasmussen launch in September 1979 after he was fired by hockey's New England Whalers?
ESPN
ESPN went on the air from Bristol, Connecticut, with the first edition of SportsCenter. The idea had started as a monthly cable show about Connecticut sports.
Q 11Which exiled cleric flew home from France on a chartered Air France jet in February 1979 to lead Iran's revolution?
Ruhollah Khomeini
Ruhollah Khomeini was welcomed by a crowd reported at up to five million people. He had spent more than 14 years in exile, most of them in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf.
Q 12Which country's diplomats hid six Americans who evaded capture when the US embassy in Tehran was seized in 1979?
Canada
Canada sheltered the six until January 1980, when they flew out posing as a film crew scouting locations for a science-fiction movie. The escape inspired the 2012 film Argo.
Q 13Which neighbouring country did Soviet troops invade in the last week of December 1979, starting a nine-year war?
Afghanistan
Q 21Which planet did the probe Voyager 1 reach in March 1979, less than two years after leaving Earth?
Jupiter
Jupiter's moon Io gave the mission its greatest surprise: erupting volcanoes, the first active ones ever seen on another body in the Solar System.
Q 22Which social reformer's face went on a small US dollar coin, new in 1979, that people kept mistaking for a quarter?
Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony was chosen after calls in Congress for a real woman in place of an allegorical Liberty. The coin was so poorly received that production was suspended in 1981.
Q 23Which carmaker, run by Lee Iacocca, won $1.5 billion in federal loan guarantees from Congress in December 1979?
Chrysler
Afghanistan lost its president, who was assassinated in his own palace as the Soviets took over. The invasion prompted a US-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
Q 14Which country became the first Arab state to recognise Israel by signing a peace treaty in Washington in March 1979?
Egypt
Egypt regained the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had captured in 1967, under the treaty. The deal grew out of the Camp David Accords of the year before.
Q 15Which Middle Eastern strongman, vice president for eleven years, formally took power in his country in July 1979?
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein had already been Iraq's de facto leader for several years when President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr resigned. He held power until his overthrow in 2003.
Q 16Which African dictator fled into exile in April 1979 after Tanzanian troops and rebels captured his capital, Kampala?
Idi Amin
Idi Amin had brought the war on himself by trying to annex Tanzania's Kagera Region. He went first to Libya, then Iraq, and finally Saudi Arabia, where he died in 2003.
Q 17Which cousin of Queen Elizabeth II was killed in August 1979 when the IRA bombed his boat off the Irish coast?
Lord Mountbatten
Lord Mountbatten kept the cabin cruiser Shadow V for fishing during his summers at Classiebawn Castle. The boat sat largely unguarded in the harbour at Mullaghmore.
Q 18Which communist-ruled country welcomed Pope John Paul II in June 1979 on his first visit home since his election?
Poland
Poland surrounded its native son with ecstatic crowds wherever he went. Born Karol Wojtyła in Wadowice, he was the first non-Italian pope since the 16th century.
Q 19Which 16-year-old American beat four-time defending champion Chris Evert in the women's final of the 1979 US Open?
Tracy Austin
Tracy Austin, at 16 years and 9 months, became the youngest major champion of the Open Era. Monica Seles later lowered that mark at the 1990 French Open.
Q 20Which British runner set world records at 800 metres, the mile and 1500 metres in the space of 41 days in 1979?
Sebastian Coe
Sebastian Coe set the first two in Oslo and the last in Zurich, becoming the first person to hold all of those records at the same time.
Chrysler's rescue cleared the Senate four days before Christmas and took effect in January 1980. Iacocca was later credited with returning the company to profit.
Q 24Which July 1979 hurricane was the first Atlantic storm to be officially given a man's name?
Bob
Bob came ashore in Louisiana as a Category 1 storm. It was also the first hurricane to form in the Gulf of Mexico in the month of July since 1959.
Q 25In which desert did a half-hour snowstorm surprise the town of Aïn Sefra in February 1979?
Sahara
The Sahara town waited until December 2016 for its next snowfall. A blizzard the following month then left drifts up to a metre thick in places.
Q 26Which Chinese leader put on a Stetson cowboy hat at a Texas rodeo while visiting the United States in early 1979?
Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping was handed the hat by a teenage barrel rider at a rodeo in Simonton. Earlier that day he had toured the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Q 27Which kidnap victim turned bank robber walked free in February 1979 after President Carter commuted her prison sentence?
Patty Hearst
Patty Hearst, seized by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974, had served 22 months. The order freed her eight months before her first parole hearing, and Bill Clinton later pardoned her.
Q 28Which Atari arcade game of November 1979, designed by Lyle Rains and Ed Logg, became the company's best-selling coin-op?
Asteroids
Asteroids knocked Space Invaders off its perch in American arcades and sold more than 70,000 cabinets. It ran on hardware first used for Lunar Lander.
Q 29Which 1979 spreadsheet program is often called the killer app that turned the Apple II into a business tool?
VisiCalc
VisiCalc came to Dan Bricklin while he watched a presentation at Harvard Business School. Its success helped prompt IBM to bring out the IBM PC two years later.
Q 30Which cable channel launched nationwide on April 1, 1979, as the first network aimed entirely at children?
Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon opened with Pinwheel, a show it had tested on the QUBE cable system in Columbus, Ohio. The channel ran without any advertising until 1984.