2014
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50 free 2014 trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
2014 was a year of viral stunts and record-breaking tweets, of a football semi-final nobody saw coming and a missing airliner nobody could find. Borders shifted, a referendum went down to the wire, and a spacecraft pulled off a landing that had never been tried before. This general knowledge quiz covers the whole year: the news stories from America and around the world, the hit films and chart-topping singles, the TV farewells and late-night handovers, the champions and controversies in sport, and the apps, games and tech deals that had everyone talking. Most questions are pitched for anyone who lived through it, with a few tougher ones for news, science and sports buffs. It is written for class-of-2014 reunions, 2010s 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 viral 2014 social media stunt raised $115 million for the ALS Association in a single summer?
Ice Bucket Challenge
The Ice Bucket Challenge was co-founded by Pat Quinn and Pete Frates and went viral in July and August 2014. Frates's Boston College sporting ties helped it spread.
Q 02Which nation beat host Brazil 7–1 in a 2014 World Cup semi-final, scoring four goals inside six minutes?
Germany
Germany led 5–0 within 29 minutes, and Miroslav Klose's goal made him the World Cup's all-time record scorer, passing Brazil's own Ronaldo.
Q 03Which host of the 2014 Oscars posted a celebrity-packed selfie that broke the record for the most retweeted tweet?
Ellen DeGeneres
Ellen DeGeneres's selfie passed the old record, a photo of Barack and Michelle Obama hugging, within the hour. It was taken on a Samsung phone supplied as part of a $20 million marketing campaign.
Q 04Which mobile game did Vietnamese developer Dong Nguyen pull from app stores in February 2014 at the peak of its fame?
Flappy Bird
Flappy Bird was earning about $50,000 a day from adverts when Nguyen removed it, saying he felt guilty about how addictive it had become.
Q 05Which virus spread through Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in 2014, in an epidemic that killed more than 11,000 people?
Ebola
Ebola infected 28,616 people in what became the most widespread outbreak of the disease in history, with roughly four in ten of them dying.
Q 06Which song from the Despicable Me 2 soundtrack was the best-selling single of 2014 in the United States?
Happy
Happy was first written by Pharrell for CeeLo Green, whose label turned it down because he was about to release a Christmas album. It launched with a music video 24 hours long.
Q 07Which music video passed 2,147,483,647 views in December 2014, forcing YouTube to upgrade its view counter?
Gangnam Style
Gangnam Style outgrew the largest number a 32-bit counter can hold, so YouTube moved to 64-bit numbers. Psy's video had also been the first to reach a billion views, in December 2012.
Q 08Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished in March 2014 after leaving Kuala Lumpur for which Asian capital city?
Beijing
Beijing was about six hours' flying away when the Boeing 777 disappeared with 239 people aboard. The hunt for it became the most expensive search in aviation history.
Q 09Which nation's September 2014 independence referendum let 16-year-olds vote and drew a turnout of 84.6%?
Scotland
Scotland voted No by 55.3% to 44.7%, on the highest turnout for any election or referendum in the United Kingdom since January 1910.
Q 10Which band's album Songs of Innocence was added free to 500 million iTunes accounts in September 2014?
U2
U2 saw 26 million users download the whole record in its first month, but its unprompted arrival in music libraries drew criticism, and Bono apologised for it in his 2022 memoir.
Q 11Which region of Ukraine did Russia annex in March 2014 after troops without insignia seized its parliament?
Crimea
Crimea was absorbed on 18 March 2014 after a referendum held under occupation, which offered voters no option to keep things as they were.
Q 12Who became the youngest Nobel laureate in history by sharing the 2014 Peace Prize at the age of 17?
Malala Yousafzai
Malala Yousafzai had been shot by a Taliban gunman in 2012 while riding a bus home from an exam, in an attack aimed at her campaigning for girls' schooling.
Q 13Which city's 2014 Winter Olympics opening ceremony saw one of five giant snowflakes fail to open into an Olympic ring?
Sochi
Q 21Which Disney villain did Angelina Jolie play in a 2014 live-action film that grossed over $758 million worldwide?
Maleficent
Maleficent retells Sleeping Beauty from the side of the fairy who casts the curse, with Elle Fanning as Aurora. It was the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2014.
Q 22Which 2014 Christopher Nolan film sends Matthew McConaughey through a wormhole near Saturn to find humanity a new home?
Interstellar
Interstellar grew out of a treatment co-written by physicist Kip Thorne and was first set to be directed by Steven Spielberg. It won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.
Q 23Which CBS sitcom ended after nine seasons in March 2014 with a two-part finale titled Last Forever?
How I Met Your Mother
Sochi's organisers poked fun at the glitch in the closing ceremony, where one group of dancers forming the rings deliberately failed to open out.
Q 14Which singer left country music behind with 1989, an album that sold 1.287 million US copies in its 2014 debut week?
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift named the album after her birth year as a symbolic rebirth. A week after its release her label pulled her whole catalogue from Spotify, and it stayed away until 2017.
Q 15Which 2014 film teams Chris Pratt's Star-Lord with a gun-toting raccoon and a tree-like alien called Groot?
Guardians of the Galaxy
Guardians of the Galaxy's soundtrack of 1960s and 1970s hits topped the Billboard 200, the first soundtrack made up entirely of previously released songs to do so.
Q 16Which comedian, an Oscar winner for Good Will Hunting, died in 2014 at the age of 63?
Robin Williams
Robin Williams was found after his death to have had Lewy body disease, which had been misdiagnosed as Parkinson's. He first rose to fame as the alien Mork in the sitcom Mork & Mindy.
Q 17Which messaging app did Facebook agree to buy for about $19 billion in February 2014?
WhatsApp had been founded in 2009 by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, two former Yahoo employees. A funding round one year before the sale had valued it at just $1.5 billion.
Q 18Which NFL team won its first Super Bowl in February 2014 by beating the Denver Broncos 43–8?
Seattle Seahawks
The Seattle Seahawks scored a safety just 12 seconds in, the quickest score any Super Bowl had seen. It was also the first Super Bowl played outdoors in a cold-weather city.
Q 19Which former Saturday Night Live cast member took over NBC's The Tonight Show from Jay Leno in February 2014?
Jimmy Fallon
Jimmy Fallon's start was brought forward from September so that NBC's Winter Olympics coverage could act as a springboard. He became the sixth host of the long-running show.
Q 20Which US state began licensed sales of recreational marijuana on January 1, 2014, after voters passed Amendment 64?
Colorado
Colorado voters had approved the measure in November 2012, and it also let adults aged 21 or over grow up to six plants at home.
How I Met Your Mother's finale drew 13.13 million US viewers. Co-creator Carter Bays had written his first rough draft of the ending back in 2006.
Q 24Which block-building video game's maker, Mojang, did Microsoft agree to buy for $2.5 billion in September 2014?
Minecraft
Minecraft's creator, Markus Persson, had tweeted that June asking whether anyone would buy his share of the studio, worn out by the pressure of owning the game.
Q 25Which Uruguayan striker got a four-month ban from football for biting Italy's Giorgio Chiellini at the 2014 World Cup?
Luis Suárez
Luis Suárez was biting an opponent for the third time in his career, after earlier incidents at Ajax and Liverpool. His ban also covered nine international matches.
Q 26With which country did President Obama announce in December 2014 that the United States would normalise relations?
Cuba
Cuba and the US struck the deal in secret talks mediated by Pope Francis and hosted by Canada. Their embassies in Havana and Washington reopened in July 2015.
Q 27Which 2014 Seth Rogen comedy about a plot to kill Kim Jong Un lost its wide cinema release after hackers attacked Sony?
The Interview
The Interview went out online instead on December 24, 2014, and its $40 million in digital rentals made it Sony's most successful digital release up to then.
Q 28Which John Green novel became a 2014 film with Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort as teenage cancer patients?
The Fault in Our Stars
The Fault in Our Stars grossed $307.2 million worldwide on a $12 million budget. It opened at number one at the box office.
Q 29Which singer's debut single All About That Bass spent eight consecutive weeks at number one on the US Hot 100 in 2014?
Meghan Trainor
Meghan Trainor co-wrote the doo-wop-flavoured song in 40 minutes. Several labels turned it down as too retro before she won a deal by performing it on a ukulele.
Q 30Which actor badly mispronounced singer Idina Menzel's name while introducing her performance at the 2014 Oscars?
John Travolta
John Travolta's slip became an instant internet meme, and he apologised to Menzel soon afterwards. Her next Broadway show printed joke playbills crediting her under the mangled name.