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50 free 2019 trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
2019 was the last year before everything changed, and it was packed: a Paris cathedral burned during Holy Week, Marvel's finale overtook Avatar, Game of Thrones ended with a king nobody predicted, and a cricket World Cup final was settled by counting boundaries. Astronomers showed us a black hole for the first time, a Kenyan ran a marathon in under two hours, and a teenager who sailed to New York became Time's Person of the Year. These 50 questions cover the year's news, films, television, music and sport, from Brexit's revolving door at Number 10 to Lil Nas X's 19 weeks at number one, the Palme d'Or that went on to win Best Picture, a Champions League final in Madrid, a headline set at Glastonbury and the Eurovision win that ended a 44-year Dutch drought. Most are pitched for a pub table; a handful reward the people who really paid attention. Play it on your phone with instant answers and explanations, or print it for a pub quiz, office quiz or New Year's Eve round.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Paris church lost its roof and spire to a fire on 15 April, while its three rose windows survived?
Notre-Dame
Notre-Dame's spire fell at 19:50, creating a draft that slammed the doors and sent a fireball through the attic, yet the altar, organs and 13th-century rose windows came through with little damage.
Q 02Which Marvel film overtook Avatar in July as the highest-grossing film ever, holding the crown until 2021?
Avengers: Endgame
Avengers: Endgame was only the fifth film ever to gross $2 billion, and it lost the all-time record in March 2021 when Avatar was re-released in China.
Q 03Which Game of Thrones character, by then the Three-Eyed Raven, was chosen as king in the finale 'The Iron Throne'?
Bran Stark
Bran Stark is proclaimed 'Bran the Broken', King of the Six Kingdoms, after Sansa wins the North its independence; actor Isaac Hempstead Wright said the ending came from George R. R. Martin himself.
Q 04Which country-trap single, remixed with Billy Ray Cyrus, topped the Billboard Hot 100 for a then-record 19 weeks?
Old Town Road
Old Town Road by Lil Nas X held No. 1 for 19 consecutive weeks after Billboard quietly removed it from its Hot Country chart for not 'embracing enough elements of today's country music'.
Q 05Which golfer won the 2019 Masters at 43, his fifth green jacket and first major since the 2008 U.S. Open?
Tiger Woods
Tiger Woods won by a single stroke over three runners-up, becoming only the fifth player with a gap of more than a decade between major wins and the second-oldest Masters champion after Jack Nicklaus.
Q 06Which climate activist crossed the Atlantic on the yacht Malizia II, then became Time's youngest Person of the Year?
Greta Thunberg
Greta Thunberg, 16, was the first Time Person of the Year born in the 21st century; the 60-foot Malizia II carried her from Plymouth to New York on solar panels and underwater turbines.
Q 07Who became UK prime minister on 24 July after beating Jeremy Hunt in the contest to replace Theresa May?
Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson then called a snap election and on 12 December won the Conservatives an 80-seat Commons majority.
Q 08Which club beat Tottenham Hotspur 2–0 in Madrid to win the 2019 Champions League final, its sixth European Cup?
Liverpool
Liverpool's Mohamed Salah converted a penalty after just 106 seconds and substitute Divock Origi sealed it in the 87th minute, handing Jürgen Klopp his first trophy at the club.
Q 09Which US winger took both the Golden Ball and Golden Boot at the Women's World Cup, then the Ballon d'Or Féminin?
Megan Rapinoe
Megan Rapinoe was the tournament's top scorer in France with six goals and finished the year named The Best FIFA Women's Player too.
Q 10Which streaming service launched on 12 November with The Mandalorian, whose 'Baby Yoda' became an instant meme?
Disney+
Disney+ signed up more than 10 million subscribers within a day of launch; the 'Baby Yoda' character, officially 'the Child', was a puppet of the same species as Yoda.
Q 11How was the 2019 Cricket World Cup final at Lord's settled after both the match and the Super Over ended tied?
Boundary count
England's boundary count of 26 to New Zealand's 17 decided it, the only time a World Cup has been settled that way, and the ICC scrapped the rule soon after.
Q 12Which team beat England 32–12 in Yokohama to win the 2019 Rugby World Cup, led by captain Siya Kolisi?
South Africa
South Africa's third title made Siya Kolisi the first black captain of a World Cup-winning side; wings Makazole Mapimpi and Cheslin Kolbe scored the tries.
Q 13Which team beat the Golden State Warriors in six games to win the 2019 NBA Finals, its first championship?
Toronto Raptors
Q 21Which proposed law brought a million Hong Kong marchers out on 9 June and was formally withdrawn in September?
Extradition bill
The extradition bill was suspended in June and formally withdrawn on 4 September, but by then the protests had widened into demands for democracy and an inquiry into the police.
Q 22Which country held a funeral in August for Okjökull, a glacier declared dead after it had completely melted away?
Iceland
Iceland's mourners fixed a plaque titled 'A letter to the future' to the bare rock; Okjökull had shrunk from 15 square kilometres a century earlier to under one by 2015.
Q 23Which travel firm, a brand in use since 1841, collapsed in September, stranding around 600,000 holidaymakers?
Thomas Cook
Toronto Raptors star Kawhi Leonard was Finals MVP for the second time, joining Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and LeBron James as the only players to win it with two different teams.
Q 14Which film became the first R-rated movie to gross $1 billion, after winning the Golden Lion at Venice?
Joker
Joker passed $1 billion six weeks into release, a mark no R-rated film had reached; its Venice premiere drew an eight-minute standing ovation.
Q 15Which South Korean film about a poor family infiltrating a rich household won the 2019 Palme d'Or at Cannes?
Parasite
Parasite was the first Korean film to take the Palme d'Or and went on to become the first non-English-language film to win the Best Picture Oscar.
Q 16Which 17-year-old became the first artist born in the 21st century to top the Billboard Hot 100, with 'Bad Guy'?
Billie Eilish
Billie Eilish had already become the first 21st-century-born act to top the Billboard 200 in April with When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, written with her brother Finneas O'Connell.
Q 17Which country won the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv with Duncan Laurence's song 'Arcade'?
Netherlands
The Netherlands' fifth Eurovision win was its first since Teach-In's 'Ding-a-dong' in 1975, a wait of 44 years.
Q 18The outbreak that grew into the COVID-19 pandemic began in December in which city, the capital of Hubei province?
Wuhan
Wuhan's cluster of unknown pneumonia cases was reported to the WHO's China office on 31 December, and the '19' in COVID-19 marks that year of first identification.
Q 19Which WikiLeaks founder was carried out of Ecuador's London embassy by police in April after seven years inside?
Julian Assange
Julian Assange was jailed for 50 weeks for skipping bail; within weeks Sweden reopened its rape inquiry and the United States began seeking his removal to face charges.
Q 20Which comedian who played a fictional president in Servant of the People won Ukraine's real presidency in April?
Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Volodymyr Zelenskyy took 73 percent of the run-off vote against Petro Poroshenko, the biggest landslide in Ukrainian presidential history; his party even borrowed the show's name.
Thomas Cook's failure set off Operation Matterhorn, the UK's biggest peacetime repatriation, to fly home 150,000 British customers.
Q 24Which airliner was grounded worldwide in March after Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, its second crash in five months?
Boeing 737 MAX
The Boeing 737 MAX's MCAS flight-control software activated in both accidents, and the FAA had privately predicted in 2018 that MCAS could cause 15 crashes over 30 years.
Q 25Which Ethiopian prime minister won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for ending the border conflict with Eritrea?
Abiy Ahmed
Abiy Ahmed's 2018 peace initiative ended a 'no war, no peace' freeze that followed Ethiopia's refusal to hand the town of Badme to Eritrea; after the Tigray war began in 2020, critics called for the prize to be revoked.
Q 26Which spacecraft made the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon, in the Von Kármán crater on 3 January?
Chang'e 4
Chang'e 4 carried a sealed biosphere in which cottonseed sprouted, the first plant to grow on the Moon, before the −52 °C lunar night killed the experiment.
Q 27Which SI unit was defined by a platinum-iridium cylinder for 130 years until new definitions took effect on 20 May?
The kilogram
The kilogram is now fixed by the Planck constant; the old prototype and its official copies had drifted apart by about 50 micrograms over a century.
Q 28The first image of a black hole, released in April by the Event Horizon Telescope, showed which galaxy's core?
Messier 87
Messier 87's supermassive black hole, designated M87*, was captured by radio dishes spanning the globe; the Milky Way's own Sagittarius A* was not imaged until May 2022.
Q 29Which era name began in Japan on 1 May when Naruhito took the throne after his father Akihito's abdication?
Reiwa
Reiwa, glossed by Japan's Foreign Ministry as 'beautiful harmony', was the first era name drawn from Japanese literature, the Man'yōshū, rather than the Chinese classics.
Q 30What did Victor Vescovo find on the floor of the Challenger Deep, 10,928 m down, alongside three new species?
Plastic waste
Plastic waste had reached the deepest point on Earth; Vescovo's submersible Limiting Factor beat the previous depth record by 16 metres and he became the first person to dive there twice.