2004
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7correct to beat the crowd
50 free 2004 trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
2004 was the year social networking left the college dorm, a much-loved sitcom said goodbye and a baseball curse finally ended. Phones still flipped open, email inboxes were tiny, and one quiz show contestant kept winning for so long that he became a household name. This quiz covers the whole year: the websites, games and gadgets that first appeared, the blockbusters and Oscar winners, the TV premieres and finales, the albums on the charts, the Olympic stars and underdog champions, and the elections and headlines from around the globe. Most questions are pitched for anyone who lived through it, with a few tougher ones for sports and news buffs. It is written for class-of-2004 reunions, 2000s trivia nights and anyone who was born, graduated or married 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 social network did Mark Zuckerberg launch for fellow Harvard students in February 2004?
Facebook began as TheFacebook, open only to Harvard students before it spread to Stanford, Columbia and Yale a month later. It opened to anyone aged 13 or over in 2006.
Q 02Which singer's costume was torn open by Justin Timberlake during the Super Bowl halftime show in February 2004?
Janet Jackson
Janet Jackson became the most searched term in internet history, and YouTube's founders said the hunt for a clip of the moment helped inspire their site.
Q 03Which NBC sitcom about six New Yorkers ended in May 2004 with a finale watched by 52.5 million Americans?
Friends
Friends signed off with the most-watched episode of any American series in the 2000s. Only the Super Bowl drew a bigger television audience in 2004.
Q 04Which baseball team swept the St. Louis Cardinals in the 2004 World Series to win a first title since 1918?
Boston Red Sox
The Boston Red Sox had trailed the New York Yankees three games to none in the previous round before winning four straight. The title ended the so-called Curse of the Bambino.
Q 05Which software engineer from Utah won 74 consecutive games of the quiz show Jeopardy! during 2004?
Ken Jennings
Ken Jennings took home $2,522,700 from the run, which ended in his 75th game on a final clue whose answer was the tax firm H&R Block. The company then offered him free tax advice for life.
Q 06Which talk show host opened her 2004 season by giving every audience member a new Pontiac G6?
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey did not pay for the cars herself: General Motors donated them, at a total value of about $8 million.
Q 07Which country in March 2004 became the first to ban smoking in workplaces nationwide, including bars and restaurants?
Ireland
Ireland's ban began on 29 March 2004 and covered pubs as well as offices, with fines of up to €3,000. Norway and New Zealand brought in national bans of their own later that year.
Q 08Which country, rated as long as 150–1 beforehand, beat hosts Portugal in the final of football's Euro 2004?
Greece
Greece beat the hosts twice, in the tournament's opening match and again in the final, where Angelos Charisteas scored the only goal.
Q 09Which British preschool cartoon began its first series of five-minute episodes on Channel 5 in May 2004?
Peppa Pig
Peppa Pig was created by Neville Astley and Mark Baker and has been broadcast in over 180 countries. Hasbro paid $3.8 billion in 2019 for the company that owned it.
Q 10Which world-famous painting did masked gunmen steal from an Oslo museum in broad daylight in August 2004?
The Scream
The Scream was taken along with Edvard Munch's Madonna, and police recovered both two years later. Another version had been stolen from Oslo's National Gallery in 1994.
Q 11Which city hosted the 2004 Summer Olympics, having staged the first modern Games back in 1896?
Athens
Athens staged the shot put in the ancient stadium at Olympia, and both marathons finished in the marble Panathenaic Stadium used for the 1896 Games.
Q 12Which teenage American swimmer won six gold medals and two bronze at the 2004 Summer Olympics?
Michael Phelps
Michael Phelps tied the record of eight medals at one Games, and had earned a medley relay final place that he handed to teammate Ian Crocker.
Q 13Which Democratic presidential nominee did George W. Bush defeat in November 2004 to win a second term?
John Kerry
John Kerry conceded the day after the election, once the crucial swing state of Ohio had reported about 135,000 provisional ballots still to count.
Q 21Which fantasy film won all eleven Oscars it was nominated for at the Academy Awards held in February 2004?
The Return of the King
The Return of the King tied Ben-Hur and Titanic for the most Oscar wins by one film, and it was the first fantasy film to take Best Picture.
Q 22Which ABC drama premiered in September 2004 with a plane crash stranding survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 on an island?
Lost
Lost was filmed mainly on Oahu, Hawaii, and its two-part pilot was the most expensive in ABC's history, reportedly costing between $10 million and $14 million.
Q 23Which Major League Baseball team played its last season in 2004 before moving to Washington, D.C.?
Montreal Expos
Q 14Which former US president died in June 2004 at age 93, a decade after revealing an Alzheimer's diagnosis?
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan was the longest-lived US president up to that point. More than 100,000 people queued for up to seven hours to file past his casket in the Capitol Rotunda.
Q 15Across which ocean did a tsunami spread on 26 December 2004, killing about 228,000 people in 14 countries?
Indian
The Indian Ocean had no tsunami warning system in 2004, so coastal communities had no alert before the waves arrived. It is the deadliest tsunami in history.
Q 16Which planet did NASA's twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity land on in January 2004 for a planned 90-day mission?
Mars
Mars kept both rovers working far beyond the plan: Spirit was active until 2010 and Opportunity until 2018, more than 14 years after landing.
Q 17Which email service launched on 1 April 2004 with a gigabyte of storage, an offer some took for an April Fools' joke?
Gmail
Gmail's one gigabyte was far more than rival services offered, and once people realised it was real, invitations to join were in high demand.
Q 18Which animated sequel beat Spider-Man 2 to finish as the highest-grossing film of 2004 worldwide?
Shrek 2
Shrek 2 also became the highest-grossing animated film of all time worldwide, a record it held until Toy Story 3 passed it in 2010.
Q 19Which 2004 animated film features Edna Mode, a fashion designer who refuses to add capes to her costumes?
The Incredibles
The Incredibles gave Edna Mode the voice of its own writer-director, Brad Bird, who took the part after several attempts to cast an actress failed.
Q 20Which R&B singer topped the US Hot 100 for twelve straight weeks in 2004 with a hit featuring Lil Jon and Ludacris?
Usher
Usher had the longest-running number one of 2004, and the single finished top of the year-end Hot 100. Its parent album, Confessions, sold 1.1 million copies in its first week.
The Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals. Their last game was against the New York Mets, the same club they had faced in their very first game in 1969.
Q 24Which British actor began playing the American doctor Gregory House when the Fox drama launched in November 2004?
Hugh Laurie
Hugh Laurie recorded his audition in Namibia, where he was shooting a film, and producer Bryan Singer, set on hiring an American, took him for one.
Q 25Which actor directed The Passion of the Christ, the 2004 film with dialogue entirely in Aramaic, Hebrew and Latin?
Mel Gibson
Mel Gibson saw the film take $370.8 million in the United States, a record for an R-rated release that stood for 20 years.
Q 26Which Saturday Night Live writer turned a self-help book about teenage cliques into the 2004 comedy Mean Girls?
Tina Fey
Tina Fey read Rosalind Wiseman's Queen Bees and Wannabes and called producer Lorne Michaels to suggest it as a film. She also plays the math teacher Ms. Norbury.
Q 27Which fast-food chain's meals did Morgan Spurlock eat for 30 days straight in the 2004 documentary Super Size Me?
McDonald's
McDonald's dropped its Super Size option six weeks after the film premiered. Spurlock had gained 24.5 pounds by the end of his month on the menu.
Q 28Which actor won an Oscar for playing the blind soul pianist Ray Charles in the 2004 biopic Ray?
Jamie Foxx
Jamie Foxx needed no piano double, having gone to college on a classical piano scholarship. Ray Charles died in June 2004, months before the film opened.
Q 29Which pop star's Las Vegas wedding in January 2004 was annulled just 55 hours after the ceremony?
Britney Spears
Britney Spears married Jason Alexander, whom she had known since childhood, at A Little White Wedding Chapel. The court petition said she had not understood what she was doing.
Q 30Which American band released American Idiot in September 2004, an album its members called a punk rock opera?
Green Day
Green Day won the Grammy for Best Rock Album with the record, and its story of a suburban anti-hero later became a Broadway musical.