The 1990s
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145 free The 1990s trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
78 free The 1990s trivia questions with answers. The internet was born, grunge ruled the airwaves, and everyone wanted a Beanie Baby. The 1990s were a wild ride of cultural shifts, technological breakthroughs, and unforgettable moments. How much do you remember?
30 of 145 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1994 sitcom followed six twentysomethings in Manhattan and became one of the decade's most-watched shows?
Friends
Friends' six leads bargained over pay as a bloc from the third season, against the studio's wish for separate deals, and by the last two seasons each was earning $1 million an episode.
Q 02Kurt Cobain was the lead singer of which iconic grunge band?
Nirvana
Kurt Cobain fronted Nirvana, whose 1991 album Nevermind and its hit single "Smells Like Teen Spirit" are credited with bringing grunge into the mainstream.
Q 03Which egg-shaped virtual pet made by Bandai became a worldwide craze in 1997?
Tamagotchi
Tamagotchi pets had to be fed, played with and cleaned up after, or they died, which kept owners checking the egg all day; many schools ended up banning it.
Q 04Which 1997 film became the highest-grossing movie of all time, a record it held until 2010?
Titanic
Titanic was the first film to gross $1 billion worldwide, and only its own director could dethrone it: James Cameron's next feature, Avatar, took the record in 2010.
Q 05Which recorded phrase told AOL users in the 1990s that new messages had arrived?
"You've got mail"
AOL's "You've got mail" greeting was recorded by Elwood Edwards in 1989 on a cassette deck in his own living room, and it lent its name to the 1998 Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan film.
Q 06Which basketball legend led the Chicago Bulls to six NBA championships during the 1990s?
Michael Jordan
Michael Jordan won three straight titles, quit in 1993 to play minor-league baseball for the Birmingham Barons, then returned in 1995 and won three more.
Q 07Which U.S. President was impeached by the House of Representatives in December 1998?
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton was impeached on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice related to the Monica Lewinsky scandal. He was acquitted by the Senate in February 1999.
Q 08What collectible plush toys, made by Ty Inc., caused a massive buying frenzy in the late 1990s?
Beanie Babies
Beanie Babies became one of the biggest fads of the 1990s. Ty Inc. created artificial scarcity by retiring certain designs, leading to a speculative market where some were valued at thousands of dollars.
Q 09Steven Spielberg directed which 1993 dinosaur blockbuster based on a Michael Crichton novel?
Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park was meant to use puppet 'go-motion' dinosaurs for its wide shots until a computer-animated test changed Spielberg's mind; seeing it, animator Phil Tippett said, 'I think I'm extinct.'
Q 10Which computer scare of the late 1990s traced back to programmers saving memory in the 1960s?
Y2K
Y2K came from dropping the '19' from every year to save costly memory, so 2000 could be misread as 1900; fixing the code in time cost an estimated $300 billion or more.
Q 11Which rapper, whose 1996 double album All Eyez on Me went Diamond, was fatally shot near Las Vegas that September?
Tupac Shakur
Tupac Shakur was shot on September 7, 1996, in Paradise, Nevada, after attending the Bruce Seldon vs. Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Grand, and died six days later.
Q 12Which British royal died in a car crash in Paris on August 31, 1997?
Princess Diana
Princess Diana's car crashed in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel with photographers in pursuit; a 2008 inquest ruled she was unlawfully killed through the gross negligence of driver Henri Paul and the paparazzi.
Q 13Which web browser, released in 1993, was the first to win a mass audience for the World Wide Web?
Mosaic
Q 21Which 1998 Tiger Electronics toy seemed to learn English the longer you owned it?
Furby
Furby was simply programmed to swap its 'Furbish' for English over time and could not record a word, yet rumours that it could got it banned from U.S. government offices.
Q 22Which 1999 film made 'bullet time' famous, slowing the action to a crawl while the camera swings around it?
The Matrix
The Matrix popularized bullet time and, despite facing a Star Wars prequel, won all four Oscars it was nominated for, visual effects among them.
Q 23Which Soviet leader resigned as the USSR dissolved in December 1991?
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president, leaving Boris Yeltsin to lead an independent Russia; that evening the Soviet flag over the Kremlin was lowered for the last time and replaced by the Russian tricolour.
Mosaic, built at the University of Illinois's supercomputing center, was easy to install and showed pictures on the same page as text; by late 1993 it was being downloaded more than 5,000 times a month.
Q 14In the 1990s TV show "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," who played the title character?
Will Smith
Will Smith was a rapper in deep trouble when NBC built the sitcom around him: he owed the IRS about $2.8 million in back taxes, and it was garnishing his income.
Q 15Which handheld console, released in 1989, dominated portable gaming in the 1990s?
Game Boy
Nintendo's Game Boy, launched in 1989, was the decade's best-selling handheld; Game Boy and Game Boy Color together sold about 118 million units, and Tetris, bundled with it in North America and Europe, was its killer app.
Q 16Which 1990s boy band sang "I Want It That Way"?
Backstreet Boys
Backstreet Boys admit the lyrics make little sense, written when a Swedish co-writer's English was still limited; a clearer rewrite was recorded in 1999, but the original was the one released.
Q 17What verdict did the jury deliver in the O.J. Simpson murder trial on October 3, 1995?
Not guilty
Not guilty on both counts: with an estimated 100 million people or more tuned in, long-distance call volume fell 58 percent and NYSE trading dropped 41 percent as the verdict was read.
Q 18Oversized plaid shirts of which fabric became the unofficial uniform of early-1990s grunge?
Flannel
Flannel shirts, cheap Pacific Northwest workwear worn loose and open over T-shirts, became the grunge signature once Seattle bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam wore them, and the look spread from skaters into mainstream stores.
Q 19Which golfer won the 1997 Masters at 21 by a record 12 strokes?
Tiger Woods
Tiger Woods began with a shaky four-over-par 40 on his first nine holes, came home in 30, and never looked back, beating Tom Kite by 12 as the youngest Masters champion.
Q 20At midnight on 1 July 1997, the United Kingdom handed which territory over to China?
Hong Kong
Hong Kong returned under the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, in which China pledged to keep "one country, two systems" for 50 years; Macau followed from Portugal in December 1999.
Q 24Which 1990s accessory, a goth-teen staple, did Gwyneth Paltrow wear in diamonds to the 1999 Oscars?
Choker
Choker necklaces go back to ancient Sumer and Egypt, where women wore them to protect the throat; around 1900 Queen Alexandra made broad ones fashionable by wearing them to hide a scar on her neck.
Q 25Whose single-season record of 61 home runs did Mark McGwire break in 1998?
Roger Maris
Roger Maris's 61 had stood since 1961; McGwire hit number 62 against the Cubs with the Maris family watching from the stands, so his rival Sammy Sosa could congratulate him on the field.
Q 26Which Japanese franchise, conceived by Satoshi Tajiri, began with two handheld RPGs in February 1996?
Pokemon
Pokemon grew out of Satoshi Tajiri's childhood hobby of collecting insects; seeing two handhelds joined by a link cable gave him the idea of a game about collecting and trading creatures.
Q 27Which search engine did Stanford students Larry Page and Sergey Brin launch in 1998?
Google began as a research project called BackRub; in August 1998 Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote a $100,000 cheque to Google Inc., a company that did not yet exist, so the pair had to incorporate.
Q 28Which Seinfeld character was known for sliding through Jerry's apartment door?
Cosmo Kramer
Cosmo Kramer, played by Michael Richards, was loosely based on Kenny Kramer, a real former neighbor of co-creator Larry David; Richards' bursting, sliding entrances became the show's signature running gag.
Q 29What nickname was given to the 1992 US Olympic men's basketball squad, the first with active NBA players?
The Dream Team
The Dream Team won gold in Barcelona in 1992, beating opponents by an average of 44 points, after FIBA voted in 1989 to admit professionals to the Olympics.
Q 30Who bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995?
Timothy McVeigh
Timothy McVeigh's truck bomb killed 168 people; within 90 minutes a state trooper had pulled him over for driving without a licence plate, and he was executed in June 2001.