1991 Trivia
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50 free 1991 trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
1991 was the year the Cold War ended and the web began. A 34-nation coalition drove Iraq out of Kuwait in a ground war that lasted four days, hardliners in Moscow tried a coup and lost, and by Christmas the Soviet flag had come down over the Kremlin. Meanwhile a physicist at CERN quietly switched on the first website. These 50 questions cover the news, sport, music, film and television of the year: a Valentine's Day thriller that swept the Oscars, a Bryan Adams ballad that would not leave number one, a jeweller who called his own products crap, the first Briton in space, a rugby World Cup final at Twickenham and the Christmas number one that had already been there 16 years earlier. Most 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 1991-themed birthday.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which film supplied the Bryan Adams ballad that spent a record 16 straight weeks at UK number one?
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves' ballad ran 16 weeks in a row at number one, beating the 11-week record Slim Whitman's 'Rose Marie' had held since 1955.
Q 02Which Queen song returned to UK number one with the same recording after Freddie Mercury died?
Bohemian Rhapsody
Bohemian Rhapsody returned to number one for five weeks at Christmas, 16 years after its first run, with the reissue's proceeds donated to an AIDS charity.
Q 03Which Nirvana album, released in September, has a cover of a naked baby swimming toward a dollar bill on a fishhook?
Nevermind
Nevermind was an unexpected success, replacing Michael Jackson at the top of the US Billboard 200 in January 1992 and dragging grunge into the mainstream.
Q 04Which thriller released on Valentine's Day swept the 'Big Five' Academy Awards, a feat managed only twice before?
The Silence of the Lambs
The Silence of the Lambs began as a Gene Hackman project he meant to direct and star in, but he pulled out over its violence, leaving it to Jonathan Demme.
Q 05Which film, then the most expensive ever made, topped 1991's worldwide box office?
Terminator 2
Terminator 2 cost an estimated $94–102 million and took around $520 million, with its liquid-metal T-1000 effects setting a new bar for computer graphics.
Q 06Which leader resigned as Soviet president on Christmas Day, a day before the union was formally dissolved?
Mikhail Gorbachev
After Mikhail Gorbachev resigned, the Soviet flag over the Kremlin was lowered for the last time that evening and replaced by Russia's tricolour.
Q 07Which Los Angeles motorist's beating by police was filmed from a balcony by bystander George Holliday on 3 March?
Rodney King
Rodney King's beating was seen worldwide after Holliday sent his camcorder tape to KTLA, and the officers' acquittal a year later sparked the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
Q 08Which computer scientist at CERN announced the World Wide Web on a newsgroup on 6 August?
Tim Berners-Lee
Tim Berners-Lee never patented the web, and CERN made its protocol and code available royalty-free in April 1993, so anyone could build on it.
Q 09Which NBA team beat the Los Angeles Lakers in five games in June to win the first championship in its history?
Chicago Bulls
The Chicago Bulls got there by sweeping the Detroit Pistons, who had knocked them out of the playoffs in each of the three previous seasons.
Q 10Which Los Angeles Lakers guard announced on 7 November that he had HIV and was retiring immediately?
Magic Johnson
Magic Johnson was back within a year, co-captaining the Dream Team to Olympic gold in Barcelona in 1992.
Q 11Which Sheffield-born chemist answered a radio advert to become the first Briton in space, flying to Mir in May?
Helen Sharman
Helen Sharman was chosen live on ITV from nearly 13,000 applicants to an advert reading 'Astronaut wanted. No experience necessary', and spent nearly eight days in space, mostly aboard Mir.
Q 12Which British boss nearly sank his own company with a joke mocking its products?
Gerald Ratner
Gerald Ratner's name became a byword for the blunder, as in 'doing a Ratner': harming your own reputation with an ill-judged remark.
Q 13Which group of men jailed for the 1974 pub bombings that killed 21 people had their convictions quashed in March?
Birmingham Six
Q 21Which Russian president climbed onto a tank outside Moscow's parliament to rally crowds against the August coup?
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin's stand held: troops around the White House defected or refused orders, and within days the coup had collapsed.
Q 22Which Soviet city voted in a June referendum to take back its original name, St Petersburg?
Leningrad
Leningrad had been renamed Petrograd in 1914 to drop the German-sounding name, then named for Lenin days after his death in 1924; St Petersburg returned on 6 September.
Q 23In which republic's state dacha at Viskuli did three Soviet leaders sign the 8 December accord that created the CIS?
Belarus
The Birmingham Six walked free after 16 years, and the same day the government set up a Royal Commission on Criminal Justice.
Q 14Which media tycoon was found dead in the sea off the Canary Islands in November after vanishing from his yacht?
Robert Maxwell
Robert Maxwell's yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, was named after his daughter, and after his death he was found to have plundered his companies' pension funds.
Q 15Which Church of England envoy was freed in Lebanon in November after 1,763 days as a hostage, four years in solitary?
Terry Waite
Terry Waite had gone to Beirut to negotiate for other hostages and was himself kidnapped in 1987.
Q 16Which levy did John Major's government choose to replace the hated community charge, or poll tax, from 1993?
Council Tax
Council Tax bands in England are still based on what each home would have sold for on 1 April 1991, the year the poll tax's abolition was announced.
Q 17Which club won a then-record eighth FA Cup in May, in the final where Paul Gascoigne tore his knee ligaments?
Tottenham Hotspur
Tottenham Hotspur's Gascoigne, a multimillion-pound target for Lazio, scythed down Gary Charles inside the first 15 minutes and wrecked his own knee, missing a year of football.
Q 18Which club took the league title despite a two-point deduction for a brawl at Old Trafford, losing just one match?
Arsenal
Arsenal conceded only 18 league goals all season, and their sole defeat, 2–1 at Chelsea, came while captain Tony Adams was serving a prison sentence.
Q 19Which country beat hosts England 12–6 at Twickenham on 2 November to win the Rugby World Cup?
Australia
Australia's Wallabies had knocked out holders New Zealand in the semi-final, while David Campese spent the build-up publicly mocking England's forward-dominated style.
Q 20Which band's 1982 single 'Should I Stay or Should I Go' topped the UK chart in March thanks to a Levi's advert?
The Clash
The Clash had announced their split in January 1986, so their first and only UK number one arrived five years after the band broke up.
Belarus's parliament chairman Stanislav Shushkevich signed alongside the Russian and Ukrainian presidents at the state dacha near Viskuli, declaring the Soviet Union finished.
Q 24Which two Yugoslav republics declared independence on 25 June, triggering the Ten-Day War within days?
Slovenia and Croatia
Slovenia and Croatia's declarations prompted a brief Yugoslav army campaign in Slovenia that ended with the Brioni Agreement on 7 July, while Serb forces besieged Vukovar for 87 days in the autumn.
Q 25Which Cold War military alliance was formally ended by Václav Havel at a Prague meeting on 1 July, after 36 years?
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact had been created in 1955 in response to West Germany rearming inside NATO, and within 20 years every ex-member outside the USSR had joined NATO itself.
Q 26Which former Indian prime minister was killed by a Tamil Tiger suicide bomber at a rally in Sriperumbudur on 21 May?
Rajiv Gandhi
Rajiv Gandhi was campaigning to return to office, and the Congress party won the most seats in the June election, making P. V. Narasimha Rao prime minister.
Q 27Which opposition leader, under house arrest, won the Nobel Peace Prize, her sons collecting it?
Aung San Suu Kyi
Aung San Suu Kyi could not give her Nobel lecture until June 2012, when she finally delivered it in Oslo, 21 years after the award.
Q 28Which Philippine volcano's June eruption, the century's second largest, cooled global temperatures?
Mount Pinatubo
Mount Pinatubo erupted as a typhoon struck, and the rain made the falling ash so heavy that thousands of roofs collapsed.
Q 29Which famous mummy did two German tourists find in the ice on the Austria–Italy border in September?
Ötzi
Ötzi, about 5,300 years old, was first taken for a recently dead mountaineer, and in 2001 X-rays found an arrowhead in his shoulder: he had been murdered.
Q 30Which airline, founded in 1927 and famous for its blue globe logo and 'Clipper' call signs, shut down on 4 December?
Pan Am
Pan Am shut down when Delta, which had bought its European routes, withdrew its support.