80 free 2023 Events trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This 2023 events trivia quiz is the year in review for people who followed the news rather than the red carpet. Seventy-three questions cover the world events of 2023: the bank failures of March, the Turkey–Syria earthquake, the Wagner mutiny, the coups in Niger and Gabon, the elections that put Milei, Noboa, Tusk and Wilders on the front page, the first Starship launch, the first landing near the Moon's south pole, the Nobel Prizes, the AI Safety Summit and the COP28 deal to transition away from fossil fuels. Sport gets its share too: the Women's World Cup, the Rugby and Cricket World Cups, the World Baseball Classic and Léon Marchand's swim into the record books. The easy questions ask which country overtook China in population and which company launched GPT-4; the hard ones want the town of the Nepal air crash, the bloc Somalia joined and the missile system behind the first interception in space. It suits pub quiz teams, news addicts, classrooms doing a year-in-review and anyone who wants to check how much of 2023 actually stuck. Films, music and celebrity gossip live on our separate 2023 pop culture quiz. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's article on the year 2023, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 80 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which country adopted the euro and joined the Schengen Area on January 1, 2023?
Croatia
It was the first eurozone enlargement since Lithuania joined in 2015, and the first Schengen enlargement since Liechtenstein in 2011.
Q 02Which country became NATO's 31st member on April 4, 2023, doubling its border with Russia?
Finland
Its neighbour to the west had applied at the same time but had to wait until March 2024 for Hungary's ratification.
Q 03Which US lender failed on March 10, 2023, the largest such failure since 2008?
Silicon Valley Bank
It was the 16th-largest bank in the country, and its collapse rippled through tech start-ups around the world that held deposits there.
Q 04Which San Francisco-based lender was auctioned by the FDIC to JPMorgan Chase for $10.7 billion in May 2023?
First Republic Bank
The sale made it the second-largest bank failure in US history, behind only Washington Mutual in 2008.
Q 05Which bank bought Credit Suisse for 3 billion francs in a Swiss-brokered deal in March 2023?
UBS
The takeover ended 167 years of Credit Suisse history and created a single dominant Swiss banking giant.
Q 06Which country overtook the long-time leader in April 2023 to become the world's most populous?
India
The world as a whole started 2023 with an estimated 7.943 billion people and was expected to pass 8.1 billion by the start of 2024.
Q 07Which company launched GPT-4, a large language model that could respond to images, on March 14, 2023?
OpenAI
The model could process up to 25,000 words at once, a big jump on the version powering the original ChatGPT.
Q 08What did Google DeepMind name the language model it released on December 6, 2023?
Gemini
Bard itself was renamed after the model a couple of months later.
Q 09Which SpaceX rocket, the most powerful ever built, first flew on 20 April 2023 and exploded after four minutes?
Starship
The test flight lifted off from Texas; the vehicle tumbled and was destroyed before its stages could separate.
Q 10Which space agency's Chandrayaan-3 was the first spacecraft to land near the Moon's south pole, in 2023?
ISRO
The mission carried a lander named Vikram and a rover named Pragyan.
Q 11What record did Freddy, the storm that formed in the Indian Ocean in February 2023, go on to set?
Longest-lasting tropical cyclone ever
It crossed the entire Indian Ocean and caused more than 1,400 deaths across southeastern Africa.
Q 12Which country, along with Turkey, was devastated by the magnitude 7.8 earthquake of February 6, 2023?
Syria
A 7.7 aftershock struck the same day; more than 121,000 people were injured across the two countries.
Q 13A magnitude 6.9 earthquake on 8 September 2023 killed at least 2,960 people in which country's Marrakesh-Safi region?
Morocco
Q 21In February 2023 Russia suspended its participation in which nuclear arms reduction treaty with the US?
New START
It was the last remaining arms-control agreement between the two nuclear powers.
Q 22President Mohamed Bazoum was overthrown in a July 2023 coup in which country?
Niger
General Abdourahamane Tchiani took over, and France announced two months later that it would pull its troops out.
Q 23An August 30, 2023 coup ended the Bongo family's 56-year rule in which Central African country?
Gabon
It came minutes after Ali Bongo Ondimba was declared the winner of a disputed presidential election.
The quake damaged historic buildings in Marrakesh's old city.
Q 14Two dams collapsed above Derna after Storm Daniel in 2023, destroying a quarter of the city, in which country?
Libya
The Mediterranean storm killed at least 5,000 people, with tens of thousands more reported missing.
Q 15Wildfires that killed at least 101 people in August 2023 struck which Hawaiian island?
Maui
About 17,000 acres burned, with the historic town of Lahaina largely destroyed.
Q 16Near which resort city did Hurricane Otis make landfall on 25 October 2023?
Acapulco
Its 165 mph winds beat the landfall record set by Hurricane Patricia in 2015.
Q 17The Sycamore Gap Tree, illegally felled in September 2023, stood beside which ancient structure?
Hadrian's Wall
A 16-year-old was among the first arrested; the tree had featured in the 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
Q 18Which mercenary chief led a June 2023 mutiny against Russia's military, then died in a plane crash two months later?
Yevgeny Prigozhin
His convoy got within a few hundred kilometres of Moscow before turning back after a single day.
Q 19Which leader brokered the deal that ended the one-day mercenary mutiny in Russia in June 2023?
Alexander Lukashenko
Belarus's president had also, a month earlier, agreed to host Russian tactical nuclear weapons on his territory.
Q 20Which sitting head of state did the ICC issue an arrest warrant for on 17 March 2023?
Vladimir Putin
It was the first ICC warrant ever issued against the leader of a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
Q 24Bola Tinubu was elected president of which West African country in February 2023?
Nigeria
Obi's Labour Party surge made it the most competitive three-way race in the country's modern history.
Q 25Javier Milei won the presidential runoff of which country on November 19, 2023?
Argentina
The chainsaw-wielding libertarian took office on December 10 with Victoria Villarruel as his vice president.
Q 26Daniel Noboa became the youngest-ever president of which South American country in October 2023?
Ecuador
He was 35, the heir to a banana fortune, and won a snap election called after the sitting president dissolved congress.
Q 27Bernardo Arévalo of the Semilla movement was elected president of which country in August 2023?
Guatemala
He took 58% in the runoff, a shock result that prosecutors then spent months trying to overturn.
Q 28Who succeeded Jacinda Ardern as Prime Minister of New Zealand on January 25, 2023?
Chris Hipkins
Ardern had announced her resignation only six days earlier, saying she no longer had 'enough in the tank'.
Q 29In which country did Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom win the most seats in a November 2023 election?
The Netherlands
The vote followed the collapse of Mark Rutte's coalition that summer.
Q 30Donald Tusk replaced Mateusz Morawiecki as prime minister of which country in December 2023?
Poland
Law and Justice had won the most seats in October but lost its majority to a broad opposition coalition.