1995
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free 1995 trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The year 1995 sat on the hinge between two worlds. Families were buying their first home computers and hearing a modem screech for the first time, while cinemas, record shops and Saturday-morning television were still the centre of pop culture. This quiz covers the whole year: the blockbusters and the animated milestone that changed film-making, the songs that ruled the charts on both sides of the Atlantic, the shows children and teenagers rushed home for, the consoles and websites that had just arrived, and the trials, tragedies and peace deals that led the news. It also touches on Larry Clark's Kids, the year's most argued-about independent film, along with sporting records and well-known names born in 1995. It is written for anyone who grew up in the nineties, anyone born that year, and anyone planning a birthday party, a reunion or a quiz night. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play straight through or print the questions for a group.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1995 Pixar release became the first feature film made entirely with computer animation?
Toy Story
Toy Story earned director John Lasseter a Special Achievement Academy Award, and its script was the first for an animated film to be nominated for a writing Oscar.
Q 02Which website, launched by Pierre Omidyar in 1995, made its first sale with a broken laser pointer?
eBay
eBay began as a hobby site called AuctionWeb, and the pointer fetched $14.83 from a buyer who said he collected broken laser pointers.
Q 03Which product was Jeff Bezos's Amazon set up to sell when the online store opened in July 1995?
Books
Books were the whole catalogue at first, and the first one sold was a Douglas Hofstadter title about computer models of thought. Bezos had founded the company in his garage a year earlier.
Q 04Which sport had Michael Jordan been playing professionally before he returned to the Chicago Bulls in March 1995?
Baseball
Baseball had been a struggle: Jordan batted .202 for the minor-league Birmingham Barons in 1994, and a Major League players' strike helped push him back to basketball.
Q 05Which Rolling Stones song did Microsoft use in its advertising to launch Windows 95 in August 1995?
Start Me Up
Start Me Up was a nod to the new Start button. Reports put the fee as high as $14 million, though Microsoft said it had paid the band about $3 million.
Q 06Which comic strip about a six-year-old boy and his stuffed tiger did Bill Watterson end on 31 December 1995?
Calvin and Hobbes
Calvin and Hobbes ran in more than 2,000 newspapers at its peak, yet Watterson refused to license the characters, so almost no official merchandise appeared during its run.
Q 07Which Simpsons character was unmasked in September 1995 as the culprit in the cliffhanger Who Shot Mr. Burns?
Maggie
Maggie fired by accident when Mr. Burns tried to take her lollipop and his gun slipped into her hands. Viewers had waited since May, when the first half aired, to find out.
Q 08Which 1995 teen comedy set in Beverly Hills did Amy Heckerling loosely adapt from Jane Austen's novel Emma?
Clueless
Clueless drew on real classrooms: as research for the script, Heckerling sat in on classes at Beverly Hills High School to get a feel for student life.
Q 09Which company brought its first PlayStation to North America in September 1995 after a failed deal with Nintendo?
Sony
Sony had planned a CD-ROM add-on for the Super Nintendo; when that venture failed it built a console of its own, which became the first to ship over 100 million units.
Q 10Which American city became home to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum, designed by I. M. Pei, in 1995?
Cleveland
Cleveland won after civic leaders pledged $65 million in public money and pointed to local disc jockey Alan Freed, who had heavily promoted the new genre on air.
Q 11Which actor first played James Bond in the 1995 film GoldenEye, released after a six-year gap between Bond films?
Pierce Brosnan
Pierce Brosnan took over after legal disputes stalled the series for so long that Timothy Dalton's contract expired. Sean Bean played the rogue agent he had to stop.
Q 12Which actor replaced Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne in the 1995 film Batman Forever?
Val Kilmer
Val Kilmer got the cape after William Baldwin and Ethan Hawke were considered, then lasted a single film: George Clooney replaced him for Batman & Robin in 1997.
Q 13Which 1995 epic starring Mel Gibson as Scottish warrior William Wallace won the Academy Award for Best Picture?
Braveheart
Q 21Which Tejano star's album Dreaming of You debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 months after her death in 1995?
Selena
Selena had been recording an English-language crossover when she was killed that March; the album sold 175,000 copies on its first day, then a record for a female artist.
Q 22Which band released Free as a Bird in December 1995, built around a home demo recorded by a late member in 1977?
The Beatles
The Beatles came back 25 years after their break-up: Paul McCartney asked Yoko Ono for unreleased John Lennon material, and the three surviving members built a studio version around it.
Q 23Which singer's 1995 ballad You Are Not Alone was the first song to debut at number one on the Billboard Hot 100?
Michael Jackson
Braveheart won five of its ten Oscar nominations, including Best Director for Gibson, who had at first turned down the chance to direct it.
Q 14Which 1995 Robin Williams film features a supernatural board game that unleashes jungle hazards on its players?
Jumanji
Jumanji was adapted from a 1981 children's picture story by Chris Van Allsburg and finished as the tenth highest-grossing film of 1995.
Q 15Which 1995 Disney animated film about a Powhatan woman won the Best Original Song Oscar for Colors of the Wind?
Pocahontas
Pocahontas had its premiere outdoors in New York's Central Park on June 10, 1995, and won a second Oscar for Alan Menken's score.
Q 16Which future star of Rent and Sin City was discovered on her front porch and cast in the 1995 film Kids?
Rosario Dawson
Rosario Dawson was 15 when photographer Larry Clark, the film's director, came across her outside her home, and she was given a part already written into the script.
Q 17Which screenwriter, later the director of Gummo and Spring Breakers, wrote Larry Clark's 1995 film Kids?
Harmony Korine
Harmony Korine's script was his first, and the finished film went out unrated after Miramax declined to release it with the NC-17 rating it had been assigned.
Q 18Which rapper had the top-selling US single of 1995 with Gangsta's Paradise, from the film Dangerous Minds?
Coolio
Coolio built the track on Stevie Wonder's 1976 song Pastime Paradise, and it became the first rap single ever to go straight to number one in Britain.
Q 19Which Canadian singer's 1995 album Jagged Little Pill went on to win the Grammy for Album of the Year?
Alanis Morissette
Alanis Morissette won five Grammys for the album, which has sold over 33 million copies worldwide and made her the youngest Album of the Year winner up to that time.
Q 20Which band's single Country House outsold Roll with It by Oasis in the 1995 chart race called the Battle of Britpop?
Blur
Blur sold 274,000 copies to their rivals' 216,000 in what was the best week for UK singles sales in a decade.
Michael Jackson broke his own mark: earlier that year his single Scream had set the previous record by entering the chart at number five.
Q 24Which boy band did Robbie Williams quit in July 1995, months before the remaining four members split up?
Take That
Take That finished their world tour as a four-piece and released a final single before splitting in 1996. Williams launched a solo career that year and later had his best-selling single with Angels.
Q 25Which pop star, born in London in August 1995 to Kosovo Albanian parents, had hits with New Rules and Levitating?
Dua Lipa
Dua Lipa got her first name at her grandmother's suggestion, and it means love in Albanian.
Q 26Which actor, born in New York City in December 1995, went on to play Paul Atreides in Dune and Willy Wonka?
Timothée Chalamet
Timothée Chalamet grew up in Hell's Kitchen in a subsidised building reserved for artists, and Call Me by Your Name brought him his first Best Actor Oscar nomination.
Q 27Which author's Goosebumps novels became a children's horror anthology series that first aired on television in 1995?
R. L. Stine
R. L. Stine's scary stories were filmed largely in Ontario, Canada, using real houses and historic properties rather than purpose-built sets.
Q 28Which cartoon about two laboratory mice bent on taking over the world spun off from Animaniacs in September 1995?
Pinky and the Brain
Pinky and the Brain grew out of a recurring Animaniacs segment that began in 1993, and its first episode aired in prime time on The WB as well as on Kids' WB.
Q 29Which actress played the title role in Xena: Warrior Princess, the Hercules spin-off that began airing in 1995?
Lucy Lawless
Lucy Lawless first played Xena in three Hercules episodes, and the character was originally scheduled to die in her third appearance before her popularity won her a series.
Q 30Which Star Trek series, launched in January 1995, was the first to have a female captain as its lead character?
Voyager
Voyager put Captain Kathryn Janeway, played by Kate Mulgrew, in command, and it was also the first show ever to air on the new UPN network.