2005
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50 free 2005 trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
2005 was the year online video found a home, a new generation of games consoles arrived and music players shrank to fit a coin pocket. A storm season ran so long that forecasters used up their list of names, a new pope was elected, and one of football's great comebacks unfolded in a single evening. This quiz covers the whole year, with extra weight on technology: the websites, gadgets, space probes and aircraft that made their debuts, alongside the blockbusters and award winners, the TV premieres, the albums and singles on the charts, the champions across several sports and the headlines from around the world. Most questions are pitched for anyone who lived through it, with a few tougher ones for science and news buffs. It is written for class-of-2005 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 video-sharing website was founded in February 2005 by three former PayPal employees?
YouTube
YouTube's first video, Me at the zoo, shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo and can still be watched on the site.
Q 02When the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season ran out of storm names, forecasters borrowed letters from which alphabet?
Greek
Greek letters from Alpha to Zeta named six storms in a season of 27, and Wilma became the most intense Atlantic hurricane on record.
Q 03Which singer from rural Oklahoma won the fourth season of American Idol in May 2005?
Carrie Underwood
Carrie Underwood, raised on a farm in Checotah, beat rocker Bo Bice in a finale that drew 37 million votes.
Q 04Which actor jumped onto Oprah Winfrey's couch in May 2005 while declaring his love for Katie Holmes?
Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise stood on the yellow couch to make the announcement, and the couple married at a 15th-century castle in Bracciano in November 2006.
Q 05Which games console went on sale in November 2005 as a rival to the PlayStation 3 and Wii?
Xbox 360
Xbox 360 consoles failed so often at first that the fault was nicknamed the Red Ring of Death and Microsoft extended the warranty.
Q 06Which pope was elected in April 2005 after the death of John Paul II?
Benedict XVI
Benedict XVI, the German cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was elected after four ballots. In 2013 he became the first pope to resign since Gregory XII in 1415.
Q 07Which rock band reunited with Roger Waters at the Live 8 concerts in July 2005 after more than 20 years apart?
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd's classic line-up of Waters, Gilmour, Wright and Mason shared a stage again at concerts timed to pressure G8 leaders meeting in Scotland.
Q 08Which 2005 novel did Stephenie Meyer base on her dream about a human girl in love with a vampire?
Twilight
Twilight drew bids from eight publishers before its release and went on to be the biggest-selling book of 2008.
Q 09Which cyclist won a seventh straight Tour de France in 2005 but was stripped of every title in 2012?
Lance Armstrong
Lance Armstrong lost all seven wins after a doping investigation, and cycling's governing body chose not to hand the titles to other riders.
Q 10Which NBC sitcom set at a paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania, premiered in March 2005?
The Office
The Office was adapted from a BBC series created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, and it ran for nine seasons and 201 episodes.
Q 11Which online mapping service, built on software from two Danish brothers in Sydney, launched in February 2005?
Google Maps
Google Maps began as a desktop program at the small Sydney firm Where 2 Technologies, which was bought in October 2004 and rebuilt as a web application.
Q 12Which Apple music player did Steve Jobs unveil in September 2005 by pointing to the watch pocket of his jeans?
iPod Nano
iPod Nano replaced the iPod Mini and stored songs on flash memory, which made it slim enough for the pocket trick.
Q 13Which discussion website did University of Virginia roommates Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian found in June 2005?
Reddit was sold to the magazine publisher Condé Nast in October 2006, when the site was barely sixteen months old.
Q 21Which US city was left about 80 percent flooded in August 2005 when levees failed during Hurricane Katrina?
New Orleans
New Orleans turned the Superdome into a refuge of last resort for residents who could not leave, and the stadium itself was badly damaged.
Q 22Which former research scientist raised in East Germany became the first woman elected German chancellor in 2005?
Angela Merkel
Angela Merkel earned a doctorate in quantum chemistry in 1986 and worked in research until 1989, and the Bundestag elected her by 397 votes to 202.
Q 23Which city beat the favourite Paris by 54 votes to 50 in July 2005 to win the 2012 Summer Olympics?
London
Q 14Which music video game, released in November 2005, came with a plastic controller modelled on a Gibson SG?
Guitar Hero
Guitar Hero grew out of a partnership between the studio Harmonix and RedOctane, a company that had been making dance pads for home consoles.
Q 15Which tech term, coined only a year earlier, did the New Oxford American Dictionary name Word of the Year for 2005?
Podcast
Podcast was coined in 2004 by joining the name of a popular music player to the word broadcast.
Q 16Which dwarf planet, discovered in January 2005 and nicknamed Xena, was first described by NASA as a tenth planet?
Eris
Eris appeared to be larger than Pluto, which pushed astronomers to define the word planet for the first time.
Q 17On which moon did the European probe Huygens touch down in January 2005 after a ride aboard Cassini?
Titan
Titan gave Huygens the farthest landing from Earth a spacecraft has ever made, and the first on a moon other than our own.
Q 18Which double-deck airliner, the world's largest passenger plane, was unveiled in Toulouse and first flew in April 2005?
Airbus A380
Airbus A380 jets are certified to carry as many as 853 passengers, though a typical cabin seats about 525.
Q 19Which chipmaker did Steve Jobs announce in 2005 would replace PowerPC processors inside Apple's Mac computers?
Intel
Intel chips replaced PowerPC processors supplied by IBM and Freescale, and the first Macs to use them went on sale in January 2006.
Q 20Which internet calling service, built on the file-sharing technology behind Kazaa, did eBay buy in September 2005?
Skype
Skype cost the auction site $2.6 billion, and Microsoft paid $8.5 billion for it in May 2011.
London won on the fourth and final ballot at an IOC session in Singapore, where Tony Blair had flown out to lobby for the bid.
Q 24Which title did Camilla Parker Bowles use after marrying Prince Charles at Windsor Guildhall in April 2005?
Duchess of Cornwall
Duchess of Cornwall became her style, and the wedding was pushed back a day so that Charles could attend the funeral of Pope John Paul II.
Q 25Which former FBI deputy director revealed in 2005 that he was Deep Throat, the secret Watergate source?
Mark Felt
Mark Felt was 91 when he told Vanity Fair that he had passed information to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
Q 26Which civil rights figure, who died aged 92 in October 2005, was given a public viewing in the US Capitol rotunda?
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks was also honoured in Montgomery, where her 1955 refusal to move from a bus seat sparked a boycott, and in Detroit, where she was buried.
Q 27Which lifestyle businesswoman left a West Virginia prison in March 2005 and was back on television by September?
Martha Stewart
Martha Stewart served five months over the ImClone stock trading case, then launched a daytime show and her own version of The Apprentice.
Q 28Which climate treaty, adopted in 1997, finally entered into force in February 2005 with binding emissions targets?
Kyoto Protocol
Kyoto Protocol targets applied to developed countries, although the United States did not ratify the treaty and Canada withdrew in 2012.
Q 29In which city did Disney open a theme park in September 2005, with a layout that follows the rules of feng shui?
Hong Kong
Hong Kong became home to the second Disneyland in Asia, after Tokyo's in 1983, and Shanghai did not get one until 2016.
Q 30Which singer and David Furnish formed one of Britain's first civil partnerships in December 2005?
Elton John
Elton John and the Canadian filmmaker held the ceremony on the very day the Civil Partnership Act came into force, after twelve years together.