2000s
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This 2000s trivia quiz splits its 164 free questions with answers between the pop culture everyone remembers and the history that shaped the decade. On the culture side: the iPod, MySpace before Facebook, YouTube's founding, Eminem and Britney, The Da Vinci Code, Hybrid Theory, The Sopranos, Survivor, SpongeBob, Avatar and the Wii. The 2000s history trivia questions and answers cover the war on terror, Saddam's fall and execution, the Madrid, London, Beslan and Mumbai attacks, the Indian Ocean tsunami and Katrina, the Kashmir and Sichuan earthquakes, SARS and swine flu, Concorde's last flight, the Columbia disaster, Pluto's demotion, the euro entering circulation, the Orange Revolution, the end of Yugoslavia, Obama's election and the Dow's 2007 peak before the crash. Early questions are for anyone who was there; the later ones will test people who read the news, so it works both as light trivia from the 2000s for a party and as a proper history round. Every answer was checked against a reference page and shows its source once you have answered. If you were born in the mid-1990s, this is the decade you grew up in, which makes it a ready-made round of trivia for 30 year olds and their birthday parties.
30 of 164 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What portable music player, introduced in 2001, changed how people listened to digital music?
iPod
The iPod went from idea to launch in under a year, built around a tiny hard drive that Apple's hardware chief had spotted at a supplier in Japan; that drive is how '1,000 songs' fitted in a pocket.
Q 02Which fantasy film trilogy concluded its initial cinematic run in 2003?
The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings was pitched as two films, and Miramax wanted it cut to one; New Line's Bob Shaye asked for three instead, and the 2003 finale won all 11 Oscars it was nominated for.
Q 03Which artist released the album 'The Marshall Mathers LP' in the year 2000?
Eminem
Eminem's 'The Marshall Mathers LP' sold 1.76 million US copies in its first week; its single 'Stan', about an obsessed fan, gave English a new word for one, and 'stan' is now in the dictionary.
Q 04Which organization carried out the coordinated attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001?
Al-Qaeda
Nineteen al-Qaeda hijackers seized four airliners; two struck the World Trade Center, one hit the Pentagon, and the fourth crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers fought back.
Q 05Which reality competition, with contestants isolated on an island, premiered in the US in 2000?
Survivor
Survivor was a British producer's idea first filmed in Sweden: Charlie Parsons's format aired there as Expedition Robinson in 1997, three years before CBS made it an American summer hit.
Q 06At which university was Mark Zuckerberg a student when he launched Facebook in February 2004?
Harvard
Harvard students were the only people who could join at first; 'TheFacebook' then spread from campus to campus before opening in September 2006 to anyone aged 13 or over.
Q 07What Nintendo home video game console, known for its motion-sensing controllers, was released in 2006?
Wii
The Wii had less computing power than its rivals, which made it cheaper to build, yet within a year it was the best-selling console of its generation, and it went on to pass 101 million sales.
Q 08Which film released in 2009 became the highest-grossing film of that year worldwide?
Avatar
Avatar opened in December 2009 and by late January 2010 had passed Titanic as the highest-grossing film to that date, so director James Cameron broke his own record; it was the first film to gross over $2 billion.
Q 09Which 2003 Dan Brown thriller features symbologist Robert Langdon?
The Da Vinci Code
Robert Langdon debuted in Angels & Demons, not here. The Da Vinci Code, published in March 2003, was Dan Brown's second Langdon novel and became one of the best-selling American novels of all time.
Q 10Which of these was the first full-length Pixar animated film released in the 2000s?
Monsters, Inc.
Monsters, Inc. reached cinemas in November 2001, two years after Toy Story 2 closed out the 1990s; Billy Crystal voiced Mike because he regretted having turned down Buzz Lightyear.
Q 11Which of these EU members kept its own currency when euro cash arrived in January 2002?
Britain
Britain kept the pound under an opt-out it had secured in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty; the euro, an accounting currency since 1999, became cash in twelve countries on 1 January 2002.
Q 12Which 2000 Linkin Park debut album became one of the 21st century's best sellers?
Hybrid Theory
Hybrid Theory had been the band's own name until their label advised a change to avoid confusion with another act called Hybrid; they became Linkin Park and kept the old name as the title of their 2000 debut.
Q 13Which 2005 hurricane was then the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history?
Katrina
Q 21Which Nickelodeon cartoon reached cinemas in 2004 in a film with a David Hasselhoff cameo?
SpongeBob SquarePants
SpongeBob SquarePants creator Stephen Hillenburg, a former marine biology teacher, meant the 2004 film to end the series; it was a hit, so the show carried on and he handed the reins to Paul Tibbitt.
Q 22The earthquake behind the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami struck off which Indonesian island?
Sumatra
Sumatra's Aceh province lay closest to the rupture and was hit hardest; over the next seven hours the waves crossed the whole ocean, killing at least 225,000 people as far away as East Africa.
Q 23Saddam Hussein was executed in Baghdad in December 2006 by which method?
Hanging
Katrina did its worst damage after landfall in August 2005: the levees and floodwalls protecting New Orleans gave way, leaving about 80% of the city under water.
Q 14What was the 2001 opener of Peter Jackson's Middle-earth trilogy called?
The Fellowship of the Ring
"The Fellowship of the Ring" premiered in December 2001; all three films had already been shot back to back in New Zealand between 1999 and 2000.
Q 15Which social network, launched in 2003, dominated the mid-2000s before Facebook's rise?
MySpace
MySpace eventually bowed to its rival by integrating Facebook Connect, branded 'Mash Up with Facebook'. Launched in August 2003, it was the home of bands and teenagers before Facebook swept past it in the late 2000s.
Q 16Which HBO crime drama, premiering in 1999, is widely considered one of the greatest TV series ever?
The Sopranos
The Sopranos followed New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano from 1999 to 2007; its finale ended on a cut to black in mid-scene, so abrupt that many viewers thought their cable had gone out.
Q 17Which pop star's second album sold 1.3 million US copies in its first week in May 2000?
Britney Spears
Britney Spears was hit on the head while filming the video for its title track, 'Oops!... I Did It Again'; reports said a camera had fallen on her, but the director says it was only the box that fits over the lens.
Q 18Which company bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006, less than two years after the site was founded?
Google paid $1.65 billion in shares for a site with just 67 staff, even though it had a video service of its own, Google Video, which it kept running alongside its new purchase.
Q 19Which Wall Street investment bank's collapse in September 2008 became the largest bankruptcy in US history?
Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers, founded in 1850, filed on 15 September 2008 with more than $600 billion in assets after rescue talks failed; that same weekend Merrill Lynch avoided its fate by selling itself to Bank of America.
Q 20Which film won Best Picture at the 73rd Academy Awards, held in March 2001?
Gladiator
Gladiator won Best Picture and Best Actor for Russell Crowe, but Ridley Scott lost Best Director to Steven Soderbergh, who was competing against himself with two nominations that night.
Hanging was the sentence an Iraqi court passed for the killing of 148 people in Dujail in 1982; Saddam had asked to be shot instead, arguing that a firing squad was the proper death for a military commander.
Q 24Which country became the first in the world to fully legalise same-sex marriage, on 1 April 2001?
Netherlands
The Netherlands' law took effect at midnight on 1 April 2001, and minutes later Amsterdam's mayor, Job Cohen, married four couples at city hall; Belgium followed in 2003.
Q 25Which country's 2006 independence from Serbia dissolved the last remnant of Yugoslavia?
Montenegro
Montenegro's May 2006 referendum needed 55% in favour and got 55.5%; independence followed on 3 June, dissolving the union with Serbia that was the last remnant of Yugoslavia.
Q 26Which former Portuguese colony regained its independence from Indonesia in 2002?
East Timor
East Timor declared independence from Portugal in November 1975, was invaded by Indonesia days later, and finally became fully independent on 20 May 2002 after a 1999 UN-backed referendum.
Q 27Mass protests after a disputed election in 2000 forced which Yugoslav president to resign?
Slobodan Milošević
Slobodan Milošević quit after crowds broke into the federal parliament in Belgrade on 5 October 2000, the 'Bulldozer Revolution'; arrested in 2001, he died in his cell in The Hague in 2006 before his trial ended.
Q 28The 2004 Orange Revolution followed a disputed presidential election in which country?
Ukraine
Ukraine's Orange Revolution erupted in November 2004 after a rigged runoff; a court-ordered revote gave Viktor Yushchenko the presidency over Viktor Yanukovych. Georgia had its Rose Revolution the year before.
Q 29Which pope was elected on 19 April 2005, seventeen days after the death of John Paul II?
Benedict XVI
Benedict XVI, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was elected on 19 April 2005; in 2013 he stepped down, the first pope to resign since Gregory XII in 1415.
Q 30Who succeeded Vladimir Putin as president of Russia in 2008?
Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Medvedev was inaugurated as president on 7 May 2008, with Putin becoming his prime minister; that August Russia fought a short war with Georgia and recognised Abkhazia and South Ossetia.