1987
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7correct to beat the crowd
50 free 1987 trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
1987 was a year of market panic and Cold War thaw, of blockbuster albums and cult films, and of a few quiet launches that would end up in almost every home and office. A toddler's rescue kept America glued to the television, and a young pilot embarrassed a superpower. This quiz covers the whole year: the films and TV debuts, the records and tours, the champions crowned in stadiums and rings, the political dramas on both sides of the Atlantic, and the science and technology stories that shaped the decades after. Most questions are pitched for anyone who remembers the 1980s, with a few tougher ones for news and sports buffs. It is written for class reunions, 1980s nights and anyone who was born or graduated 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 animated family made its television debut in April 1987 in short sketches on The Tracey Ullman Show?
The Simpsons
The Simpsons were dreamed up in a hurry by Matt Groening in the lobby before his pitch meeting. He had planned to offer his Life in Hell comic strip, but did not want to sign away its rights.
Q 02What nickname was given to 19 October 1987, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 22.6 percent in one day?
Black Monday
Black Monday's 508-point slide is the largest one-day percentage drop in the Dow's history. Markets crashed worldwide, starting in Asia, and Hong Kong shares lost 45.8 percent.
Q 03Which image file format, later best known for short looping animations, did CompuServe introduce in June 1987?
GIF
GIF was meant to be said with a soft g, its creator insisted, echoing the peanut butter brand Jif. Polls show most people say it with a hard g anyway.
Q 04The picture-book character Americans know as Waldo first appeared in Britain in 1987 under which name?
Wally
Wally became Waldo in the United States and Canada, Charlie in France and Walter in Germany as the puzzle books spread abroad. Readers hunt for his red-and-white striped shirt, bobble hat and glasses.
Q 05Which US landmark flattened under the weight of about 300,000 walkers on its 50th anniversary in May 1987?
Golden Gate Bridge
The Golden Gate Bridge is built to flex that way, and the load was put at under 40% of what its cables can take before yielding. Up to a million people had turned out for the party.
Q 06At which Berlin landmark did Ronald Reagan stand in June 1987 to urge the Soviet leader to tear down the wall?
Brandenburg Gate
The Brandenburg Gate stood so close to East Berlin that Reagan spoke in front of two panes of bulletproof glass. His speechwriter took the idea for the famous challenge from a West Berlin host.
Q 07In October 1987, rescuers in Midland, Texas, spent 58 hours freeing 18-month-old Jessica McClure from what?
A backyard well
A backyard well at her aunt's home held the toddler about 22 feet down, in a casing only eight inches wide. A photograph of the rescue won a Pulitzer Prize the following year.
Q 08Which 1987 film stars Jennifer Grey as a teenager who falls for an instructor at a Catskills resort in 1963?
Dirty Dancing
Dirty Dancing was filmed at a Virginia mountain hotel and a Carolina lake, because its makers found nothing suitable left in the Catskills. It was budgeted at about $5 million, less than half the average of the day.
Q 09Which Seattle coffee chain did its founders sell in 1987 to Howard Schultz, their former director of marketing?
Starbucks
Starbucks took on the cafe format of Il Giornale, the business Schultz had modelled on the coffee bars of Milan. The founders had wanted to stay focused on selling beans.
Q 10Which future World Cup-winning captain of Argentina was born in the city of Rosario in June 1987?
Lionel Messi
Lionel Messi was diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency at the age of 10 and began therapy a year later. His father's health insurance covered only two years of the treatment.
Q 11Which Leonard Nimoy-directed 1987 comedy was the first Disney film to gross $100 million in its original US run?
Three Men and a Baby
Three Men and a Baby is a remake of the French film Three Men and a Cradle. A supposed ghost glimpsed in one scene is really a cardboard standee of Ted Danson's character, left on the set.
Q 12Which Vietnam War film, based on its director's own time as an infantryman, won Best Picture in March 1987?
Platoon
Platoon was the first Hollywood film written and directed by a veteran of the Vietnam War. Its maker wanted to counter the picture of the conflict painted by John Wayne's The Green Berets.
Q 13Which 1987 thriller casts Glenn Close as Alex Forrest, who stalks a married lawyer and boils his family's pet rabbit?
Q 21Which U2 album, released in March 1987, gave the band their only two US number-one singles?
The Joshua Tree
The Joshua Tree won the Grammy for Album of the Year at the 1988 ceremony. Its sleeve photographs show the band in American desert landscapes.
Q 22Which singer's second album made her the first woman to debut at number one on the Billboard 200, in June 1987?
Whitney Houston
Whitney Houston then sent the album's first four singles to number one, another first for a female artist. Advance orders had passed 1.5 million a week before it reached the shops.
Q 23Which Los Angeles band released Appetite for Destruction in July 1987, a debut that took a year to top the US chart?
Guns N' Roses
Fatal Attraction
Fatal Attraction got a new ending after test audiences rejected the original, in which Alex takes her own life and leaves him looking guilty. It was the second highest-grossing film of the year in the US.
Q 14Which 1987 fairy-tale film features the giant Fezzik, swordsman Inigo Montoya and scheming Sicilian Vizzini?
The Princess Bride
The Princess Bride had only modest box-office success at first and became a cult favourite over time. In 2016 the Library of Congress chose it for the US National Film Registry.
Q 15Which 1987 film follows murdered Detroit policeman Alex Murphy after a corporation rebuilds him as a cyborg?
RoboCop
RoboCop is set in Detroit but was filmed mainly in Dallas. Director Paul Verhoeven dismissed the script twice, missing its satire, until his wife convinced him of its value.
Q 16Which 1987 Bernardo Bertolucci epic was the first Western film allowed to shoot in Beijing's Forbidden City?
The Last Emperor
The Last Emperor won all nine Oscars it was nominated for, including Best Picture. It follows Puyi, who was summoned to the palace as a toddler in 1908.
Q 17Which Shakespearean actor became Captain Picard when Star Trek: The Next Generation began in September 1987?
Patrick Stewart
Patrick Stewart signed the six-year contract only because he and his agent believed the new series would quickly fail. He was still living out of his suitcase when filming was under way.
Q 18Which sitcom, launched on ABC in September 1987, follows a widowed San Francisco father raising his daughters?
Full House
Full House cast sisters Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen to alternate as youngest daughter Michelle. For years they shared a single screen credit, so that viewers would not realise two girls played her.
Q 19Which new US network began its prime-time schedule in April 1987 with the sitcom Married... with Children?
Fox
Fox told the sitcom's writers to be as outrageous as they could, with material the established networks would never allow. The working title was Not the Cosbys.
Q 20Which Welsh-born actor made his debut as James Bond in The Living Daylights, released in the summer of 1987?
Timothy Dalton
Timothy Dalton was cast after the producers came close to hiring Pierce Brosnan, who finally played Bond in GoldenEye in 1995. Dalton wanted a 007 more faithful to Ian Fleming's original character.
Guns N' Roses got little notice from American press and radio at first, apart from some airplay in California. The album finally reached number one in August 1988 and spent 147 weeks on the chart.
Q 24Which English singer spent five weeks at number one in the UK in 1987 with Never Gonna Give You Up?
Rick Astley
Rick Astley had spent two years as the recording studio's tea boy while his producers groomed him for a career. The single was the UK's best-seller of the year and topped charts in 25 countries.
Q 25Which Detroit-raised singer became the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 1987?
Aretha Franklin
Aretha Franklin had seen her voice declared a natural resource by the state of Michigan two years before the honour. In the year of her induction she also sang to open WrestleMania III.
Q 26Which musical opened on Broadway in March 1987, won eight Tony Awards and ran there for sixteen years?
Les Misérables
Les Misérables came to its lyricist at another London show, when a streetwise pickpocket on stage brought Victor Hugo's urchin Gavroche to mind. The Broadway run lasted 6,680 performances.
Q 27Which heroes named after Renaissance artists first reached television in an animated miniseries in December 1987?
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles began as darker-toned comics and were changed considerably to suit children and families. Their rat mentor names the four after his favourite Italian painters and sculptors.
Q 28Which fictional TV host's mask was worn by the pirate who hijacked two Chicago TV signals in November 1987?
Max Headroom
Max Headroom's impersonator broke into WGN's nightly newscast for about 17 seconds, then into a Doctor Who serial on WTTW two hours later.
Q 29Which singer, killed at 17 in a 1959 plane crash, is played by Lou Diamond Phillips in the 1987 film La Bamba?
Ritchie Valens
Ritchie Valens was on the plane only because he won a coin toss with Buddy Holly's backup guitarist. He had turned the Mexican folk song of the film's title into a rock and roll hit in 1958.
Q 30Which NFL team won its first Super Bowl in January 1987 by beating the Denver Broncos 39–20 at the Rose Bowl?
New York Giants
The New York Giants gave a national audience an early look at the Gatorade shower, a cooler of the drink dumped over their coach's head. Quarterback Phil Simms completed 22 of 25 passes and was named MVP.